A Good Cry

I was shaving yesterday morning. My beard is back for those of you who follow my facial hair. Like my sanity, it comes and goes. And I recalled seeing Smokey Robinson in an interview saying he wrote the Miracle's 1965 soul classic Tracks of My Tears while he was standing in front of his mirror, shaving.

Apparently, fellow Miracle Marvin Tarplin recorded the music for him and said, "here you go, see what you can do with this." And Smokey said the first three lines of the chorus came to him right away, but he couldn't come up with the last line, which would become the song's eventual, famous title. Number 50 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, by the way.

"How do you say 'I love you' in a different way?" he mused. "In the history of music, 'I love you' has been said in every way possible. But then I stood there in front of the mirror shaving one morning thinking, what if somebody cried so much for love, you could actually see the tracks in their face where the tears came down? And that's how the song happened."

Take a good look at my face

You'll see my smile looks out of place

If you look closer, it's easy to trace

The tracks of my tears

Lord knows Justice and Adam and I have carved out our share of those tracks. At the beginning, tears came out like buckets, like waterfalls, like an endless well from this little girl who was so hurt inside, there was nothing left for her to do but to take us with her. 

"I'm not your sweetheart!" she would scream at us, and we'd leave the room and cry. "I hate you," she'd rage, and we'd go away and cry again. "Get away from me!" she'd yell, as we came back for more. Like prizefighters, Adam and I. Get hit, get up, get hit, get up. Too dumb and stubborn to stay in our corner and throw in the towel. Where that resiliency came from, I don't have a clue. There are wells within us we don't even realize we have until we need to draw from them. Thank God for that, because children need them.

So much about our early relationship with Justice was about tears - hers, mine or Adam's - that I want to reach back in time and comfort that struggling trio and tell them, "Hey, it's really going to be okay. All those books you're reading on adoption and parenting that dangle all that far-off hope in your face? Every single one of them is right. All of these tears are natural. Things are absolutely right on schedule. Let your tears fall because this too shall pass."

The beauty of so many tears is coming out on the other side and realizing it really does end in something better. There is a transformative nature in tears. Sometimes you just have to keep going and cry until there are no more left. Because at the end, you get something unanticipated and magnificent.

Galway Kinnell writes in his poem Crying:

Crying only a little bit

is no use. You must cry

until your pillow is soaked!

Then you can get up and laugh.

Then you can jump in the shower

and splash-splash-splash!

Then you can

throw open your window

and "Ha ha! Ha ha!"

And if people say, "Hey,

what's going on up there?"

"Ha ha!" sing back, "Happiness

was hiding in the last tear!

I wept it! Ha ha!"

The little girl who railed in rage is gone. She has been replaced by one who had to cry a lot of tears in order to find her happiness on Bonnie Castle Way. There's still a bit of "arm's length" in Justice's expressions of love. Kids who survived the System don't come with, "I love you," and "I love you, too" built-in. Verbalizing love is not part of their vocabulary. They keep that vulnerability close to their vest. But now she'll allow hugs and showers of kisses. She even enjoys them. She even seeks them out, though she'd kill me with a glance for even suggesting it. She may not say, "I love you," out loud, but it's not because it's lacking in her nature, it's just not in her lexicon. Yet, I keep telling Adam. Yet.

"Look at this," I said to Adam, who is very verbal, and needs to hear that audible "I love you" more than I do as the litmus test of success. I was showing him pictures of Justice riding on his shoulders at Sea World this past December. She is giggling, arms wrapped around his neck, all bright smiles. Oh, how I enjoy watching Justice saddle up Daddy and take him out for a trot. She puts him through his paces, putting her little hands on his cheek and turning his head the direction she wants him to go. Those are her reins and he never fails her. He is her faithful horse, Prince.

"There's your I love you," I tell Adam, who still pines for the verbal version. "When she climbs into bed and snuggles up next to you all night, you miss the whole thing because you sleep like a log, but there's your I love you right there. It doesn't come in words, but she's putting it out there, every day."

Sometimes "I love you" isn't a spoken phrase. Sure, it's a nuance sometimes. But other times it comes up like a rubber mallet and hits you over the head. They don't call it painfully obvious for nothing. All you have to do to hear it is to stop trying so hard to hear it.

