My Bad, and other instances of English comprehension

The ongoing struggle to keep multiple balls in the air--parenthood, job, creative practice--has resulted in another time lapse, but the unexpected gift of a break in employment has made me more determined to keep writing and making.

So, yesterday afternoon, my stepchildren and I played Monopoly. As we bought and sold property, forked over taxes, went to jail and collected rent, I listened to the conversation that flowed easily and quickly--in English, a language that the kids did not speak less than a year ago. As an educator, I had put so much thought into how to manage the transition from speaking French to English at home. But the transition had happened without management; it was the kids who decided, who had gotten to the point where their grammar, listening comprehension, vocabulary, and use of idiom was so proficient that it simply made sense.

I remember the murky anticipatory moments prior to their arrival late last year, when I tried to imagine what path their adjustment process would take. I had a dream in which my stepson spoke to me in perfect English--and woke up overcome with emotion because I couldn't imagine that day--I had never heard him speak a single word of my native language. It seemed to abstract and far away. 

Being the kind of person to employ internet research in search of some control over uncontrollable situations, I googled "length of time to learn English" and got dozens of wildly different answers. Lesson learned: each English language learner is different and I was forced to accept that I wouldn't know until it happened.

The kids started school in English ten days after they arrived in the United States. While they each had other francophone students in their classes, they were essentially forced to learn in English from day one. I couldn't imagine how hard it must of been to walk into a new school in a new country and culture surrounded by a foreign language. But they had at least some experience: schooling in Niger is in French, a language that most children don't learn until they begin their formal education.

As they began to learn, the educator--and English speaker--in me fretted about the best way to support their language acquisition. And I feared that they'd fall behind in school due to the gap in understanding they were experiencing because of a migration that had, after all, come about because of me. I worried that they wouldn't learn fast enough and would struggle in school for years. I emailed their teachers daily to ask which kinds of books they should be reading and in which language and when I should switch from speaking French at home to English.

I remember when they learned the basic greetings and what an accomplishment it was to say "nice to meet you". I remember when they began to put basic sentences together, when out of nowhere they started using complex grammar and tease each other in English. I don't remember when I started speaking to them in my regular, slurred and hurried pace but I know I did because it was clear they understood everything.

In less than a year, my stepchildren are proficient in English, reading almost at grade level and able to navigate easily in an English-speaking world. I am in awe of their intelligence, perseverance, and drive. I also see that, by speaking English together, our relationship is deepening. As much as I love the French language, I have always felt that speaking it removed a piece of my personality--I appreciate how pliable and versatile English is. And I'm grateful to now share this language with my children.

Mother's Day

This morning, after eating breakfast in bed (I'm a bit maladroit with poached eggs served on a tray for the record), I came downstairs to find a card on the dining room table. Hallmark has all kinds of family situations covered: the card started with "there are women who love you as if they brought you here themselves..." and it goes on from there. Each of the kids had written a note inside, in English. Their messages, along with thanking me, all contained an apology for anything they had done to make me mad. Of course my immediate reaction was to worry if they are afraid of me or if I'm not patient enough with them, but I have learned not to take these things at face value. When I asked my husband about it he said that's totally cultural, the most important thing for them is to not make their parents upset. Therefore I took it as a sign that they really do see me as a parent.

So we celebrated Mother's Day by spending the day together, at the house we all share that truly feels like ours now. The kids played in the yard and we made some art and I attempted to learn how to cornrow so that I can braid my stepdaughters' hair like my mother had done mine. I thought about how much my mother had done for me, and how I had not been sure that I would possess the same instincts.

But it's reciprocal. When we have days like this, where our schedule is open and we have time to just be together, the effect on the kids is clear: they are happy, more energetic, more talkative, and so am I.

In the last year I have cultivated a gratitude practice, which has helped me see how much I have to feel grateful for. Now I feel even more grateful, and the voice in my head says, THIS is the return. My fear of being a parent centered around anticipating the sacrifice and loss of freedom, but even then I knew that I'd receive something I couldn't yet imagine.

