Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

From the Facebook status files, December 2012:

(Ryan) Hooray! After being buried 24 hours in a bowl of dry rice, Justin's wet digital camera now works fine again! Of course, now he's boxing on Wii Sports and coming dangerously close to punching the TV screen out.

(Adam) Erin gave us an air popcorn popper and I must say, the kids are finding this old school procedure absolutely riveting. Begone, Orville! You and your fat-laden microwave bags!

(Richard) Was just Skyping with Justice at Aunt Erin's. I asked what she's having for dinner tonight. She said "boogers".

(Ryan) Speculation seems to abound this morning on whether or not Tinkerbell wears panties. Justice is weighing in heavily in the "yes" camp, while Justin vehemently rejects it.

(Adam) Me: make sure you check in with me every so I know where you are.
Justin: Okay, i will check in with you every four minutes.
Me: Okay.
Justin: Daddy, how long is four minutes?

(Ryan) Basic female anatomy, as described at our house:
Justin (giggling): Justice has China.
Adam: What do you mean? China is a country.
Justice (disgusted with him, rolling her eyes): He means I have a pagina.

(Adam) Getting dressed for synagogue tonight and my daughter told me I wasn't dressed nice enough. She insisted I change. Oy vey.

(Ryan) Justice's pagina drew several happy comments at the bar mitzvah party we went to last night. There's no such thing as bad press.

(Ryan) Who is that screechy witch woman on the Power Rangers, and doesn't she understand it's 8:30 in the morning?

(Ryan) Breakfast. Power Rangers. Sunday School. Power Rangers. Lunch at Taco Bell. Power Rangers. New Bikes for Hanukkah. Power Rangers. I'm beginning to see a pattern emerge.

(Adam) Me: Justin, unbutton your pants before you take them off. You'll growing, and one day you'll just pop the button off.
Justin: So? If I'm growing, I won't be able to wear the pants then.
Me: Uh...

(Ryan) Justin, now a confirmed size 7, has a pair of size 6 skinny jeans he can barely zip up, but he refuses to part with them. He calls them "my cute jeans."

(Adam) Evening conversation:
Justice: Daddy, what kind of pizza dough do you like better, fresh or frozen?
Me: Fresh.
Justice: And there's a only a limited time left to get a new car.
Me: You know, you can skip commercials if you're watching the Tivo.
Justice: Oh. Yeah. (runs out of my office).

(Adam) J1 and J2 are sitting on the kitchen floor right now playing the dreidel game. Every tiime it lands on a gimel, the loser screams bloody murder.

(Ryan) Rock climbing in the moutains outside of Las Vegas. Thank you, God, for giving my children a playground of mountains.

(Adam) The scariest sentence heard at our house: "Daddy, guess what Justin did."

               * * * * * * *

The Scandinavian painter Edvard Munch, best known for The Scream (1893), once wrote, "I will no longer paint interiors of people reading and women knitting, but rather living beings who breathe and feel, suffer and love."

I hope that's what this online diary has been this year...a place to store our earliest family memories in real time, in real fashion, raw and fresh as they'll ever be.

A poster at the top of our stairs reads:

In this house, we do real.
We do mistakes.
We do I'm sorry.
We do second chances.
We do fun.
We do hugs.
We do foregiveness.
We do really loud.
We do family.
We do love.

We do all of these things, Daddy, Justin, Justice and me...some better than others, some with the inborn instinct of the billion lives and loves that came before us, some with the panic or patience of hopeful exhaustion, and some, quite frankly, with nothing but the awkward baby steps of four new souls born into a brand new universe together, stumbling and learning day by day, the best we can, to love and take care of each other.

I've learned a few things along the way.

First, children aren't accessories. They weren't put in this world to make my life complete and satisfy the picture-perfect family dream I once carried in my mind. It was apparent from day one that what I need has little to do with this. Starting at square one, this endeavor has been all about them, plain and simple. Rediscovering myself in the midst of such enormous change is a painful and joyous experience, like any radical rebirth would have to be. It's not about "how do I make them fit into my life," it's about "how can I make a new life for all of us, where we all fit each other." They have needs and expectations that far surpass my own. If that doesn't knock you on your ass and teach you humility, nothing will.

