The Too Rough Fingers of the World

INSTANT FATHERHOOD

Ryan Reisman – D’var Torah on Korach

Friday Night, June 22, 2012

I delivered this sermon at my synagogue, Temple Sinai of Las Vegas, during Shabbat services on Friday night, June 22, 2012. At that point, we'd only had J1 and J2 for a couple of weeks.

My sermon, or "D'var Torah" as we call it in Judasim, this "thing, stuff, or word of the Torah," was our way to introduce Justuce and Justin to their new congregation, to explain their background, and to explore our hopes and dreams for them as we try to reestablish them as members of the Jewish community they were born into, but have been absent from for many years.

Thank you, Rabbi and Cantor. Our kids already love their Rabbi and Cantor. Rabbi and Sarah had us over to their house last weekend, and we had a cookout, and we swam in their pool, and I have to tell you, I think Elijah has finally met his match. Next to Justin, Elijah actually looks serene.

And the kids love their Cantor Mariana, too. Last Friday, Cantor took them on a special shopping spree and bought them both beautiful clothes. Justuce won’t stop wearing her favorite new Shabbat dress. It’s the same one she wore last weekend. We really do have more clothes for her. She just happens to like the pink and white one right now. Don’t be surprised if it’s back again next weekend.

I’d also like to thank Cantor for buying my daughter five different kinds of acrylic nail polish, which I didn’t discover until an hour before Shabbat services last weekend when I was helping my son get dressed and I discovered his sister had painted all his fingers and toes alternating shades of black, white, and sparkly pink.

And while you’ve all been very supportive and liberal about same-sex adoption in general, I figured if the two gay dads showed up with a son wearing pink sparkly nail polish the first time you met him, we’d all be having a meeting with Child Protective Services. So, thank you, Cantor Mariana, for getting my children off to a very colorful start in life, and thank you Temple Sinai, for promising not to call our case worker if Justin shows up to services wearing L’Oreal #504, Hot Bling Pink.

Rabbi and Cantor asked me to talk to you tonight about our instant fatherhood, and what it’s been like these last two weeks just starting to raise Justuce, who is 7, and Justin, who is 6, and how we’re settling in, and how we’re adjusting to our new life and our new world together. They’re playing with the other kids in the supervised child-care area right now, so it’s safe for us to talk about them behind their backs.

First of all, let me say how quickly I’ve turned into my own mother and father. In the past 15 days, I’m embarrassed to admit, I’ve actually said, out loud, all of the following phrases:

·         “Do what I tell you.”

·         “Because I’m the dad, that’s why.”

·         “Can we please say excuse me when we make that noise?”

·         “How do you know you don’t like it if you won’t even taste it?

·         “Stop hitting your sister.” “Stop hitting your brother.”

·         “Get in this house right now.”

·         And two days ago, I actually said, out loud, that perennial favorite, “I will turn this car around.”

This week’s Torah portion is Korach. He was the guy who led a rebellion against Aaron and Moses, challenged their authority, started an uprising, and thought the whole wandering-through-the-desert thing might go a whole lot easier if he could just be in charge of everything. I think it’s pretty appropriate that my d’var Torah on instant fatherhood tonight happens to coincide with one of the most famous biblical characters who pouted, stomped his feet, and told God, Aaron and Moses, “you’re not the boss of me.” And since the earth opened up and swallowed him whole, I think it’s safe to say, he got a pretty awesome time-out.

Adam and I have been dealing with our own uprisings and challenges for authority these past two weeks.  The textbooks call this period in our lives, and in our children’s lives, “the honeymoon period.” Adopted children in our kids’ age group are usually on their best behavior for 2-3 weeks after placement in their new home. They’re learning their new environment, they’re learning new rules, expectations and structure, and much like Korach and his followers, when they’re faced with the determined direction of Moses and Aaron, they start out compliant, not wanting to rock the boat, then little by little, they test the waters, push the boundaries, and finally, try to turn the tables, dig in their heels and attempt to establish control of their own. The textbooks say Adam and I were supposed to get 2-3 weeks of this wonderful, mythical, idyllic honeymoon period. I think we got about a day and a half. When it comes to testing the boundaries of new parents, it turns out Justuce and Justin are already enthusiastic over-achievers.

