"Somebody will see my ear"

This morning, Maia said she didn’t want to go to school and cried when Kristina said she had to go. This was in bed. Maia had climbed in with us during the night, as she always does.

Mais wasn’t communicative about why. Said something about Boltyn pushing her down. Boltyn is one of the two preschool classmates who went to Hokulani with her.

Getting the hair done this morning was a big scene. "I don't like it, Mommy. But I don't like it, Mommy," she cried, again and again.

Then she quieted down and was okay at breakfast.

On the way to school, she had started to cry again.

“Is it about your ear?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Did Boltyn make fun of your ear?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You know why, Sweetie. He’s afraid people won’t like him. So he makes fun of you.”

She was still crying. “I don’t want to go to school,” she said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Somebody will see my ear,” she said.

“Everybody will see your ear, Sweetie. But they will forget about it. You’re funny and pretty and smart and sweet. People like you.”

We were getting close to the school. “Paper, Mommy,” she said. “I don’t want anybody to see I was crying.”

When we got to the drop-off at the school, all the kids detailed to escort the kindergarten kids to class were gone. We were late.

“Go with me, Mommy,” she said, crying again. And so Kristina went.

This was the morning of August 22nd, the third full day of kindergarten.

Later that day, Kristina sent an email to her teacher. The next day her teacher showed Maia's ear to her classmates so that they could see it and ask questions. That day, when Kristina picked me up from work, Maia was passed out in her car seat, her mouth open and her back arched in the way it is when she is in deep sleep.

So brave, this little girl.

John, Friday, August 31, 2007

We go to Liliha Bakery

Last weekend was Maia's first class in her new soccer class and in her new swimming class at the Y, and between the two classes, we went to Liliha Bakery for lunch.



Liliha Bakery is an institution. It has a crowded little lunch counter, like the old dinners in New York, that serves the best pancakes ever.



It happened to be the Bakery's 47 anniversary.



I has a shortstack, of course.

On the way there, I asked Maia if she had fun in her new soccer class. She said, "Yes, I did. Nobody saw my ear." She's taken to wearing headbands in the last few days to hide the ear.



In the swimming class, she was oblivious to the ear. It's come up again because of the new children at the new school. One of her old classmates is there, and she said that he teased her about it one day.



When we got home, we took a walk. We live on a pretty street, and Maia likes for me to go on walks with her. We look for dogs because she loves dogs.


In the backyard in June, we talked about orphanages. I told her that that was where she was living when we went to Kazakhstan to get her when she was two. That an orphanage was a place where children who didn't have parents lived. Today, I talked about adoption. "Do you know what that is?" I asked her. She shook her head. "Well, it's when you have two sets of parents. Your first parents. Your birth parents. And Mommy and Daddy. Your adoptive parents."



I don't think any of it sunk in. I'm probably doing this all wrong, but I don't know how to do it except to just plow into it. Adoption, a missing ear--it's a lot to ask a little girl to put together.

The picture above was from a walk more than three years ago on the grounds of the orphanage in Shymkent.

John, Sunday, August 20, 2007

"I have a lot of laughs inside, Daddy"

Today was Maia's first day of kindergarten. Though she's been going to preschool for the last three years, I think of it as her first day of school.



This has been a very difficult time for her. Her graduating class at the preschool has dwindled down to about half a dozen children--the rest of them have gone off to kindergarten or been taken out of preschool for the summer. It was sad and scary for her. Coming home from school on Monday, she sang a madeup song as she often does. This was about going to kindergarten--how she was going to be leaving all of her friends, but how it would be okay even if she didn't have friends at kindergarten, and that she wouldn't be scared.



Her ear has preoccupied her, too. I think it is connected with the issue of going to a new school and meeting a new group of children who will ask her about it and probably tease her about it. Kristina brushes her hair in the morning and can never get it right. "I don't like it," Maia will say, crying unconsolably, and I can't help but think it's really her ear she's talking about.



One day, I showed her before and after pictures of operations done by this doctor in California. Really quite amazing. Not long after that, she wanted to know when we were going to go to California for the doctor to fix her ear. And when her new bottom teeth started to come in, and Kristina said she could show her friends, Maia said, "And when I get my ear fixed, I can show my friends, too."




She is tall for her age, and I asked her not long ago if she liked being tall. She said, "Yes." I asked her why, and she said, "Because they can't see my ear." Her "born ear," she calls it, because we've told her to say that she was born that way. "I don't like my born ear," she said to Kristina one day.



The night before last, she tossed and turned till about 9:30 probably. Very late for her. She's usually asleep by 8:30. Last night, I slept with her till about 3:30. When I left for my bed with Kristina, she woke up and joined us.



But tonight it was different.



It had been a good day at kindergarten. She had been wary. But she liked her teacher, and she liked the other children. She had kept her hair down, instead of up in its usual pony tail. Maybe that helped.



"You know two boys were fighting," she said, when we went to pick her up at about 12:30. It was half the class for half the day. "The police came and took them away," she said. "Really, Maia, or are you tricking us," Kristina asked. "I'm tricking you," she said.



Tonight, she wanted Kristina to play Hokulani with her in the playtime that the two share just after bathing. "Hokulani" is the name of her school.



We went to bed early. "Come sleep by me," she will say to me when she's ready. Kristina had been hurrying her along this evening because she wanted her to get a good night's sleep. It was a little after 7 and still light outside.




We played in bed. I thought it would help her to get to sleep. She was making nonsense words and cracking herself up. She gets into giggling fits about things she says, and I was encouraging her this evening. Finally, she was pinching my nose shut to make me snort. I began turning it down then because I didn't want the play to get too rough. But it was hard to bring her down.




"I have a lot of laughs inside, Daddy," she said, explaining, and still laughing.

"That's very good, Sweetness. It's good to have a lot of laughs inside."

John, Wednesday, August 1, 2007