Secondly, friends will come and friends will go. Like any era, we circle in and out of each other's lives - "all my life's a circle," sang Harry Chapin - but perhaps that circle is never as sharply defined as when new children enter the picture. Some who we loved and counted as our closest friends removed themselves from our daily life entirely, with excuses of their own, but underneath, not quite sure how our new incarnation as a family fit into their comfort zone and past experience of us as a neat and unencumbered couple. Our two becoming four worked for many, but it did not work for all. And although we understand it, we miss their comfort and their company.

Other close friends became even dearer, filling our ears and hearts with incredible encouragement and compassion.

"Off into the sunset, I hope," I wrote in a photo I posted of me and Justice in Red Rock Canyon, bundled up in the afternoon chill, mountains behind us, mountains ahead, her on my shoulders, me trying, as I do every day, to carry an enormous new weight of responsibility like I've never known before.

"If someday this little girl loves me 1/100th as much as I love her right now," I wrote, "we will be just fine."

"She already does," Dale wrote back. "It's just locked inside, being obstructed by a lot of pain and uncertainty. But you're getting through it, and before you know it, it will catch you both by surprise. You've been a giant blessing to each other. It just takes a little time for it to show itself."

Those are the friends, the brothers and sisters, who last a lifetime.

I wrote a poem once, in baby-step transitioning days a long time ago that ended, "I'm standing right now on the edge of Nevada. Desert sun is a curious thing. Sometimes it burns, but sometimes I smile. There are no clouds here."

For Adam and me, days may be challenging, but the future is cloudless. As we welcome the continued solidity 2013 will bring for our new family, we have never been more fully convinced that we were meant to do this, and that all of us, the "4" in "Fly4You," are uniquely situated and uniquely qualified to continue on this combined, courageous journey. More and more sunlight just keeps breaking through.

We just don't care how people see us anymore.

"Two or three things I know for sure," wrote Dorothy Allison in her book of the same title, "One is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me."

So that's my New Year's resolution. To no longer define ourselves in the world's language for us. Gay dads? Special needs kids? How about just  "family." That's what we are now. That's what we turned into. Labels mean nothing.

My son's name is Justin. My daughter's name is Justice.

And Adam and I will keep loving them and learning them for years. For a lifetime to come.

We're glad you came with us this year. This story is just beginning.

Happy New Year.

Auntie

We had a brisk and wonderful walk in the mountains this afternoon, and by "mountains," Justin means Red Rock Canyon, a conservation area 15 miles outside of Las Vegas run by the Bureau of Land Management. Its hiking trails and scenic driving loop draw over a million visitors a year (and at seven dollars a car, you think they could set up indoor plumbing on some of those trailheads instead of all those 20-year-old pit toilets, but I digress).

My sister, God love her, sat in the back seat with J1 and J2 all the way out there, all the way around the 14-mile loop and all the way back into town, crammed like a sardine into the 15-inch space between their buckle-up safety seats. Our well-travelled Hyundai Elantra is not nearly big enough for two dads, two kids and two new aunts down the street, but we make do and improvise, especially on a fine December afternoon when J2 heard the mountains calling his name.

My sister's name is "Auntie" to the kids, or sometimes "Aunt Erin."

"Auntie" is a longstanding term of endearment from my dad's side of the family. Aunt Peg, Aunt Mary, Aunt Barb, Aunt Ellie, Aunt Sue...they were all just "Auntie" to us nieces and nephews, and it delights me that my sister, who has always been "Bug" to me, has now inherited the title.

Erin hit the ground running when she arrived here in Las Vegas. It took her, what? Two? Three weeks to find a job? That's some happy hunting in a tanked economy. But land one she did, at a care facility that specializes, as she does, in taking care of Alzheimers and Dementia patients. And in her spare time, for fun, she takes on J1 and J2.

So we all hauled ourselves out to Red Rock this afternoon. It was predictably cold up in them-there hills. We stopped about midway through the scenic loop and got out of the car, the kids bundled up in their cute winter coats and their red and orange gloves. Adam and Erin yelled at me for not dressing warmer. I always forget a hat. Erin loaned me hers and said I looked like a prisoner out on furlough.