About four days into our instant parenthood, we went to our friend Dawn’s house and as soon as our kids were out of sight, playing with her kids, we hid in her laundry room, collapsed into her arms, and just completely broke down in sheer exhaustion, crying and sobbing and wanting to hide in that laundry room forever, because all of this is so beautiful…and all of this is so hard.  It is love like we have never known before. It is difficulty like we’ve never known before. It is different like we’ve never know before.  And Dawn, who has four beautiful, wonderfully-behaved kids of her own – the kind of kids you’d all trade for in a heartbeat – just smiled and hugged us and let us cry, and she said, “it’s okay…you can do this…you’ll be fine…this is what being a parent is. Loving this much, and feeling this tired.”  That was so wise. We needed to hear that so much.

This is what we signed up for. This is how everything needs to happen. Like Korach and his followers, Justin and Justuce have been wandering in their own desert for a long time now. They’re just trying to find their way in this world…a new life they probably never envisioned for themselves, with two dads instead of a dad and a mom, full of all the love in the world, but also full of new rules, new traditions, new expectations, new structure, and new direction. Whether we’re talking about Justuce and Justin, or whether we’re talking about Korach, we’re talking about displaced children. Children in new circumstances. Children on a journey. Children trying to comprehend what became of their old world and how they can possibly fit into their new one.

At any given time, there are 3,500 children under the age of 18 in foster care in Clark County. 40% of them will be returned to parents or other relatives. 40% of them, like Justuce and Justin, will be adopted into new forever families like ours. And 20% of them will just be lost. They will “age out,” as the system calls it. They will grow up, turn 18, and never find a home.  They’ll be on their own with no steady, nurturing parental presence, ever.

The poet Langston Hughes wrote a poem about dreams once. He said, “hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is like a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” We have way too many broken-winged birds in Clark County today, wandering the desert, trying to find their new homeland. Hughes said…and this makes me cry, thinking of my own children and what Adam and I hope to give them…

“Bring me all of your dreams, you dreamers. Bring me all of your heart melodies, that I may wrap them in a blue cloud-cloth, away from the too-rough fingers of the world.”

My kids have known the all-too-rough fingers of the world for too long already. At six and seven, they’ve lived through things kids should never know.

We try not to talk about their birth parents in too much detail. We know all we need to know, but in a lot of ways, information about their birth parents is very much their private history. At some point, when they’re older, they might not want everyone who knows them to know every bad thing that ever happened to them. But here’s what we would like you to know. If it takes a village to raise a child, here’s what our village should know about ours.

Justuce was born with alcohol and crystal meth in her system. She’s scared of loudness, of closeness, she tantrums easily, and she doesn’t quite know who or how to trust yet. In her life, she’s been hit and she’s been hurt, and now it’s her time to be healed. Women of Temple Sinai, please be the mothers and sisters and the good strong women in her life, her two dads can never be. She will need you.

Justin was left alone and neglected as a baby. Even today at six, he has a permanent flat spot on the side of his head from being laid down and left alone in his crib, and not moved and not cared for. He has impulse control issues, low frustration tolerance. He’s scared of the dark, he hits, he pushes, and he reaches out desperately and needfully and lovingly like you can’t imagine, with open arms and perfect hugs, to anyone who will love him. Men of Temple Sinai, be his uncles, his brothers, his cousins and friends. He needs strong boys and men in his world. He needs you.

I don’t say these things for sympathy, or dramatic effect, or to violate our children’s sense of privacy or history, but only because you guys are their village now, and if you see them after Shabbat tonight, being a little too wild, or a little too unruly, or having problems with politeness, or focus, or paying attention to what you say, it’s not their fault. They try hard, they work on it constantly, they have hearts full of love and determination, but they need your help.

Every week, Adam and I and their therapist work through the scars of an early life of unspeakable difficulty, as we try to wrap them in a new blue cloud-cloth, away from the too-rough fingers of the world. Please help us wrap them in your love and patience, too. And if they get out of line, correct them. Tell them how they need to behave. We don’t know how to do it alone yet, and it’s okay for you to help us do it. They need that consistency from all of us, and you have our permission to help us. We ask you to help us.

Here’s something else I can tell you about our children: they are incredibly brave. Adam and I didn’t rescue them from a Charles Dickens novel. Thank you, to all of you, who keep telling us what a wonderful thing we did, what good people we were to save them, but it’s not like that. By the time we arrived, they didn’t need saving. The rescuing had already happened by the time we showed up.

Justin and Justuce have been living for three years in the same foster home. And it was a good foster home. It just wasn’t a forever home. The foster moms they had were incredibly good to them, but they had four other girls of their own. They just couldn’t keep Justuce and Justin together. They didn’t have the ability, the room, or the means. They had to give them up.  And as much as my heart aches for what those two good women had to lose, I thank God every day, Adam and I were in the right place at the right time to find them wandering in the desert of the Clark County child care system, right here in our own back yard. That was an amazing twist of fate that makes me believe in miracles again.

