Being an Index and Statistical Compendium of Salient Factors and Mitigating Data for the Celebration Event know as "Adinah's Fifth Birthday Party"

Event Duration:
3.5 hours

Cakes:
2 (Chocolate Frosting with Smarties and Gummi Bears on top)

Bowls Popcorn:
1

Music:
"Rebel Rebel" by David Bowie

Most Startling Pre-Party Revelation:
Several of Adinah's closest Kindergarten pals had never gone on playdates without their mothers, let alone gone to the fairground to ride ponies with rogue parents like Anette and I.

Most Satisfying non-Adinah moment:
Watching some of these same girls smile triumphantly as they rode ponies solo, without even holding on!

Most Satisfying Post-Party Report:
Hearing that Magdalena, one of the shyest girls, hasn't stopped talking about the party for three days.

Barbie Paraphernalia gifted or exchanged:
2 Dolls, 1 "Fashion Fever" kit, several pairs of half-inch high heels, one pink rubber purse, assorted crowns.

Number of Invited Attendees:
6

Number of Tag-along Attendees (i.e. little brothers/sisters):
2

Number of Adult Escorts/Pony Minders:
5

Best Gift:
A purple and silver striped Hula Hoop, from our babysitter Rosa.

My Favorite Four Seconds:
Holding Adinah's hand as we left the Prater.

Number of Attendees Who Cried when the Party was Over:
3

Number of Adults who would Not Leave:
2

Real Life Quote:
Adinah: "I'm five years old. I'm not a baby anymore."

a reprise

"Happy birthday, Adinah."

These were my first words this morning when we woke up. At the breakfast table, we opened her presents from us. Then we lit a candle for Adinah's first mother. Kidan.

Anette asked me if there was anything I wanted to say to the woman who brought Adinah into the world. I said yes, then I started to choke up, and I said, "Thank you."

Today is Adinah's day, and Euro Like Me will no doubt be dispatching its cub reporter to cover the festivities (which are rumored to include pony rides, Blind Man's Bluff and more than a few heart-shaped balloons.) But before the Birthday Blitz resumes, I want to take a moment to consider the other little girl in our lives: Miss V. Thinking of Adinah's biological mother set off something in me and what I wrote in my last post. So I want to continue a thought...and somehow address this force that rages red through me sometimes.

I've got anger. I know fury. It may have something to do with my father, but I can't blame him anymore. It's me. This anger is part of who I am. I can (usually) control it, but I don't think I can kill it.

And lately, I've been mad at V., and mad at her mom, mad at Hillary Clinton, and mad at the world. I'm mad because it's so hard to get a good night's sleep, and because I miss my wife, and because it sometimes seems impossible to find a quiet moment that's mine and only mine.

But I can't be mad like that anymore. At least not at V. or her biological mother. I can't because it's not right. If V. keeps us awake because she's in pain, it's not her fault--that's just the way it is. And as difficult as it is too accept, even if V. is in pain because of something that happened before we met her, I cannot be mad at her first mother. I don't even know her first mother.

So it really doesn't matter whether I get tired of being understanding and forgiving. Because I'm just going to have to keep trying to forgive and understand everyone in our house, and a few people outside of it.

I owe that to them, and to all the first mothers.

In the Night

At 4:15 a.m., V. wakes up: in sixty seconds, she goes from whimpering to inconsolable. This happens sometimes.

And I finally realize that--as I scramble to get her out of our bedroom so her screaming won't wake up Adinah (who wakes up anyway), and I hurry to get her changed and make her a bottle of tea and try to comfort her with little pats on the leg--I finally realize that she's gonna wake up like this sometimes. Maybe for a long time. I realize that her screams and miserableness don't mean I'm doing something wrong, or not changing her gently enough. She's not even howling because she'd rather Anette was doing this (although of course she'd prefer that.) In short, she's not howling because of us.

Whether she wakes up screaming because of what she experienced as an infant, or because of anything anyone did to her, is hard to say. I'm not a shrink. All I can do is trust my own senses. This morning V. sounds angry and scared. Three nights ago, when she woke up and I tried and failed to comfort her, she sounded sad. She cried like a grown-up crying about something she can't change.

She had a resignation in her.