We hiked a half mile up a trail, Justin excited and wandering off the whole time, counting the dozens of holes in the ground where snakes and lizards and other desert critters dug in to hibernate for the winter.

"Here's another one!" he'd yell, and his joy was genuine.

Justice was only a tiny pair of eyes peeking out from under a massive gray scarf, dutifully putting up with this crazy hike of ours...wanting to be anywhere but out in the cold, but being a genuine good sport about it thanks to God, Risperidone and a healthy dose of good luck.

We took some pictures, labored our way up the trail, then turned around and came back. All said, not a long walk, but try it with J1 on your shoulders or J2 on your back and it always seems a little further. We sort of tag teamed, the three of us...me, Adam, Erin...one of us always with a kid in tow, on back or on shoulders. It's a hell of a way to walk on loose gravel. And I'm not sure what I dread more. A tiny voice saying "carry me," or the day I know that'll arrive too soon when they don't ask me anymore.

Aunt Jaime is back in Wisconsin for the holidays and she is missed. She is Justin's primary snuggle bunny, although "Auntie," Aunt Erin, will do in a pinch. Adam and I still don't get the same snuggles, but we're happy they found two beautiful women to share them with. They're important and they're needed and of course we sigh with wistful envy, but there's no way we can begrudge them that very particular outlet of love.

March 30, 2012

Dear Open Arms Adoption Agency of the JFSA,

It is not hard to recommend two people you love very much for the job of parenting, and

caring for two children.

I know that both Ryan and Adam have the qualities it would take to provide a safe and loving home. They are both kind, intelligent, sensitive, family oriented men who would build their lives around these children, and use their gifts of patience and humor to overcome whatever obstacles may come their way on this journey.

They have built a strong, solid, loving relationship over the last fifteen years that, I can only

imagine, would grow better and brighter with two little ones to love.

I can speak from experience when I tell you that my brother Ryan, being eight years older

than I, was more than a big brother. He was a father figure as well. He was my rock during a

difficult childhood.

Adam, who has become my brother, is one of the kindest, sweetest souls I have ever met, and

am so happy my brother is loved by him. I know they both have much more love to give and

would be ideal parents, especially to children who need to regain their carefree childhood.

Ryan and Adam would do everything possible to make that happen.

And finally, the one person who should be writing this letter is my daughter Jaime. She is

seventeen years old now, but has grown up with her two uncles caring for her and making her

feel very, very loved. As a single mother, it gave me a lot of peace to know they would be

there for her if she ever needed them, and they are the only two people in the world I would

trust to take care of her as well as I could.

Sincerely,

Erin Malone

I love you, Bug.

We love you, Auntie.

Thank you for coming so far to share this amazing hike with us.

Welcome to the mountains.

Jackets, Joy and Wild Things

"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him "Wild Thing!" and Max said, "I'll eat you up!" so he was sent to bed without eating anything."
-Maurice Sendak, "Where the Wild Things Are."

I was hanging jackets in the closet this morning.

To me, a jacket hanging on a chair or a stairway bannister is the OCD equivalent of an unflushed toilet. You dropped it in the right neighborhood and I give you credit for not doing it on the floor, but I still don't want to look at it. So daily, I find myself hanging up jackets, jackets, numerous jackets, all in a row, all in our little downstairs closet, and today I just stood there and admired them.

The kids each have about a dozen. There are light ones and heavy ones. Special ones that match their school uniforms and some really dirty ones that look like mud and food and magic markers. There are ones that look like leopard fur and ones that look like superheroes. Justice has a hooded one that looks like a zebra and Justin has one that looks like the Green Lantern. There are new ones, Savers ones, lots of hand-me-down ones. God bless Lily, Lucas and Gavriella, their older cousins...J1 and J2 will never want for warm, cozy comfort.

And, hangers in hand, I just stood there and admired them today.

Who would have thought sixteen years ago when Adam and I were struggling with a different kind of closet - we'd one day be married and parents of two wonderful children, staring at rack so bursting with jackets you can't see past the vacuum cleaner. And now here it is. Pretty birds, all in a row. Big jackets, little jackets, becoming a family.

