The Illinois Seashore

Most families have some tradition they can't explain.

I once read the account of a woman who always cut the end off a ham before cooking it. When her daughter asked her why, she answered, "That's what my mother did, so it must make it taste better." The daughter asked her grandmother, who replied, "My pan was small. That's how I made it fit."

Something practical becomes magical.

My grandmother always kept a fern in a large seashell on her porch. I assumed ferns grew best that way.

I never once considered how my grandmother, living all her life in Southern Illinois, got that big shell. I don't remember ever hearing a story of a relative traveling to the ocean and bringing it back as a souvenir. She came from a long line of farm people, and they never left home for longer than a few hours.

Who would feed the chickens? Who would mend the fence? Who would pull the weeds? They lived a Little Red Hen life without complaining.

By the time I wondered about it, my grandmother had died. My mother didn't know the answer either.

But I couldn't stop thinking about it. For some reason I've always believed that if I thought long enough about any puzzle, I could connect its dots and find a plot line, a character's motivation, a meaningful metaphor. I could solve anything.

I remembered summers in the front yard swing with my grandmother. I'm sure now it was how she got me to take a nap, my head resting in her lap. To my right, her seashell fern bobbed in the breeze on the porch, a wide expanse of cement beach out there in the country. And in the distance, the wind blew the rows of corn, the stalks rising and falling like green ocean waves. The warm air rushed up to us, ruffling the long grass blades at her feet. My grandmother and I rocked together, our hearts afloat in our swinging boat, daydreaming together on the Illinois seashore.

Forever after, I've kept a fern in a conch shell, too, not because I know why, but because she did.

That's reason enough.   

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If a Stone Turns

I resisted labyrinth walking at first.

I thought it would be upsetting in the way that walking a maze, with its Point A to Point B prescription, made me panic. Finding my way through the tall shrubs was a living nightmare. I didn't know if I should turn left or right. My heart raced. I was trapped by my own doubt.

I wanted out. I wanted someone to save me.

A labyrinth, however, bobs and weaves with meaning. The trail is clearly set. Walk within the marked boundaries and you succeed. In fact, even if you stray, the course will take you somewhere. Ultimately it doesn't matter how you reach the center or if you bypass it completely and return to the beginning for the second time.

You don't win or lose. You keep turning. One way or the other.

And turning is the point.

I live in patterns, routines, habits. I drive the same streets. I buy the same yogurt. I relive the same disappointments. Those brain channels deepen into a self-imposed A to B monotony.

When I finally walked a labyrinth, I was forced to turn at unexpected moments. It pushed my brain left, with my feet following instead of hesitating. Before I could get too comfortable with that left turn, I was sent right. I gratefully paced forward at a steady clip, only to be pressed suddenly right and left and right.

Whoa. What happened? How did I get here? But I was still going. And I was fine.  I was not lost. I was on the journey.

I've walked labyrinths less than ten times by now, so I still know just enough to be dangerous. On a vacation in Cincinnati, I found myself on one by happenstance. I thought I was walking it on a lark to introduce the concept to an uninitiated friend. It was a warm summer day, and I followed the path marked by rocks from the Ohio River.

I wasn't thinking about anything, although walkers are free to ponder a particular issue while winding. For some reason, I took my eyes off the blue sky and glanced down. There it was--my unexpected talisman, a small crooked stone. I stopped.

I think of river stones as evenly edged, not as something bent. I considered its crook formed over millions of years, I guess. (Geology is not my field.) Something clearly got in its way--an aggressive rock or a stubborn tree root or a resistant dinosaur skull.  

That rock didn't wait for the impediment to pass. It didn't freeze, hoping to be saved. It changed course. It turned bravely, however long that took, and never looked back. It continued on its journey.

I hold it in my hand from time to time as a reminder when my brain stops too long in one of its  time-scraped ruts.

The stone's bent edge reminds me of my own possibility. If I keep turning.

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A Quilted Fish out of Water

I don't know what it is about me. My presence, specifically my name, doesn't compute.

