book review: little fires everywhere

This book was so emotional for me. It explores relationships between mothers and children, particularly asking the big question: What makes a mother?  Biology? More?

The writing in this book is riveting. Beautiful, particularly since one of the characters is a mixed media artist, and I feel like I always had a very clear picture of what she was creating.

Race is a huge theme in this book.  The author makes her own opinions vividly clear--there are no redeeming qualities in the older white characters who 'try' but always miss the mark when it comes to understanding. I get the feeling that the author believes she is presenting a hopeful view of the future by allowing the white youth to be more understanding, but it makes me sad to think that she looks at me as a lost cause. 

(I need to confess that I'm a white foster parent, so I know my opinions are going to be shaped by my own personal experience.  I don't know how to say too much about the book without some spoilers, so... fair warning. Limited spoilers ahead.)

There's definitely a huge push in this story to support the birth parent who "just made one bad decision." The book presents an extremely false narrative I've often heard pushed in TV and movies that sensationalize the DHS workers who are desperate to keep kids away from their birth parents. That. Doesn't. Happen. Even most parents who have physically assaulted their children are given supervised visitation. The entire system is set up to reunify families-of-origin, NOT to create new families through adoption. But I read on and allowed her to sensationalize this for the sake of the story, even though it presents a hugely false narrative of how the system functions.

The book's biggest failing is the HUGE HUGE HUGE straw man she writes as the foster/potential adoptive mom in this book. Almost pathetic. The author sets herself up with the most ridiculous softball. I mean, if you're going to write what is supposed to be a compelling 'which mother is better', let's not have the foster mom say things like "I guess I never noticed we had only white baby dolls" or pull out an old racist, 50's-era 'heirloom' children's book as her only reading material that featured faces that match the child's. Frown. Author, you could have at least let her try. Not all foster parents are clueless white people who would say their honest idea of cultural exposure is Chinese take-out. Absurd and you lose points for taking it way too easy on yourself. You could have actually made the battle worth watching.

The saddest scene in this book for me is the conversation between two characters immediately after one of them has elected to have an abortion. The line is, "Would you have been ready to be a good mother? The kind of mother you'd have wanted to be? The kind of mother a child deserves?" The heart-wrenching selfishness of this line chills me to my core, especially because the author clearly intends it to be empowering and cleansing. 

She continues, "You'll always be sad about this. But it doesn't mean you made the wrong choice. It's just something you have to carry." The selection of the word 'carry'... shivers. 

The best scene in this book is when the foster/would-be-adoptive mother was on the stand in Family Court. The author intersperses the lawyer's questions with flashing memories of caring for the child. You watch the foster mom become more and more unhinged, realizing that four nights of no sleep when baby had a fever isn't enough for the legal system to view her as the mom. With each question, she recalls something else sacrificial she has done for this child (while her birth mother was entirely absent) while she recognizes that it won't be enough to change their perspective. Her mind is filled with thoughts that seemed so clear: I'm the only mother this child has ever known... But it isn't enough, and the author makes it clear that she believes biology trumps anything else and that any mistake can be forgiven for a 'real' family member. 

Bottom Line: Riveting story and truly compelling characters, but sensationalizes the reality of the system and lobs a softball straw-man to make a statement.

book review: the first fifteen lives of harry august

This book was suggested to me by the great underbelly of the internet, What should I read next? Not a bad recommendation following Station Eleven. Literary qualities in a science fiction novel, nice for a change.

Concept: "Kalachakra" or "ouroboran" live the same life over and over. Groundhog day for a lifetime. But apparently not all of the members of this so-called Cronus Club live the same life... someone is making history speed up. Why are mobile phones in everyone's hands in 1973? Who is changing history and how? And why?

[ominous dun dun dun....]

I give this book four stars. It so easily could have been five, but I can't in good conscience say I entirely loved a book in which I had to skim several large portions to stay awake. Frankly, a few of the lives of Harry August are quite boring, like when he decides to be a philosophy professor... sorry, author, I'm not gonna read that entire lecture. Snooze.  