She laid in my lap and she cried like that and I let her.

* * *

And after Anette came and took her and calmed her and put her back in bed, I wasn't angry at V. for waking us or for anything else. I was angry at her bio-mom.

I was sick and fucking tired of being sympathetic. I'm not gonna be understanding all the time. Fuck that.

***

So I thought some bad things, and I said a few of them out loud.

And maybe that's okay, as long as I don't curse V.'s bio-family in front of V. I don't know.

Today I told a co-worker some of this, and she said, "Maybe it's good that you're pissed off now. When V. gets older, she's gonna be pissed off too. Maybe you'll be able to talk about it with her, because you will have already gone through some of it."

Yeah, well, as Irma Thomas sang, "May-hay-be. Maaa-ayyy-bee. May-be. Maybe."

open mouth, insert foot

Today, I listened to a woman who should know better go off about how evil Islam is, how it's based on the teachings of a murderer, etc etc etc. blah blah blah. So I told this story:

In 2001, a little while after 9/11, I was walking down the street and saw a Muslim woman getting out of a car. She was in a full black hijab, but her face wasn't veiled. An older, hippie-esque couple was walking towards her just ahead of me, and the man called out to her, "Free yourself, sister!"

"Why?", she said. "So I can be like you?"

Peace.

On the U1, In the Ruts

The morning slog. Breakfast-shower-V. screaming and Adinah upset about something,anything. Out the door, run to catch the Strassenbahn, then switch to the U-bahn. The faces in the subway car: doughy white, artificially brown, a beautiful black man (Ethiopian?), a tired old fur coat on a businesswoman with fried blond hair. Everyone planning, anticipating, on their cel. phone, or staring out the window at the tunnel.

I'm in that phase of immigration where I've started to settle and regain my equilibrium (previous phases: excitement, disorientation, depression, intense yearnings for nachos.) Starting over has stopped: I'm a part of life here. Earning. Commuting. Integrated.

So?

Weekend Top Ten, February 17

Most Undignified Freakout:
Throwing down a platter of olive and caper sauce when I realized I had ruined the tuna steaks again.

Most Graceful Save:
Anette's rescue of the Tuna steaks (by putting a lid on the pan and cooking them three minutes longer)

Adinah's Favorite Moment:
Seeing the moonrise out of our courtyard window tonight

Anette's Favorite Moment:
Sitting in her office, blissfully alone, reading

My Favorite Moment:
Tie:
Making out on the brown couch last night
and
Seeing sixteen-month-old V. appear around the corner, suddenly dressed in a full-body Winnie the Pooh costume

Most Overdetermined International Laff:
Our Ethiopian friend Sintayehu cracking up me, an American, and Anette, an Austrian, with his imitation of a tourist with a thick Viennese accent, startling his hotelier by requesting "a sheet on my bed"

Most Benevolent Greenhouse Side Effect:
The blinding sunshine accompanying two of the coldest days of the winter

Barack (pt. 1)

As per always, various observers and professional wise-acres have casted the 2008 US Presidential election as a question of "electability." This is one of the most wretched aspects of American politics, but it pervades the culture at large: operational evaluation has taken the place of critical analysis. People talk about books that are readable, and "popcorn movies" which are most excellently...watchable. So, like cheeseburgers that are sublimely edible, politicians need to be electable, and elections are about who can win, not what is at stake.

John McCain has been mouthing off, in his sly, old bastard way, that Barack Obama is nothing but platitudes about Change. But as it happens, Change is an actual issue in this election, motherfucker. Neither McCain nor Hillary Clinton represent the sort of potential for change that Obama does. I think that's a pretty strong argument for the guy right there.

Nonetheless, if the same old media cynics will not actually grapple with Obama's ideas and positions, I think we should. And I will. After this post.

But the thing that impresses me about Obama so far is the idealism surrounding him, particularly that on display in this music video with the Black Eyed Peas, John Legend and Scarlett Johansson singing the words of one of his speeches. I wasn't aware there were any Americans still unparalyzed by eight years of Bush administration horseshit, let alone Americans guided by the simple belief that our president should be a decent fellow. People who think the US can not only do better, but that it can do good. That is more moving than any campaign speech I've seen so far.