The kids began their medications this week, and the difference has been night and day.

If you've been following our saga, you know it's been a difficult journey to get our children's medications approved by the Department of Family Services, a cumbersome body of disorganized bureaucrats whose intentions are good, but who don't have nearly enough staff or resources to pay attention and take proper care of the far-too-many children in their possession. And like it or not (and in our case, not) our kids are still firmly under the DFS bureaucratic thumb until a judge signs on the dotted line and tells the whole world otherwise. Please God, let it be soon.

Thanks to a well-meaning but ridiculously ill-thought-out snag in the system, ADHD/ODD kids can't have Ritalin, Risperidone or other psychotropic meds anymore if they're prescribed by their plain old family pediatrician. And this is probably good, since we live in an age where most doctors hand out Ritalin like candy. And since that's the unfortunate reality, foster kids, for their own protection, are required by Nevada law to have their ADHD/ODD meds prescribed by a psychiatrist instead.

This makes little or no sense in the case of our kids, who have severe behavioral disturbances and should have been on these medications before we even met them. First of all, our pediatrician sees our kids twice a month and knows exactly who they are and how they act. She's been in contact with us, she's been in contact with their teachers. Our psychiatrist (who we waited nearly three months to see), has known them for five minutes. But, oh well, water under the bridge - ain't nobody said life is easy - and when your kids are on Medicaid and only a handful of child psychiatrists in the city take it - you do what all the other kids in the system do. You wait your turn. For three long months, you line up and wait.

But praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, December 18 finally arrived, and the psychiatrist took one look at the two of them bouncing off the walls in his office and said to us, "I have no idea how you've handled this for six months without medication. This is severe."

He rolled his eyes at the inefficient, unhelpful, unheathful system, said "this is ridiculous" to the DFS nurse who had to accompany us to sign off, pulled out his pad, and without any hesitation whatsoever, "re-prescribed" the exact same meds our pediatrician would have given us three months ago, had the law of Nevada allowed her to do so.

So here we are, and thank God and Dr. Emannuel Nwapa, we can give you a good review this week of where the wild things are.

First of all, much of the wildness disappeared. Instantly.

The children didn't disappear, thank goodness. J2 is still our funny, adventurous, daring little J2. J1 is still our stubborn, independent, confident J1. But medication, thank God, took the edge off so much of all that was hurting and hindering them, we can't begin to summarize the improvement.

Right now, for instance, it's Saturday morning. And on a typical Saturday morning, we'd have already had five name callings, four competitive fights, three wild hittings, two tearful tantrums and a partridge flying for cover straight up the proverbial pear tree. Today, sheer bliss.

Justice is sitting at the coffee table doing word search puzzles. Word search puzzles are all the rage in our house all of a sudden. They've both been doing them by the boatload. Her book ran out this morning, and she politely asked me if I'd drive her to CVS Pharmacy and get her another one. "Politely" and "Justice" usually don't go together in the same sentence around here. Now we're getting it in droves.

Justin is playing Skylanders on the Wii. For the first time ever, he's sitting there playing the Wii, without crying, without throwing the controller across the room, without tantruming when Ingitor, Slam-Bam and Jet-Vac don't shake their groove things the way he wants them to.

My sister said last night, "Do you realize it's been three days since Justin has hit me?"

"Yeah," I said, coming to terms with the incredulousness. "Me too."

We both just stared at him from across the room, quietly doing his word search. After school, he'd gone straight to the table to read me There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell, a book at least a year over his grade level. This from the kid who four days ago, couldn't slow down enough to differentiate between "ran" and "run." Now he's patiently sounding out "she jingled and jangled and tickled as well."

No hits, no kicks, no biting. Still a few sibling arguments here and there, but regular sibling arguments now...not crazy sibling arguments.

In the car on the way to school, they sit quietly drawing or doing their puzzles. They don't hit each other, they don't aggrevate each other, they don't tease each other.

"It's like a regular car ride," Adam said, amazed after the third one in a row. "You know. The quiet kind."

When they get home, they do their homework and ask for more. They volunteer for additional online homework and sit there quietly and do it.

Who are these quiet, happy children?