However, despite a couple unfortunate boring sections, the story here is awesome. Harry is always born in 1919 and lives through the same historical events each life (until things start to move too fast). Once Harry realizes that he can remember everything from the last time through (and, bonus, he is a mnemonic, a rare even among ouroborans whose recall is 100% perfect), he can learn to read and write every language on the planet. He can win bets on horse races. He can regularly save the lives of a few so-called "linears" that he knows in advance will be abused or murdered. He can become a surgeon, a soldier in WW2, a spy, a physicist, a philosopher... Under the guidance of the Cronus Clubs in every major city worldwide, Harry learns everything there is to learn (except golf, because "I like to tell myself I could have been a good golfer, if only I'd given a damn, but perhaps the simple truth is that there are some skills which experience cannot buy.") but faces an enemy who has discovered how to permanently kill the kalachakra--friends he's known for hundreds and years and dozens of lives who are not reborn.

Harry's personal conflicts are many. His relationship with his father always changes. Many opportunities to "make it right" (and no great success) shed light onto the truth that relationships will always require effort from both sides. His various marriages and friendships all show different aspects of his characters as he ages and matures (when 900 years you reach...). Interesting to hear from a character who has to decide if a dangerous spy mission is worth it because facing death means having to face potty training again.

Bottom line: lots and lots of intrigue. Super fun alternative history. Some very fascinating twists and a GREAT "I open at the close" ending.

NOTE: Philosophically, this book is extremely atheist, and I am a Christian. But for the purpose of reading fiction, I am fine with accepting the worldview of the author to enjoy an interesting and unique story.

language immersion: give folder to parins

My son has just begun his third year of a Spanish language immersion program. We are hugely blessed that the public school district in which we reside offers this and that he was selected (literally, his name pulled out of a brown paper bag) to be one of the students who attends. 

The worst part of this program is his spelling. He used to be ahead of grade-level with spelling, and now... disaster. Spellings in English make no sense, while almost everything in Spanish is spelled phonetically.  My favorite quote on the matter:

English lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages, and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary.

A friend of mine teaches at a local college and asked for our thoughts on the pro's and con's of the program.

Here are our (unedited) responses.

From my son:

Because you can learn another language and speak with people that speak a different language. It’s fun. You can make new friends that speak Spanish because you can talk with them. It helps you think. It’s cool to learn another language. If you get teased for knowing another language, it isn’t that you’re weird. You can tell the other person they are wrong.

Learn from a teacher who is really good at speaking Spanish and a teacher that was born learning Spanish. You have to listen very, very carefully and study a lot. Speak the language you are learning a lot. You can make poems or songs to have a fun way to memorize your words. During the summer, you should read a lot of Spanish books so you can practice for the harder grade that’s ahead of you.

From me:

My son’s participation in Spanish Immersion has made him more aware of the possibility that he might be able to understand things. Receptive language skills in Spanish, for example, caused him to ask me to pause the radio on scan on a Spanish station and make several attempts to tell the rest of us what they were saying. I think he’s less likely to immediately tune something out without first making at least an attempt to listen closely.

Expressively, he speaks Spanish comfortably to his level in the classroom but only makes attempts to speak Spanish in the community when prompted. For example, if his bi-lingual teachers at the YMCA speak to him in Spanish, he pauses and responds in Spanish, but when he first enters, he continues speaking English as he was with me. He has a very good ear for pronunciation, speaking with very little American accent, so it’s been interesting to me to hear him transition from English to Spanish. In the very early weeks of his first year, I was testing him on color vocab red (rojo), green (verde), and then I switched and said azul and he responded blue, but pronounced it with a "Spanish intonation" and not his normal English-speaking voice. He thought it was hilarious, and I really enjoyed seeing this tangible example of how his brain was learning to transition between the two languages.

Oral reading has always been a great strength of his, but I do think that being forced to read words he doesn’t and wouldn’t understand at all in Spanish has made him more willing to ‘gloss over’ words in English rather than make an attempt to sound them out and understand them. For example, if he sees ‘creatividad’, he might read it too quickly and miss a syllable—something like ‘creatvidad’—but maybe that doesn’t matter because he didn’t know what ‘creatividad’ meant anyway. However, I think he’s unfortunately more likely to do this in English. Instead of pausing to see if it’s a word he knows or can decode (like turning ‘peculiar’—a word he would know—into a made-up like ‘pec-lee-er’), he is more likely to just say nonsense and finish the sentence without understanding the new word.

If I had a "biggest complaint" (which I don't because we were very specifically warned about this before joining the program), written expression is definitely the biggest area of regression I’ve seen. His spelling and phonics in English were well ahead of his age level and now everything is spelled like a complete disaster. (Or... truth be told, English spelling is the disaster and his spelling make phonetic sense!)