I finally tried to create an author profile for the Goodreads page about Sweet Moon Baby: An Adoption Tale. I began clicking here and there, only to be told that HENRY was not an acceptable last name so I should try again.

A new round of clicking began, only to be told that I had to apply for LIBRARIAN status if I wanted to edit an author profile. There was no author profile; that's what I was trying to create. I just wanted to offer some details for the folks who landed on my page.

I don't want to be a librarian. That ship sailed. (I'm not even sure I'm an author on some days, truth be told.)

My trouble wasn't just with technology. My name has been swimming upstream for decades.

When I got married in the late 1970s, I faced name changing red tape when I explained to the bank teller that I'd need new checks. She congratulated me on getting married and began asking questions and filling out a form. She handed it to me, marking where I should sign. I scanned the blanks she'd filled in.

"No," I said. I don't want the checks to say Mrs. Clifford W. Clark."

"Would you prefer Ms.?" she asked with a knowing nod.

"No. I want it to say Karen Henry Clark. I'm not using my husband's name," I said brightly.

 Shocked silence. Then she asked incredulously, "Why not? Aren't you proud to be married?"

Okay. I'll admit this was Tulsa, Oklahoma, a state still known for being socially behind the curve. Our Junior League cookbook from that era listed recipe donors as Mary Brown (Mrs. John T.). Being married was everything then. (I suspect it still is out there in many circles.) 

In all fairness, the recipes were great. In fact, we still use many of them. (My husband cooks, but don't mention that. I'm sure that's not what the cookbook committee ever intended.)

I patiently explained to the teller that this wasn't about my husband and that I never intended to be known as Mrs. Him. She said she'd have to talk to a manager and disappeared behind a door. When she returned, she said my check request would be discussed at the next board meeting. They'd let me know their decision.

I am absolutely not making this up.

I don't remember how much time passed, but I finally received a call. They granted permission for one box printed with my requested name change "to see how it would go."

Don't you wonder what that meant? Was I a new-fangled scam? Some kind of feminist fiasco that would fraudulently steal millions from respectfully married members? Best I can tell, whatever they feared was never perpetrated by my red-flag name.

But as someone with three names, I can tell you that technology remains confused with it to this day. Some places have filed me under C or H or HenryClark or Henry-Clark. I've learned to roll with it.

But my basic inability to communicate correctly with computers, however, has continued. A tech-literate friend, who was trying to unravel a device problem for me, said, "Karen, you're the only person I know who would be better off living among the Amish."


I love quilts.

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January, The Epiphany

If I were a better person, I wouldn't admit this.

But my favorite part of Christmas happened when Maggie and Cliff returned to school after the holiday break. I didn't need another sack of flour or spool of ribbon. Nothing was left to mail.

I sat down with a cup of coffee and listened to my New Age holiday CDs that cleverly disguise carols behind flutes and strings.  Without feeling stressed, I gazed at the decorations.

Because I'm a storyteller by nature, I've always created a plot line for every arrangement displayed, but this year I rushed to cover the surfaces. Things were pulled from boxes and clustered around whatever was already there. As Maggie had handed pieces to me, I mentioned I wanted to write something about it all.


She was quiet for a long time and said, "You know you've ended up with an Asian-Fusion approach."

"Isn't that something about cooking?" I asked. We're devoted fans of the Food Network.

"I think that's Asian-infused, Mom."

I panicked. Because Maggie is forever politically correct, I feared I'd made a mistake. "Have I committed that horrible 'cultural appropriation'?" (She once explained that referred to the idea that children learn about other cultures by playing dress up--white children with painted faces and feathers in their hair, pretending to be American Indians. Terribly offensive.)

She assured me I hadn't crossed a line.

So I've taken time to see what she meant, and sure enough, our standard Asian things were indeed thematically entwined with the traditional frou-frou. Our Chinese lady lamp oversaw the Christmas tree. A glass pagoda became a stable. Angels decorated the deer, paused by an unfolded fan. Stone lions protected the Holy Family.

When I told Maggie I wasn't sure how to connect the dots into a clear thesis, she asked why it had to mean something. She said it made her happy to see her favorite Chinese pieces among the Christmas things. Shouldn't that be enough?