Justice woke up three days in a row this week with a smile on her face. Not angry. Not growling. Not insulting me and calling me names. Just happy to be starting her day. She looked around at her toys and her room and said to Adam, "I have everything I want now."

That's amazing. That's a miracle.

Our friend Judy gave us mugs last night that say "iDad" and "iDaddy," and I had tea in mine this morning, for the first time content and happy about that title, not terrified by it.

I feel good for me, but bad for them. Imagine how easy this was, and how long it's been withheld from them because of procedural red tape. How stupid the system is that made these poor children wait this long for such easily available help.

"Let it go," Cindy, their grandmother, told me on the phone yesterday. "It doesn't serve anyone to dwell on that part. Don't put any more of your energy into feeling bad for what was. You can better spend it moving forward. They're being helped now and that's all that matters."

Around five o'clock, like clockwork, the meds wear off and they become regular, old-school Justice and Justin again. They tear around the neighborhood on their new Hanukkah bikes, jump all over the house and blow off steam and energy before dinner and bed. And yes, when the last dose fades away, they still tease and scream and whack the crap of each other. We haven't lost them at all. Medication has not made them zombies. It's only helped them, for a significant part of their day, be who they are capable of being underneath.

Underneath all the impulse and self-control problems they couldn't shake any other way. Not after years of therapy and every trick in the book. Every trick in every parenting book ever written. Night and day, friends. Night and day.

And of course this is not the magic bullet. The responsible, forward-thinking part of me knows we still have plenty of road ahead, and better living through chemistry sure as hell ain't gonna solve it all. But you know what? The difference this week has been so astounding and such a relief to two exhausted dads, screw it. This week, it is our magic bullet. And anybody who thinks otherwise, well, you haven't had enough wild things in your life yet.

"The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws, but Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye, and sailed back over a year, and in and out of weeks, and through a day, and into the night of his very own room, where he found his supper waiting for him. And it was still hot."

Medication is not the magic answer for everyone's child.

But for ours today, it feels like help.

It feels like hope.

And I'll take that and run with it.

"Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak ©1963 Harper Collins Publishers

Snow and Gratitude

If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I bet they would live a lot differently. - Calvin & Hobbes

My friend Carol and I used to collect snow poems. I still have mine. I have so many. There's Philip Levine and Robert Frost and Edna St. Vincent Millay. There's one by Chase Twichell, who I never heard of before or since. There's one by my cousin Anne in Denmark, one by my cousin Donald who died, and one for the winter solstice by Edward Byrne. Some of them, Carol and I wrote ourselves. Some were special and some embarrassed us, but I kept them all.

Snow came to the tips of our mountains for the first time this year. Riding to school this morning, Justice and Justin were fascinated to see the mountantops covered in clouds. Two days of rain in the valley left our peaks in a haze of dark, floating cotton. Such a grey morning. Such a dark day.

Our kids' Hanukkah presentation took place at their school this morning and we were so proud of them. Watching Justin's face light up when he scanned the audience and finally spotted us brought tears to my eyes. What a beautiful gift these children have been to me and Adam. What beautiful, irreplaceable treasures. I can not imagine now what I'd ever do without them.

Kindergarten, first, second, third and fourth grade. There they were en masse, up on stage in their shiny Shabbat uniforms. New blue tights and new blue ties. It took me forever to find a blue tie for Justin, and of course, he took it off the minute he was done. But that's okay. It was worth it. They sang "Light One Candle" by Peter, Paul and Mary. They sang "Mi Yimalel" and "Al HaNissim." So many children up on that stage. All incomparably beautiful and all blessedly safe.

And out of all the proud parents who came to watch our children today, none of us knew that 2,500 miles away in Newtown, Connecticut, where the forecast says it will snow on Sunday, the unspeakable was already happening.

"Stunned by the slaughter of innocents," Associated Press wrote later. And I guess, for something so horrific that makes completely no sense, that's as good a summary as any.

And I think how lucky I am to have my children warm and safe tonight. They're sleeping soundly on the living room floor right now, downstairs on their sleeping bags, as is their routine on Friday nights after Shabbat service.