I remember several years ago telling my therapist that I had adjusted to the idea of parenthood and he turned around and asked me, "what about the idea of being a mother?" That distinction was too much: I broke down in tears, unable to go there. I'm still not totally there, for many reasons: one, the kids have a mother and I accord great importance to that fact. Second, I don't know what the difference is but am sure that it's not a sharp line. It's simply a path that I sense that I'm on.

Thank you to my mother, grandmother, sister, aunts, cousins, and friends...for taking that path too.

Why did we come here? And other questions to ponder

One night, out of the blue, my stepson asked, "why did we come to the United States?"

I froze. What did he know or think or mean by this?

Turns out that he's doing a unit on immigration in his History class, which makes sense given that all of his classmates are recent immigrants and therefore have a strong personal connection to the topic. So his teacher asked each of the students why they came.

It's hard for me to remember that kids asking questions are, well, just kids asking questions. There are fewer underlying implications or sub-contexts. But when these profound questions come up I have to take a deep breath and remind myself of this. So I took my deep breath and then asked him how he responded. He said, I came to the US to study, which opened up a debate between him and his sisters, who didn't feel that his answer was sufficient. The youngest, who often comes up with the wisest answers, said that my husband married me and I was American and so they all came to live with me here. I couldn't help adding the detail that the two of us made this decision together, but her explanation pretty much covered it.

Of course the situation is much more complicated. Before my husband and I got married, I spent three months in Niger, with two huge questions to answer: 1) could I imagine parenting his children and 2) could I imagine moving to Niger on a longer-term basis? One answer was yes, the other no. And the consequence is the displacement of an entire family from their community and culture. I know that there is no utility in feeling guilty about that, but sometimes I do. I also know that while they have given a lot of things up to be here, they also have a lot to gain. And I know that I have given up a lot of things to get them here.

But when these questions come up, I have to simply sit and listen because in that moment it's about them. They are making their way into this experience of acculturation, an experience that I've never had. So it's my job to hear that process unfold.

A few nights later, when my stepdaughter said that her teacher had asked if she was going to live in the US full time or "half in half" US/Niger, and that she had responded half in half, I froze again. How should I react to something like this? And the answer is--despite the fact that half and half isn't remotely feasible, and that I felt guiltier than ever about that fact--I shouldn't. So I didn't, and then we continued on with our day. 

Dinner in English

At dinner time, my family goes around the table and each person shares something interesting about their day. I love this challenge because it forces me to think about the little moments: the interactions, the coincidences, the surprises that, even in the midst of what feels like another stressful/boring/whatever day, remind me that there is much to be grateful for. But what I love even more is that, just in the last week, the kids have begun sharing their stories in English.

This is significant. Although not (yet) referenced in this blog, my three stepchildren arrived in the U.S on December 26th, 2013 with almost no English. Less than three months later, they are able to get an idea across in complete sentences and workable grammar. And when they do, I have to keep from crying because 1) I'm excessively emotional about these things and 2) it's so profound.

And this realization is, in turn, significant as well. I spent the five years after I met my husband working through all the potential implications of being a parent to his children. I put myself through the wringer; went through every possible stage of fear, excitement, anxiety, grief, you name it. And then, in late 2012, we began the process of bringing them to the United States, a process that dragged on for longer than we could have ever imagined. At a certain point in our lives I think we finally start to figure out how we operate; clearly I thrive in struggle. The experience of having to advocate and fight for the kids to be here with us strengthened my resolve to be a good parent to them once they were.

So now they are here. They arrived after 40 hours of traveling from Niger, exhausted and jetlagged and shell-shocked by the new place they found themselves in. But that already feels so long ago. Kids adapt to new circumstances in a way that defies comprehension. They jumped right in, ready to take on the monumental challenges of going to school in a completely new culture, in a language they didn't understand, and living in a nuclear family with a father they hadn't seen for two years and a stepmother they had previously lived with for a total of two months.

And me? I jumped right in too, headlong at first, and now am doing my best simply to notice that my path to adjusting to being a parent is not linear and often involves contradictory and conflicting feelings. It's a lot to take on. But the pride and joy I feel when one of the kids accomplishes something or expresses their excitement about a part of their new life here or just when they do something funny shows me that I have the essential ingredient. I can build out from there.