It was not lost on me that I finally understood her point on January 6th, The Epiphany. I would not be the first adult to be enlightened by a child. All kinds of things are a wonder on their own, just because they are. Just because they make us happy. 

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Human Heartbeats

It's odd the things you don't think of when you adopt a baby. It never occurred to us that Maggie would be any less our daughter than a biological daughter would be.

But now I realize people think all kinds of odd things about adopted children. 

My husband recently listened to a friend talk about his first grandchild and the wonders of the experience.  Then the friend said, "But I know it won't be like this for you because your daughter is adopted."

What?  She isn't really our daughter so any children of hers wouldn't really be our grandchildren?  Therefore, we couldn't possibly love them completely?  We couldn't feel an equivalent happiness to that of a genetically spawned extended family?

Do divorced people who remarry ever get told they can't really love the new spouses because only a first marriage is a real marriage? No one ever writes about that kind of love being non-transferable.

Yet some children are more real than others in the minds of some.

There are plenty of things I don't believe in, but I do believe love is love. The same love that makes you smile also makes you cry. It floats your spirit just as easily as it sinks it. It isn't measured with a different set of rulers.

If your baby cries, you don't run faster in the night to a biological baby than you do to an adopted one. The human heart moves at the same speed.

The power of adoptive love is captured in Ladybug Love by Kat Lamons and Trish Diggins. They offer 100 charming vignettes from adoptive families on the day they were contacted about their match with a baby in China. That tiny picture they receive of a child on the other side of the world causes smiles and tears that rival those in a hospital delivery room. Without a caption, who could tell the difference in the parents' faces?

The book contains sweet stories about the goodness of mail carriers and adoption agency staff who sometimes faced extreme challenges to deliver the news about a long-awaited baby. There are difficult accounts about the agony of governmental delays, crippling self-doubts, and years of bitter disappointments. International adoption is not an easy path. But more importantly, they provide a firsthand account of joy when the parents learn the news in a grocery store or a garden or an office cubicle. Who would say theirs is a lightweight joy?

I looked up details about the human heart. They are all about the same size and beat approximately 100,000 times per day. It didn't say they beat faster or grew heavier for biological children than for adopted children.

Love for a child weighs the same in any heart.

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December 2013

When Cliff and I moved from Tulsa to Wisconsin, I wrote a Holiday letter to let everyone know how we were doing. It became a tradition. We aren't folks who get sales bonuses or athletic trophies to announce, and based on Maggie's trepidation through her finals, we won't be flying a valedictorian flag anytime soon either. Still, we might have something worth reporting. 

Dear Everyone,

This is an old and embarrassing thing to say, but I think we all looked better when we used to get dressed up, like women wearing white gloves to restaurants. My dad wore a suit to see The Ten Commandments. My closet held plaid dresses with matching sweaters. We paid attention to little things. While you know I’m not especially religious, I have to say I believe God is in the details. By the time I stopped teaching, students no longer knew common expressions like easy as pie, smart as a whip, asleep at the wheel. Lost cultural details. They didn’t know why it mattered either.  LOL My mother used to love saying: When it rains, it pours. It covered a lot of territory. It set a recognizable theme. Well, we’ve had showers and storms this year and weathered them all.

After over 40 years in education, Cliff has finally begun thinking his favorite season is summer.  Free of a MN winter that lasted 7 months, he set off on a solo camping trip to Yellowstone in July. When a deluge of rain left standing water in our basement, Maggie and I called him for back-up. After 4 clear nights under the stars, he hurried home, finishing out his vacation with a few nearby fishing excursions--in water he could manage easily.

