Telecom

Several years a go at the dawn of camera phones the big girl got her first 'hand me down phone', giddy with joy she passed her number to all and sundry. So, slightly perplexed she came and asked me to help her to open a message that she'd been sent. You can imagine my surprise when it was a picture text from a 14 year old acquaintance of himself. I say himself it was only part of himself in a state of 'happiness'. You can imagine MrsC's surprise. Clearly, young eyes were protected from this.

After a little thought we felt that a couple of decades in a Gulag breaking rocks would perhaps smooth out a few curves in the young man's character so we rang the police. I confess that they spoke a lot of sense and guided me to having a chat to the young man as to involve them would place him on the sex offenders register for the rest of his life and though tempting was perhaps a bit too much for us. So, chat we did and I suggested that if he ever saw my daughter again, let alone give her any bother, he was to throw himself under a bus or I'd release the Good MrsC upon him and the full weight of the law. Having weighed the potential outcomes he plumped for the former and that was the issue over.

Of course no trouble was ever had with the big girl again, bless her.

So back to present day and our plans with Lotty's phone have worked a treat for the last year. After the initial flush of giddy joy and frenetic texting and calling of relatives a moderation set in. Having got what she wanted she realised that it was in fact the un coolest phone in the known world and it was resigned to the bottom of her school bag to gather dust. How sad.
The deal had been, learn to have a phone i.e. don't call the police because you didn't get sprinkles on your hot chocolate*. So, though it is uncertain as to how well the lesson has been learnt it gave us another year. Job done, we've had no bother and no texts.


She has a smart phone now, albeit a second hand one from the big girl** and is making steps into the modern world. That had always been the deal, have a 'trainer phone' for a year then a 'real' phone. I like to think of technology as neutral neither inherently good nor bad. That may be true but human nature being as it is and young people being what they are I feel a fair amount of apprehension. However, this is a bridge that we cannot go around so we are tentatively stepping across it, caution and moderation being our watchwords along with the usual and reasonable ground rules and safeguards. So we'll see how we go.

Am I worried? Eh, yes.

Will it be ok? Eh, yes, we'll make it ok, that's what parents do.



*I really must tell that story sometime. 

**I really must check the photos

Over My Shoulder

Back in the early days when we were young and the Big Three were the only three we looked differently on the world. There were parts of the city we wouldn't go as a family, even when we were in the city centre there were times when for no reason I would start to feel uneasy, watched, conspicuous.

Surely among the thousands of people that we would pass someone must recognise the children, someone from their old life. We've all had the experience of being on holiday and bumping into someone we know, a mutual friend or an old neighbour. So surely someone would recognise us it seemed inevitable.

Once we were in our home town and all of us hand in hand going swimming and as we walked into the centre Birth Mam walked out of the door. She wasn't, it was someone who looked like her but for a split second we thought it was. Our world froze for a second,  the children oblivious, but Paula and I shocked.

The edges of our family have blurred and the line between adoptive and birth family is ragged and in part dissolving. I found out today that we had been seen. Sat in a city centre restaurant two years after the Big Three joined us my children's aunt and grandmother had watched as we sat and played out the usual family scene. They watched not malevolently but frozen transfixed by the sight of their children. Observers of this scene unable or unwilling to act or intervene so close.
But then leaving and letting the scene play on.

Speaking to the aunt last night she was sure I knew and I saw, I can't recall.
I don't look over my shoulder anymore.

Sarah

Sarah was brought into care aged four and moved into her adoptive home one week off her sixth birthday. Now twenty one she describes some of her thoughts and feelings.





Sarah discusses her experiences of re establishing contact with her birth family in adulthood.

Hurricane - National Sibling Day

I will confess to feeling a warming of my heart as Flossy and Lotty ran together across the large play area. It was so nice to see them enjoying each others company as they united in a common goal. Casting aside usual differences they put their remarkable energy and willpower into a shared task that they both clearly felt passionate about.

Ah, bless.

I was not proud that they intended to rip the arms off a 4 year old boy and beat him to death with them. But it was lovely to see them not fighting each other and moreover sharing something. The little boy hadn’t realised what he was dealing with when he over zealously pushed a then 3 year old Lotty off a play slide, she’d sought out Flossy, 4, and formed an alliance to ‘resolve’ the issue.

Fortunately, I’d witnessed the whole event and having perceived their intended goal I managed to sprint across the room to save to poor unfortunate soul. 

He’d sown the wind and was about to reap the whirlwind.

Though clouded in mystery and intrigue part of our motivation to adopt a sibling group was born from a desire to keep siblings together. We had this, perhaps romantic, view that that must be in the best interest of children.

Sarah, Gracie and Ginger were the embodiment of that. Throughout their child hood they were best mates. We rarely had any of their friends over, they just played nice for the 12 years the three of them lived in the house. The odd squabble and spat of course but no more than that.

Flossy and Lotty are a different matter. Enmity, jealousy and at a pleasure in the others misfortune is in their way. The reasons are multiple and complex. They share common biographies but differ in all the wrong, or right, places.

I’m not naive I know all siblings can fight, bicker, get jealous and fall out. But this is something different. Enmity was sown between them through contact experiences and is perpetuated by anxiety, fear, temperament, hurt, adrenaline and a raft of stuff. Sometimes one is the antagonist sometimes the other and sometimes both.

The rare times that they unite it is against Mrs C, one of the big ones or me.

They love each other I have no doubt but even that is a complex emotion.

Is it in their best interests that they were kept together? I can't and won't answer that but I'd be lying if on the worst days wondering what if.

When the regular headlines come out noting that X number of children in care are separated from siblings my heart cries ‘no’ and my head asks ‘perhaps there’s good reason’. 
Once again dogma, romance and popularism have no place in adoption, rather case by case pragmatic decisions.