Moving On and Letting Go

Every aspect of the wait for your child is excruciating in a different sort of hellish way.  The beginning stages are filled with a seemingly endless black hole of time to wait for your child.  The middle parts are more of a quiet, almost apathetic abyss where things begin to seem endless and unmoving and unreal.  The last sprint towards homecoming is surrounded with minute counting, e-mail and phone jumping, and desperate heartache as each day and week come to a close without movement you know is just around the corner.

That's where we are at.  The final sprint where things are barreling ever closer towards this amazing and huge new life, while simultaneously trapping you in a constant state of living with your life on hold.  The entire summer we have been living for August.  Anything past August was unknown and therefore unschedulable.  That was okay. It was exciting. We lived Summer up as much as we could.

August is here now, and schedules can be made. But now I feel crippled for scheduling the Fall or Winter.  I held off planning for kids' extracurricular activities because I wasn't sure how Little Moon would do with them....should he happen to be here for them.

But this week I decided I could no longer force my family into a holding pattern.  My older childrens' lives are continuing despite the fact that each evening without news I go to sleep feeling for a brief moment like time has just stopped.

So schedules were made.  Epically, if I do say so myself.  I scheduled weekly therapy sessions, swim lessons, science classes, TKD lessons, farm outings, and enough bug and insect classes to fill up many of our nights and weekends. We're riding hay rides and train rides and hunting for spiders and owls and milking cows.We're going to magic shows and rock concerts and possibly even booking a guitar-playing robot for a birthday party. Turns out renting carousels is pretty darn expensive...

And I know, at some point, we're going to have to miss some of it to go to Korea and bring Little Moon home.  Oddly, that gives me a sense of satisfaction.  I might not be able to schedule my trip to him yet, but I know I've scheduled plans our trip to him will force us to break.

I'm also letting go of the dream of his birthday.  For a gal who went into this knowing I'd never see this milestone; I sure have thrown a fit about missing it lately.  I recently learned that we likely won't get pictures from this special day...at least not right away, if at all.  After drinking a lot of alcohol in the dark on my back porch and using some not nice words to people I could trust not to be offended, I am letting go of all expectations I have for his birthday.  I know he will be loved on that special day by those around him and by those who will love him from afar. I know he will have a birthday package waiting for him when he can get it.  And I know I'll have all the rest of his birthdays to come to never have to worry about pictures or updates or whether he is getting to blow out candles or have someone sing to him.  I cannot let my joy for him be sucked out by my disappointment. 

So I move on and let go and wait until I can move forward and grab hold of him.