You can tell it's spring in Milwaukee when you can see curb.~from a morning broadcast on WLUM last week

As every soul in Milwaukee is probably thinking, it's so good to see the white of winter disappear. Not only can we see curb, we can see grass as well.

What a difference that makes to me. It means hope, hope that the world will erupt in green soon, hope that before long we'll be outside more than in, hope that my isolation will end.

My Polish ancestors supposedly settled in Milwaukee as the area reminded them of their homeland. And it is beautiful. I love to drive through the Wisconsin countryside more than any other state. (Virginia is second.) But as far as the climate goes-my Polish DNA must end there. I am not cut out for these long, bitter winters. My French DNA must be dominant there.

Speaking of spring, spring break begins for us tomorrow. Saturday we'll attend a family class in karate. (Have fun imagining my lack of coordination Saturday afternoon.) Next week we'll go to Lake Geneva for a night. A hotel on Lake Delavan had a great spring break special for a two bedroom, two bath suite. With the full kitchen, we'll eat in mostly, swim a lot, and get away for pretty cheap. J's first time swimming-it ought to be fun.

And it's time for spring cleaning, which I've already begun. Time to put the pass-on's on the newly visible curb...

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.~Winston Churchill

Yesterday there was a hearing in court for J. Once again we found that the papers for him hadn't been filed. We'd been told they'd be filed by the end of December, then the middle of February, and now this. I'd volunteer to strap J in a harness on me and fill out forms or make copies or do whatever to help get this done, if it would be taken seriously.

Some good came of the hearing, though. The judge officially ruled that adoption was the plan for J. He also recommended the papers be filed as quickly as possible, bless him. A supervisor has them; they could be filed by today, even. I know enough, though, to not to get my hopes up too high.

On the note of legal issues, we're in the middle of submitting a request for more time with A. These two issues are my heart's purest prayers. It seems to be hard to make either happen. All this loops back to my previous posting on prayer. Still not a lot of luck on that front, either. I go through the motions; the routine itself offers some comfort. I still search.

It's so odd to aspire to something you have little to no control over. What a frustrating position to be in! Is that how my children feel? (Or will feel, in J's case.)

So the most important efforts of my life to this point show no success. Is that failure? If I can find a way to continue enthusiasm, then maybe not.

Wish us success...

Somehow destiny comes into play. These children end up with you and you end up with them. It's something quite magical.-Nicole Kidman, adoptive parent

Yesterday was magical.

We've had J for five months. We went through '100 Nights of No Sleep'. We've watched his reflux ravage him, from once an hour to once or twice a day. We've changed over 1,000 diapers. We've fed him over 3,000 ounces of preemie formula. We've kissed him at least 10,000 times.

The adoption is still stalled. We have court later this week, but since nothing else has been done, nothing else will be done.

But yesterday, in my heart, he became my son. Not my foster son. Not my adoptive son. But my son.

We were sitting in the den, he on my lap. As I ate a nectarine, I slowly scraped tiny tastes for him to savor. He'd look up at me intermittantly, content, serene, sweet.

Nothing special. No fireworks, no parades, no trumpets. But everything changed, deepened, intensified.

I could adopt a dozen children, love them, fight for them, spend my life being their mother. All with the hopes that this feeling would bloom.

Isn't it sweet that it did?

Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list. ~Dennis Leary

I had the most unnerving experience last night. I believe I was the subject of racism.

I'm white. I'm a woman. I'm an American of Polish and French descent. You might need to know that before you read ahead.

I pulled into a parking space at Buffalo Wild Wings. There was a car on my left; none on my right. My mini-van needed to be straightened out, so I put the car in reverse.

The passenger in the car on my left started to open the door. I stopped backing out; ripping off their car door didn't sound like much fun to me. The woman closed the door, then rolled down her window to throw out some garbage. (We can tackle littering in some future blog, but not today.)