The foster parents were not Jewish. Justuce and Justin were born Jewish…their birth mom was Jewish…their Jewish grandmother pestered, cajoled, petitioned and begged Family Services until they didn’t even want to deal with her anymore to have these children placed in a Jewish home…and Baruch Hashem, here they are…but you should know that these kids are brand new to being Jewish again.

They’ve been raised in a Mormon home the past three years. Justin got dressed for Shabbat last weekend and asked me if he could wear his new church shoes. When I was being particularly strict the other day, he told me if I didn’t shape up, he was going to tell Jesus on me.

We’ll get them back to their Jewish roots and nurture them back into their rightful tribe. But in this case, it really will take a village. Be patient if they think they’re still in church. I know they’re both going to appreciate that Moses, Noah and the Old Testament Greatest Hits are still here, but I’m fairly certain at some point they’re going to wonder where J.C. went.

The Saturday morning after we got them, we brought them to morning services here at Temple Sinai. We’d only had them in our home for 24 hours, but there they were with us, right here. Right in that first row. And Cantor started singing her first niggun of the Saturday morning service, and we looked over, and they were both singing along. And then the next prayer came, and they sang along. And the next one. And the next one. And they didn’t even know the words, but there they were, moving their lips, stumbling over the Hebrew, lifting their voices, trying to keep up with us, trying to sing with us. Trying to pray with us, like Jews.

And I looked over at Adam and he was crying. Tears were running down his face. And I said, are you okay? And he said, “Yeah. I just never thought I’d ever have anyone to pass my traditions down to.”

 And now he does. Now we both do. And if anyone thinks there are no miracles left in this world, just watch our children grow here. Adam and I never dreamed we’d get to have this opportunity in a million years worth of dreams. This is our lifetime miracle. We don’t have a clue what we did to deserve this. We don’t have a clue how we will educate them. We don’t have a clue how we can afford it. But yet, here it is. And we will never stop daring to dream big for them. And we will hope you can dream with us, because they need you all, and we don’t have the means or the experience to do it alone. But we’re so very, very grateful we have the opportunity to try. Thank you, God, for this beautiful chance. Thank you, God for this beautiful world.

Thank you, Temple Sinai, for putting clothes on their backs. What you see them wearing tonight, is because of you. They came to us with clothes from their old world. Many of them very worn out. Many of them way too small. But you guys threw us a shower. And when we said, hey, we don’t know their clothing sizes yet, gift cards from Target would be nice…you responded with such amazing generosity, we not only clothed them for this year, and the winter  ahead, we have enough left over to put aside for the clothes they’ll wear out and the inches they’ll grow next year. That was amazing. That was a village. Our children have clothes because of you. They’re warm and cozy in pajamas at night because of you. They swim and play and spill all over themselves and have something new to put on because of you.

I hope you understand how incredibly loved and protected and supported that makes us feel. Before we were even able to physically have our children in our home, you were already taking care of them for us. We’ll never forget that.

I think I should stop crying now and end this with laughter and tickles… Justin and Justuce let us know when it’s time to be tickled. One of them will come up with a mischievous smile on their face, and announce, “tickle time,” and Adam and I will, of course, lay down flat on our backs on the living room floor, and we’re instantly pounced on, and little fingers dig into our armpits, and we do the same back to them, and the whole living room erupts in such a joyful chorus of laughs and sunshine and rapturous giggles, it’s like God Himself has opened up His heart to sing to us.

It’s a sound we’ve been missing all our lives, and we didn’t know how much we needed it until it was actually here, and now that we have it…it’s the most beautiful sound in the world, and we can’t believe it’s ours.

It’s music. It’s a niggun. It’s a prayer without words. It leaves us breathless for its beauty and its power and its simplicity and its joy. It is the laughter and joy of four people learning how to love each other and I wish you could all know what it sounds like and how it feels in our hearts. It is amazing.

This started out as a d’var Torah on rebellion, power struggle, setting boundaries, learning how to adapt to a new world, challenging authority, but maybe it ends right here, rolling on my carpet, being tickled by four new lives and brand new laughter.

Adam and I got to be fathers for the first time for Father’s Day this year. A whole temple of wonderful people played a great role in starting us off. For what you’ve already done, for what you will be, we love you and thank you for finding us wandering in a brand new desert with all it entails…rebellion and challenge, hope and possibility, and a beautiful new homeland in front us.

We’re a week late in our Father’s Day wishes, because we’ve been so busy falling in love.

Happy Father’s Day, everyone. Shabbat Shalom.