Now a high school junior, Maggie landed a summer job at a neighborhood movie theater where she found Prince Charming working beside her. He has all the best traits of every great boy I ever taught. Sitting between us through her 2-hour fall concert to hear her sing one solo line, he announced her talented and brave. When he declared our album collection prime, Cliff exclaimed, “The son I always wanted!” Energetic and spontaneous, he’s perfect for our buttoned-down, organized daughter. In the spring, she went with friends to the State Capitol for the vote to allow gay marriage. When the vote was delayed, she called me in a panic because she needed to be at rehearsal since she was the stage manager. Dodging cross-bearing protestors and rainbow-flag supporters, I remembered my dad’s driving antics during I-75’s first traffic jam to get me to the Beatles’ Cincinnati concert. You do what it takes. She was disappointed about missing the celebration’s high point and her compatriots’ unwillingness to attend the important rehearsal and sighed, “It’s tough to have a moral compass.” She has no idea where she wants to attend college and says understandably, “I’m still trying to do high school.” If she holds onto that compass, we don’t think it will much matter where she ends up.

Although Cliff usually takes the prize for medical emergencies, I got my turn last month. He was raking leaves in the front yard while I snipped dead stems in the garden. I carried the bags to the alley, stepped through the garage door into the back yard, and had no idea what to do. Blank. Something was terribly wrong. After a night in the hospital and an array of tests, they declared I had experienced Transient Global Amnesia. It was a frightening 2 ½ hours of not being able to retrieve information I knew I should know. As I searched drawer after drawer, every mental file was empty. I cried and asked the same questions repeatedly. I couldn’t hold onto anything. Then it was over. Cliff said it was like me to have some incredibly rare, highly dramatic diva disorder. I now wrestle with the metaphorical implications of a brain that throws up its hands and says, “Enough!” I think I exhaust myself to high heaven.

So we’re taking a close look at our emotional weather this year and feeling pretty grateful. We're now dry as a bone, but there’s a lot to be learned from storms. Maggie’s favorite movie, when she was little, was Singin’ in the Rain. She couldn’t get enough of “the happy man,” as she called him, dancing in the puddles in that nice suit and hat. It stands to reason that her favorite room plaque says: Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain. 

We’re trying. We hope you are, too.

Love,
Karen 

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A Wedding By Any Other Name

When we moved to Minnesota from North Carolina, Maggie noticed something different about her new middle school.

"There are lots of gay teachers up here," she said.  We explained that her last school had gay teachers, too, but they had to keep it secret in order to hold their jobs in a narrow-minded community.

She was incredulous.  So when she reached high school, she joined the Gay-Straight Alliance.

Fairness and honesty have always mattered to her. As a Chinese adoptee growing up in America, she's no stranger to racism, prejudice, ignorance, intolerance. Pick your poison.

For over two years, she's been a dedicated, enthusiastic ally and is now the vice president. She helped create a school-wide activity to challenge gender stereotyping. She worked to pass state legislation allowing gay marriage.

Last Saturday she celebrated her efforts at a wedding for one of her school's gay teachers.

The prelude included John Lennon's Imagine, and the processional was What a Wonderful World, made famous by Louis Armstrong. When the couple lighted the unity candle with their separate candles, the new flame leaped brilliantly.

Fire passes no judgment. Love is love in the presence of light.

These two wonderful men had a typical church wedding. Flowers and scripture readings. Rings and programs. Lunch and toasts. There was not, however, a poofy-dressed bride and a chorus line of bridesmaids. Honestly, I appreciated that.

The absence of sequins and satin kept us focused on their promise and their dream, a dream that any straight couple can take for granted.

At one point in the service, the pastor's blessing said: "...as you walk toward a horizon that never comes." I keep thinking about her words. Maybe she referred to the religious concept of life being eternal, even after death, for those who accept Jesus as Savior. That's certainly fine, but I've never been a stamp-pad hereafter Christian.

Instead of thinking about the next life, I think about her words in terms of this life as a road we're following into the distance, toward a better life on earth.  But if we experience life thoughtfully and bravely, we discover the journey doesn't end in a watercolored sunset on the horizon.  Rather, we keep finding new roads with even greater challenges.  Our ambitions expand because our courage soars, one success at a time.

Something seemingly impossible always awaits us.

My father used to say that I couldn't see the forest for the trees whenever I was stuck in the learning ditch. I had a tendency to be stopped by a single pine. He wanted me to understand the beauty up ahead.

Last Saturday Maggie witnessed that beauty up ahead with David and Tim.

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