In family therapy, Miss Hannah, our therapist, occasionally stops us to check our goals. She does these assessments a couple times a year. The kids go off and play while Adam and I sit at the table and tell her where we're at. The question that used to stump me in those tear-tracked early days was "Tell me about Justice's good qualities." I'm ashamed to admit, that was hard. "Strong-willed," I'd grumble. And by strong-willed, I didn't mean strong-willed. By strong-willed, I meant "Pain in the ass." "Driving me bat-shit crazy with her defiance and her powerful hatred of me during this incredibly hard new situation."

But now the compliments flow like rain. Like tears of joy. Like honey off the tongue.

"She's strong-willed," I say, but now it's in genuine admiration. "Independent, self-assured."

"Compassionate," Adam adds. "Empathetic, helpful, thoughtful."

"Protective, creative, artistic, free," I toss out.

"Smart, graceful, athletic," Adam adds.

"Full of fun," I say. "Good-hearted, well-meaning, adventurous..."

"Brave," Adam and I say together.

And it goes on like this for quite sometime, until Miss Hannah finally smiles and says, "Okay, that's enough." And we smile, knowing our therapy with Miss Hannah will soon be coming to an end, at least for this essential era in Justice's life. Who knows what help her teen years will require when all that abstract thinking kicks in. She has not cried her last of life's tears, we know that, but for now, in this incarnation, we all sense our days of little girl adjustment therapy are winding down. And we're good with that.

We're discovering the essential truth of Justice. She is many things to us now, and what is good about her so far outweighs what is challenging, it's a joy to wake up each day just to see what will happen next. Happiness was hiding in the last tear and we wept it. Ha-ha!

Friday morning before school, we all colored. I made black and white coloring pages of all our faces with my iPhone, printed them out, and we all colored our family in the brightest colors you can imagine; primary colors...red, yellow, blue. Justice looked like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka. "You're turning violet, Violet," I pointed out. And she giggled.

I hugged her right before she left for school, and she let herself melt into my arms for a minute and she said, "Sometimes I think of you when I'm at school and I cry."

"Because I'm so mean and grumpy?" I asked, pouring on the fake growly-face.

"No," she said giggling, hugging back a little.

"Because you miss me?" I whispered hopefully.

"Yes," she whispered back.

And then she was gone. Off like a shot. Another drive-by loving from the irrepressible little girl who has stolen my heart so completely, I can't imagine taking another breath without her.

And then thank goodness the house was empty, because I cried too. For a good long time, and joyfully.

There's your "I love you," I told myself. Right there. 

"I love you, too," I whispered to an empty room.

And smiling, I went back to the table to pick up the crayons.

How Much Hours?

As I type this, there is a digital timer running downstairs counting down the hours and minutes until we go to the Sobe Ice Arena at the Fiesta Hotel here in Las Vegas to enjoy what the schedule calls "open skate," and I call "hopefully not a trip to Urgent Care."

This comes immediately on the heels of our trip to SeaWorld over the holiday school break, where our friend's daughter fell down and broke her arm on the snow they pump into a special kids' play area during the Christmas season. She was only walking. On shoes. On feet. Our kids will be balancing on ice skates. Never before attempted. Fast forward to the next blog title, "Scenes from an Emergency Room."

Anyway, perilous thoughts and potential Four Stooges choreography notwithstanding, we're going ice skating today because Grandma Judy sent us a Groupon, and we are not one, two, three or four to turn down a freebie. Thank you, GJ.

The timer is running downstairs because open skate doesn't start until 2 pm, and in Justin's world, that's a million years away. It's either start a timer for him or listen to him ask out loud every five minute interval, "How much hours until we go?" I tell him it's "how many hours" ten times a day, but to Justin, "how much hours" is the way to go. It's stuck in his immoveable syntax, just like "panties," which he still uses for "underwear." Future Mrs. Justin Reisman, I really apologize, but by all ongoing indications, you're both going to call your underwear panties. You'll want to encourage him to keep his voice down in Target.

Developmentally, Justin has made great strides in the vexing and perplexing way only boyhood can illustrate. He can shoot amazing baskets from the free throw line -- impossible shots for someone four feet tall -- then come up to me two seconds later and ask me to tie his shoe. He can build Lego sets that require an advanced engineering degree, but still flip his plate off the table attempting to cut his baked potato. He remains a combined enigma of total grace and oh shit, watch out.

Intellectually, the kids are growing too. They still hate losing games to each other, but the DEFCON 1 tantrums have turned into DEFCON 4 sulks and bad manners, and now they're over chess and backgammon instead of Chutes and Ladders and Candyland, which is cool to watch, even if the good sportsmanship is still a work in progress.