"boy, you have your hands full"

A lady at the grocery store must have felt my two boys were being too loud today because she gave me 'the eyeball' and said, "Boy, you have your hands full. I hope they still nap."

Hmm.

What 8-year-old naps, lady? And, also, mind your business.

I do not have my hands full. This is, in fact, the lightest my hands have been since I became a mother 8 years ago. I had just the one newborn, then, and I may have thought my hands were full, but they were not. Because shortly thereafter, I was pregnant and had a toddler. But still, my hands were not full.

Two years later, we were a foster family and I was parenting four-under-four. Yes, I had a 3-year-old, an 11-month-old, a 4-month-old, and a newborn. Ok, that was PRETTY close to full, I'll admit... The issue there was that I hadn't thought through what three non-walkers meant. I'll tell you what it meant: it meant wearing one baby while pushing a double stroller LITERALLY EVERYWHERE.

More recently, for three and a half years, I had three boys. Loud, boisterous, energetic, silly, prone-to-running-and-swordfighting BOYS. They started out as a 5-month-old, a two-year-old, and a five-year-old. But, as children are known to do, they grew up. They were 3, 5, and 8 years old when that stage of our lives ended this summer. 

So, lady with the judgmental eyes, I do not have my hands full. I would venture to say that none of us do. None of us are doing enough. Few of us are really giving all we can to help others.

Someday soon, my hands will open wide again and more children will be in my family. Today is not that day for us, as today we are healing. But trust me, that day will come. 

Some stranger will see me pushing a double stroller, or holding a baby with one hand while I scold a toddler, or corralling a bunch of preschoolers. And the stranger may think (perhaps keeping their thoughts to themselves), "her hands are full."

But my hands will not be full. Because there is always room for us to do more.

What happens in a Foster Care Home Evaluation?

In addition to all your background checks and a family study, a foster care caseworker will come to your home for a Home Evaluation. While this probably varies greatly from state to state and even agency to agency, here’s a good idea of some things to expect. Some of them are obvious, but some of them really surprised me the first time!

1. They will flush your toilet. Not kidding. They watched the water go down and come back up in our potty! (They have to make sure the plumbing works.)

2. They will run your sink to make sure the water gets hot. Have any handy conversation starters for when you’re in the bathroom while a stranger holds her hand under your running sink? I didn’t.

3. Read carefully about your state and county’s firearms/weapons policies (and their storage if applicable). For us, a firearm and ammunition must be stored separately and locked separately.

4. They will look at your cleaning products and medicine storage. Make sure everything is up high where little hands can’t reach, that all containers are clearly labeled, and that all potentially dangerous substances are locked up.

5. You will need a date-stamped fire extinguisher accessible near every source of fire or flame. (We are required to show separate ones for our fireplace and gas stove even though they are nearby.)

6. They will test all the smoke detectors… as in press the button down on every one to make them scream. Lesson learned: don’t schedule a home evaluation when you have a little one sleeping! You need one on each floor of your home, including the attic and/or basement.

7. Our agency requires two posted (and visible) “no smoking” signs on the main living floor of our home. I got pretty ones so they blended a little better with the décor and my living room didn’t suddenly feel like a Pub.

8. Our agency requires a posted fire escape plan on the main floor. Keep in mind, my house is small enough that there isn’t an angle I found from which I couldn’t see either the front or back door. Still, I had to get out my crayons and graph paper to outline my house to draw colorful arrows that pointed to the exits. Safety first.

9. Emergency phone numbers have to be posted, visibly. (We have the side of our fridge reserved for foster-care-related signage, because it adds up!) We have to showcase 911, poison control, police/fire, and gas emergency. My mom is also on that paper because Grandma is always the #1 contact for our everyday “emergencies”!

10. They will check your bedrooms. All of them. (There’s no where to hide the wash you didn’t finish; just embrace it.) Each child needs a bed, so they have to visibly count.

11. If you’re looking to host young children, they will check for outlet safety and make sure your extension cords or long lamp cords are stored securely. (In our case, we changed all our outlets to child safety outlets were acceptable rather than messing with the push-in plastic pieces.)

12. They asked questions about our pets, our neighbors, and our stairs. They also checked the backyard for basic hazards (like holes and ungated swimming pools, not like uneven pavers).

While the Home Evaluation seems like a simple “check” on the long list of items toward becoming an approved family, I was in for some definite surprises. I hope this helps as you prepare and consider this great calling!

nashville christian family august issue released

Look for me on page 11 with the cute pancakes!

Read it online here.