Lost in the Bush

It's been almost two years since my last post and again, a lot has happened. My stepchildren are now in the United States and living here in Berkeley with my husband and me. So I have a lot of ground to cover and will have to do some retrospective writing. 

But first, here's a short story that I wrote in my amazing and inspirational friend Marisa Handler's writing course two years ago.

Lost in the Bush

We were sitting at a fork in the road, deep in the West African bush.
Before I could stop him, my stepson, who is always ready to
problem-solve, jumped out of the truck to get closer to the faded
hand-painted sign with a badly rendered elephant on it, illuminated
only by our headlights in the dense darkness. My first trip to Africa
had involved an expensive safari, yet I never got out of a vehicle in
the bush. And now my stepson was standing at the crossroads in the
middle of the night, prime nocturnal animal feeding time, trying to
navigate. So I jumped out after him, realizing that, despite a
lifetime of doubt, I had done what parents instinctually do: try to
protect their children. My husband and his two daughters stayed put,
peering out at us from behind the safety of glass and metal with a
mixture of anxiety and excitement. This was an adventure, after all.

The excursion had been my idea. I was trying to make the most of the
meager six days I had to spend with my new family, which I was meeting
in Niger and had not seen in the seven months since the exceptionally
cross-cultural marriage that bound us together. I am an inveterate
planner, an intention that found itself at odds with the improvisatory
chaos that is West Africa. But this trip was loaded, and special. How
could I build a parental relationship with three children whose first
eight, ten and twelve years of life experience were lived in a
different world? My husband and I had married in Niger with the
intention of having him immigrate to the United States and then, once
he had gotten settled, bring his children. So, as my therapist told
me, I had to start “building the bridge” between their universe and my
own. This was a responsibility only I could fully shoulder. And to
shoulder it, I had to give them an entry point into the world beyond
what they knew, which in my mind translated into experiences that they
would love, that would in turn encourage them to love me.

I found the answer in my guide book: African animals. My experience in
Niger had shown me that where basic infrastructure and resources are
so lacking, there is a significant dearth of children’s activities.
But one thing that Niger had that California didn’t was elephants, and
antelope, and crocodiles.  And, despite having lived in close
proximity to these animals, the children had never seen them. So here
was my opportunity: an overnight trip to a game preserve where we were
guaranteed to see animals, could stay at a rustic bush camp, and bond
over it all.

In an attempt to organize this trip in a way that only a nasara like
me would do, we paid a visit to the National Tourism Office, a small
unmarked room in a crumbling mid-century concrete building that not
even the people who sold fruit or leather shoes or packets of Kleenex
or flashlights for the inevitable power outages right in the shadow of
said office could help us locate. After traipsing around for almost an
hour in 110-degree heat with three grumpy children, we found it and
the effusive young man inside, smiling broadly at the chance to
actually serve some tourists, gave us a road map and detailed
directions to the game preserve. When the multiple phone calls he
placed to the bush camp went unanswered we decided to head out anyway.

One of my husband’s most admirable qualities is a patience so
unfathomable that sometimes I believe him to not be human. But the
time I have spent in West Africa has at led me to understand that this
trait is born out of necessity. When nothing happens the way one
expects, and when this constant shifting of plans and expectations
always involves interminable amounts of waiting, one must develop
patience. In the five years I have known my husband, I have tried to
parlay my admiration for him in this regard into an effort to increase
my own capacities.  Although I have made progress, the results are
still mixed. And West Africa always provides me with tests of my
newfound, half-baked serenity in the form of unexpected diversions
from my carefully-laid plans.