Rabbi Mintz, one of my Melton studies teachers, sent us all an email tonight, paraphrasing Rabbi Naomi Levy, who wrote the following in "Talking to God."

"We are scared, God. Why did this have to happen? Why didn't You protect them? What is wrong with this world? We wish we could understand your silence, God. We wish we could make sense of the senselessness of their deaths. We wish we could have done something to save them, to protect them from harm. When we cry out against You, accept our protest, God, as a prayer too. As a call for You to give us the strength to rid this world of such pain and tragedy. When the nightmare of what they experienced invades our thoughts, watch over us, God; watch over Your world. Shelter us all with Your peace, Amen."

I am so lucky, God. I have two beautiful new children, and nothing harmed them today. Nothing hurt them or scared them or took them away from me. They're right downstairs, Justin snoring softly, and Justice burrowed into her sleeping bag, head covered to shut out his noise. Thank you God, for keeping my kindergartener and first grader safe today. Thank you for the simple and incredible gift of their ongoing life.

And still I'm thinking of snow poems...one in particular, that has nothing at all to do with the children who died today, but it does speak of family and loss, and children and snow. I wrote it for my friend Jenny, who lost her husband Chris in what now seems to me another lifetime ago. Somehow it seems to echo my sadness tonight. It may be fitting, it may be not, but since I can't get it out of my head, I'll leave it here and hope it reaches Newtown, and all the lost parents who await Sunday's sad snow.

You pushed me down in fresh snow that winter,
And struggling, we made angels together,
Flapping and flailing, pretending with wings,
Struggling and laughing at the depth of it all:
The humor in our teenage games,
The light the moon made,
And the inconsequentialness of our lives.
You and I in winter, never cold,
With wonder and promise and good springs to follow.

I took your name. You lived in me.
My heart was changed, stomped firm with your imprint.
Like boots in snow and prints on the walkway.
We made a different kind of love then.
I gave you sons.
We made different kinds of angels.

So how is it that you died today?
In the middle of this cold, sad winter?
So far from snow games?
So far from yesterday's springs?

Standing now at the edge of my driveway,
I stop to breathe and look up at the stars.
Alone as I'll ever be, I count them and cry.
In a rage unfair and a dream half-remembered,
I wonder which blink in the heavens is you.

Snow starts to fall.
Somewhere in the world, angels form.
They take their shapes and play their harps
On leaves and lawns and lonely snow.

I hold out my hand to catch the first flake,
But all I can feel is you.

Thank you God, for keeping us safe today.

For those who died, we send our love.

Amen and amen.

Shabbat shalom.

The Awesome Responsibility of Sight Word Bingo

"Ruth had arrived with the slush of spring. She was light, buoyant even, and yet when the midwife first shifted the tiny bundle into his arms he felt as if he might drop her, so heavy was she with helplessness, with the need to be protected at all costs. He knew he could not let her fall, ever, in any way." - Christina Schwarz, "Drowning Ruth"

We're torn, often, between helping and hindering, teaching and allowing.

There's a concept in child-rearing called "natural consequences," in which, if your defiant child refuses to cooperate you send them off into the world with their own poor decision and let the chips fall where they may.

Our cold weather arrived in Las Vegas this week, and Justice, who likes to dress in the lightest fabrics known to science, threw a fifteen minute tantrum yesterday because we wanted her to wear a heavy winter coat to school and she wanted to wear something better suited for a light breeze from the treetops on a sunny Saturday in June. She detested our choice for two reasons. 1. It was our choice and we were telling her what to do, and 2. It was our choice and we were telling her what to do.

Justice doesn't do well yet with understanding we're in charge of her life now. Her incredibly intense and amazingly well-practiced "you're not the boss of me" attitude spans seven years and a few different homes, and as I've said before, she's less than impressed that we're next in line to take a crack at parenting her. She's had parents before, and they all gave her the boot, and frankly, in her world, it makes perfect sense for her to take the reins and look out for numero uno. In other words, the way Justice sees it in her long-hurt head, she'll be damned if she's letting anyone else tell her what she can and can't wear.

So, natural consequences it was.