I read two books this past month by arguably the best elementary school teacher in the United States, Rafe Esquith. Rafe teaches children of immigrants in inner-city Los Angeles, most of whom speak English as a second language. Not only do his fifth graders score higher on standardized tests than all others around him -- (he thinks standardized tests are a load of crap, by the way, and I tend to agree) -- he also teaches them, in the course of a year, to read music, play rock songs note-for-note, behave impeccably in public, including an annual trip to Washington D.C., and oh-yeah-in-his-spare-time after school, rehearses with them daily to put on an annual Shakespeare play. Unabridged. A different play every year. Front to back. Cover to cover. The guy is a scary-good teacher. Stunningly good.

And his whole philosophy boils down to a sort of humble, "aw shucks, anybody can do this...you just have to be organized." And balls, he sure is. Every moment is accounted for...on the clock, or the thousands of hours of personal time he "gives up" for his kids. His fifth-graders often grow up to be some of the brightest college graduates in the nation. He's the only teacher in the nation to receive the National Medal of the Arts. Oprah Winfrey gave him a $100K "Use Your Life Award." Queen Frickin' Elizabeth made him a Member of the British Empire. Mother-a-God, Rafe, take a day off.

Anyhoo, the books have inspired me greatly -- not so much to cram education down my kids' throats 28 hours a day -- but to at least understand that "education is ongoing...it doesn't stop at 3 pm," as Esquith writes. I feel challenged to give just a little extra in 2014, and be just a little more organized in delivering it. If Esquith can teach 40 fifth graders how to read music and stage Shakespeare, I think I can spend ten minutes at the kitchen table with a globe, playing games and pointing out Brazil.

So, yep. I actually made a weekly schedule for learning games we'll play at home. Geography, art, math, music, dictionary, writing, science, organizing, Torah, theatre. They're all in there, mapped out daily in easy-to-stomach ten minute segments. This is on top of "D.E.A.R. - Drop Everything and Read," which we are already doing. How far we'll get with the new mini-segments, I do not know. Where it might take them, I have no earthly clue.

But it can't hurt to try, and it is fun to be involved in their learning lives proactively, and not just as a disinterested observer, picking school sheets out of their backpacks at night and throwing the "done ones" away. It might be good for a while to remember I'm a teacher, too. And if I can make it fun, maybe learning will always be fun for them. That's my job, too. There's nothing noble or braggy about that. It's just part of what I'm supposed to be doing. Besides, what else am I going to do? Sit around here writing blogs all day?

I want them to read better too. I want them to learn to love to read, like I do. I don't quite know how to do that yet, but I'm open to your ideas. How do I foster a love of reading in these two kids? The boring online basal readers they use in school certainly aren't lighting any fires. I think it's up to me to find material that sets their minds ablaze and their desire to gobble up more and more.

"I want my students to love to read," writes Rafe Esquith, in a quote I'm typing up and posting on my wall. "Reading is not a subject. Reading is a foundation of life, an activity that people who are engaged with the world do all the time. If a child is going to grow into a truly special adult -- someone who thinks, considers other points of view, has an open mind, and possesses the ability to discuss great ideas with other people -- a love of reading is an essential foundation."

Amen. Now how do I make that happen? Your ideas are more than welcome.

Meanwhile, with ongoing thanks to Irving Naxon, beloved inventor of the crock pot (because right now I'm cooking a hell of a pot roast and writing you this little update at the same time) we Reismans will embark on 2014 with a little more planning, a little more organization and a little more learning, to make up for early days of falling, floundering and shell shock. We're finding ways to use our time better lately. We also have a weekly menu planned out here at home now, too. We started that a few weeks ago. The kids know what's coming up every day for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack time, and I don't have to scramble at the last minute with last minute shopping and wondering what the hell I'm making for dinner. It's working out great. But yeah, that part's just me bragging.

So, there you have it. That's the New Year's Resolution in our house. Better organized dads, more enlightened kids, and little tiny ten minute attempts to make learning something they love, not something they have to endure.

How much hours will it take? I really don't know.

But I think it will be an awfully great adventure.

"Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire" by Rafe Esquith, c.2007 Penguin Books, New York
"Lighting Their Fires" by Rafe Esquith, c.2009 Penguin Books, New York