In other words, the Tourism Office visit, which took three times as
long as it should have in what I consider normal circumstances, meant
a two-hour delay in our departure. We were leaving mid-day and
therefore had less time to reach our destination before dark.  But I
was determined, so we headed out of town. The endless rows of clothing
boutiques (several named after our half-African president), roadside
peanut stands, grimy motorcycle repair shops, makeshift brochette
poulet frites restaurants with all varieties of charred meat smoking
on the grill, the bustle of unregulated traffic and non-stop commerce
and children carrying baskets of food on their heads, quickly ceded to
the bush. Squat, low-lying trees spread their branches wide over dusty
expanses of bright red earth, punctuated by scrubby clusters of bushes
and a young man astride a donkey cart or a woman carrying a load of
firewood on a rickety old bicycle. Now and again a village popped up
on the landscape, a close grouping of adobe and cinder block houses
alongside teardrop shaped granaries sitting precariously on stilts.

Short distances always take so much longer to cover than one would
imagine, and as we travelled towards the preserve it became mid, then
late afternoon. We arrived at the point where our friendly Tourism
Office employee had indicated the turn off from the highway, yet, true
to form, there were no signs or markings of any kind. This lack of
clarity turned into a dispute between my husband and I, which I, being
behind the wheel, decided I needed to win.

So we continued south. Late afternoon headed towards sunset, and the
light became richer and deeper. As harsh as the climate in West Africa
is, the moment just before dusk is unspeakably beautiful. The sun
turns the landscape a deep orange and the heat, so unbearable during
the day, becomes soft and enveloping. The dust in the air holds the
changing light, a thick cushion closing in as night falls. After half
an hour a line of trucks, their loads wrapped with dusty canvas tarps
tied down with tangles of bungee cords, belching diesel, hulking black
and green, emerged along the side of the road, signaling that we had
most definitely gone too far. We had reached the northern border of
Benin. As the children craned their heads to see if Benin looked any
different than Niger (it didn’t), I admitted to myself that arriving
at the camp by sunset was most definitely not happening.

So we turned around and, after asking several people, none of whom had
the slightest idea where this major game preserve was, and as the sky
turned a deep blue and night fell, a lone man on the side of the road
confirmed that we were headed in the right direction—and only had
thirty kilometers to go. But as we started down the dirt road that
became increasingly narrow and bumpy (which often means a blown tire,
difficult and dangerous to fix), it became clear that thirty
kilometers was an estimate. After an hour, still no sign of the
preserve, and the deep blue had turned to black, with no intervening
lights to indicate a place for us to aim towards, or sleep.

Out of the blackness, the elephant sign emerged with the faded word
campement, and under it, an arrow.  And ultimately, after taking the
left fork down the dusty road we saw a faintly glowing cluster of
multi-colored lights in the distance. Drawing nearer, the outlines of
a series of bungalows and an elephant outlined in neon perched
precariously on a nearby tree confirmed our hope.

The next morning we headed out into the bush with a guide in tow. The
children were clearly exhausted and therefore not as visibly excited
about the excursion as I would have liked; but minutes later as an
elephant emerged from the brush, they craned their necks to see,
snapping pictures with my camera.  After a couple of hours and several
more sightings, we drove back to the camp for lunch, and as we sat on
the dusty screened porch looking out at a lagoon an entire herd of
elephants made their way to the water and began to bathe. I had seen a
herd of elephants before, but it didn’t matter:  I was transfixed by
the sight. But I apparently was the only one. The children were
certainly enjoying the view, but weren’t as captivated as I would have
imagined.

So we headed back, a makeshift assembly of younger and older, African
and American, brought together by marriage, on a road trip. The
children bounced around in their seats, playfully slapping and pushing
each other and singing at the top of their lungs to the songs I had
carefully assembled for my husband’s history of American hip hop CD. I
was thankful they weren't able to decipher the words of Jay Z or
Eminem or all of the other masters of rhyme of which I'd have to
facilitate their critical understanding once they learned English.

As our big blue truck barreled down the two-lane, potholed highway, it
hit me:  the trip had been a success even though it didn’t transpire
at all as originally planned. The children knew their lives were
changing before them. That their family was going to be built around
new kinds of bonds, new experiences that they had never imagined, and
new opportunities to be loved and cared for in an expansive new world
where they were no longer hemmed in by geography or circumstance.

And so, despite the huge hurdles that our family faces in
reconstituting itself in a country and culture entirely new to
four-fifths of it, I have faith. In myself and in them. We’re used to
navigating poorly-marked routes.