We let her go off to school in her much-too-light jacket, and sure enough, fifteen minutes after she got there, her teacher, God bless her, told Justice her jacket wasn't up to snuff for such a winter's day, trotted her over to the nearest phone, and made her call home to have us bring her the jacket she defiantly left behind. A pain in the ass for us to turn right around and drive back to school, but mission accomplished, with her teacher's advance understanding of our situation, it was a cooperative example of teaching Justice natural consequences. This morning, with a smattering of yesterday's egg still fresh on her face, she grumbled, but trudged off to school in the heavy jacket we gave her.

This is called ODD, or Oppositional Defiant Disorder. According to Wikipedia (and honestly, what in the world is not described according to Wikipedia anymore?), oppositional defiant disorder is a diagnosis described by the Diagnostic and Statisitical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as an ongoing pattern of anger-guided disobedience and hostilely defiant behavior toward authority figures which goes beyond the bounds of normal childhood behavior. Children suffering from this disorder may appear very stubborn and often angry.

That's our little pumpkin in a nutshell, with a behavior that extends exclusively to us, one that thanksfully she does not exhibit at school. To teachers and other adults, she's a beacon of cooperation. To us, she is as uncooperative and non-compliant as possible. It'll get better, we're told, but for now...c'est la vie..."that's how you get," as Justin would say, for being this far removed in her parenting lineage.

Justin, on the other hand, with his still untreated ADHD, is usually more cooperative, shows much more compassion and remorse when his behaviors lead him astray, and tries to get along with us the best he knows how when his efforts aren't being sabotaged by his sister. "He has a heart of gold," his kindergarten teacher summarized. "He just can't sit still."

So, both of the kids definitely have a healthy smattering of both, but if I had to sum it up, I'd say Justin has a major in ADHD and a minor in ODD, while his sister's course load is exactly the opposite. They're both still unmedicated, which I continue to blame on the monumentally inept Department of Family Services, so we do what we can with therapy and patience until our long-awaited psychiatric appointment on December 18, at which time a doctor will legally "re-prescribe" what another doctor (a non-psychiatrist) already prescribed on October 3, but DFS and the DA's office wouldn't let us administer, due to "standard policy."

When this is all over, remind me to tell you what I think of DFS and the DA's office's "standard policy" and their overall lackluster ability to fully understand and properly take care of the children who are supposed to be in their care.

It's an awesome responsibility to take care of the medical needs of these children when the system is so mired down in generic procedures that serve no individual best interests whatsoever, and in fact, actually hinder new parents who have stepped up to meet their children's incredible challenges. They created these ridiculous prohibitions as a stopgap, so masses of kids aren't overmedicated needlessly, but they do nothing to help the percentage of kids who really do need help, quickly, thoroughly, and in a supervised manner. We've been waiting 67 days now to give our children the medicine their doctor prescribed more than two months ago, for conditions their therapist has been recommeding medicaton for since June, before we even got them.

All hail the brilliant system.

"I feel like nobody in the system has our back anymore," I admitted to our therapist a couple weeks ago. "In fact it's worse than that. Not only do they not have our back, they won't even just stand aside and let me do what any parent should responsibly be doing. Their policies just prevent me at this point from taking proper care of the kids. They don't benefit the children at all."

"You're not the only one to tell me that," she said with a heavy sigh. "I hear that a lot."

So, Justin still can't focus academically. His godsend of a teacher gives him additional structure and help, and she gives our "stuck in the system" status her undying patience. A lesser teacher would have the poor kid banging erasers and sitting in a corner 24/7. But Ms. H is on our team and she knows how the land lies. She knows his meds are on the horizon, and is hanging in there with us, hoping his focus will be improved in his appropriately-treated months ahead. As soon as DFS and the DA/Court system pull their heads out of their collective asses.

Meanwhile at home, we play Sight Word Bingo, hoping to slow down Justin's overactive guessing brain long enough to differentiate between with, what, when, and why. Justin's brain moves too fast impulsively. He can't slow down and take his time. If it starts with a W, no matter what it is, Justin will read it as "was." I could give you a million examples of how ADHD has affected Justin's ability to learn and how we try to circumvent it without the benefit of medicine. This is his second attempt at kindergarten, and if left to DFS and the Courts, he'd be repeating it, what... three? four? five times before we can slow him down enough to read?

On the social and religious front, I'm afraid to take him to our synagogue anymore, which was once a welcome and irrefutable part of our Friday night identity. He can't sit still for an hour-and-a-half of services, and after being cooped up in the child care room for 90 minutes, he certainly can't stand patiently at my side when other kids are running and playing in the courtyard. We can't turn our back for two minutes at the post cookies and coffee dash before we're being chastised by the temple management for letting him "run wild and unsupervised" again, in spite of the fact that six other children are out there jumping around with parents nowhere to be seen. I love my temple, but at this point, Justin is clearly being singled out even when he's not hurting a fly, and since that's the case, it's easier just to keep him at home.

Justice and Justin are still vastly misunderstood by our community as a whole. ODD and ADHD are chalked up by almost everyone we meet as inept parenting, with everyone offering their own version of the easy fix, if we'd only be smart enough to listen.

We get some of the most ridiculous advice. One older member of our congregation told us we could curb Justin's impulsive physical behavior by finding an older boy to beat him up. "That'll set him on the straight and narrow," he said proudly, as if he'd just come up with the perfect solution all by himself, one that's eluded child experts since the beginning of time. Sure. We'll get right on that.

It continues to amaze me, in 2012, how many people think physically beating the shit out of a child is the wisest way to fix him. If that's how it works in your world, good for you. Now get the hell away from my kids.

I don't just want to help and protect him. I get angry at those who stand in my way of doing it, or threaten him harm, even on a hypothetical level. My friend Dawn calls this the Mama Bear Syndrome. You want to feel wrath you've never known before, mess with my cubs.

Another friend of ours - a dear friend, in fact - described Justice to a third party this week as a sociopath. In front of Adam. "She's a socioapth," he told our mutual acquaintance. And Adam, horrified, set him straight. This is the kind of misunderstanding and ignorance we get from friends. Some of them our closest friends. It boggles the mind, this kind of ignorance and stupidity, even from those who know our fledgling family the best.

so-ci-o-path (noun) a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.

Justice's ODD - Oppositional Defiant Disorder - is many things to us, and quite frankly, a good percentage of them are a healthy pain in the ass - but a sociopath she's not. She doesn't lack conscience. She's just seven and angry at the whole messed-up hand of crap she's been dealt since she was born. Misspeak like that again in my presence, and you'll find out just how dangerous this bear can be when you poke your big stick of ignorance at a cub who's trying her best. This is her fourth go-round, folks. You lose three sets of parent-figures and tell me how cheery you feel when number four shows up and promises to love you.

Remember that pretty song from Sweeney Todd?

Nothing's gonna harm you, not while I'm around
Nothing's gonna harm you, no sir, not while I'm around

Demons are prowling everywhere, nowadays
I'll send 'em howling I don't care, I got ways

No one's gonna hurt you, no one's gonna dare
Others can desert you, not to worry, whistle I'll be there
Demons will charm you with a smile, for a while, but in time
Nothing can harm you. Not while I'm around.

Before I got the kids, I only saw that song as tender and poignant, a pretty lullaby, heartwarming for its protection and nobility. Now that life has made me a father of two children whose nature and nuture have left them lacking in the "normality" many of our friends seem to think they should have in spades by now, I can see how it's prettiness masks an awesome, fearless undertone. It's my duty and obligation to live up to its words. It's a direct challenge from me personally to anyone foolish enough to treat my children poorly or speak of them with anything less than understanding and respect.

Give it a shot, but you won't get away with it on my watch. Not while I'm around.

So December 11, 2012 finds us at six months and three days as a family. Waiting for filing. Waiting for a psychiatrist. Waiting for medication. Waiting for the with, what, when, and why of our lives to settle and clarify. It's an ongoing game of Sight Word Bingo. We practice, we play, we win and we lose.

But even on our worst days, call my daughter a sociopath again, and you're no longer welcome to play on our team.

I don't care how much history we have. Will I give you your walking papers and not even feel nostalgic about it?

Bingo.

"Drowning Ruth" by Christina Schwarz, c.2000 Ballentine Books, Random House, Inc.