So I straightened my car. As I took the keys out of the ignition, the driver leaned towards the passenger window and started yelling something at me. I couldn't hear, so started to roll down my window. This was just in time to hear, '..., you prejudiced white bitch!'.

I got out of the car then. I've pissed plenty of people off in my day, and not always on purpose, but did not have a clue what I'd done. So I asked, 'What did I do?' (I can be pretty smooth sometimes.)

She answered, 'You heard me, you honky white bitch!. Then she slowly drove away, throwing daggers at me with her eyes. Ouch. OUCH.

My husband and friend Sue have reminded me there's nothing I can do now, and even then, I couldn't have changed her perception of me. I understand that.

But that doens't mean I don't want to. I want to bridge gaps, not create chasms. I'm the not-very-bright person who was shocked to hear some whites wouldn't vote for Obama because he's black. I refused to go to Junior prom because I wasn't allowed to go with a black male friend. Extended family hid my keys in Indiana to stop me from going to protest a KKK rally.

My son is part black.

The sadness is that I could tell all of this to the women I encountered last night, and it wouldn't do any good. What they accused me of, they practiced-live and on me.

To anyone ready to pounce on me for this, I am fully aware that this is how millions of blacks, Hispanics, Jews, etc., have experienced for millenia, and often much more violently. I can think of no sentence to type that will accurately express my sorrow, sympathy, repulsion at the horror, and solidarity I feel.

But it sure is different when it happens to you, you don't know why, and you can't reason with the racist standing next to you.

God help me find more ways to bridge these gaps. Oops-I almost prayed...

Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: "Great God, grant that twice two be not four."~Ivan Turgene

I have prayed daily for all of my conscious life. There have been times that I've felt connected with God, and have heard direct answers when I've asked questions. I thank God silently feeling the sunshine on my skin, watching the rain water the roses, tasting Ghiradelli chocolate brownies, holding my newborn child. Most of the time, though, my prayer has been a dialog, like Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof.

Something has happened lately, though, and I find myself unable to pray. It is profoundly disturbing to me. When my soul talks it disolves into a dark nothingness. Not even an echo.

I believe it's because of my 'unanswered' prayers, or the ones that were answered with a solid 'No.'. Those prayers haven't been trivial-not for a sunny day on a Susan B. Koman run day, not for my skinny jeans to fit, not for the 4th grade class to like my cookies & cream ice cream torte. The deepest prayers I've prayed were for my children.

Don't get me wrong; I've also prayed for others in the world. I've prayed for the world to stop smoking, even though we've been given free will. I've prayed for the end of wars, for wisdom for the decision-makers who can stop wars. I've prayed for neighbors who've been in pain. I've prayed for family members who are short on hope.

But the prayers that come from the deepest part of me are for my children.

Several years ago, I became very angry with God for allowing bad things to happen to A. I battled the theory that God is non-interventionist-that free will thing again. Then I thought about God sending His son to us; that didn't seem too non-interventionist to me.

I pondered what Jesus would do about A's troubles if He were here. I compared it to what I had done. And I saw myself as Jesus' hand on earth. This was what Jesus had come to teach us to do.

But now, years later, and more pain for A, and now limbo for J, I've reached a new level. Why does God let horrible things happen to innocent children?

I don't have an answer for this. Maybe I should read 'Why Bad Things Happen to Good People'. In the meantime, I've been reduced to feeling foolish for even pretending to talk to a God who doesn't seem there.

It leaves me lonely. I wake in the morning and my mind reaches to whomever, to say Hello! and Please help me be a good person, mom, wife and Thank you for the sunshine peaking through our shades and the husband beside me. I go to sleep at night, ready to talk about the day, laugh over the funnies, cherish the warmth, nurse the wounds.

But those thoughts fade into a darkness. They may still be heard for all I know. I've lost my daily companion, though, and I miss that immensely.

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.-Mark Twain

J cut two teeth this weekend, one Saturday and one Sunday, the front bottom teeth. This seems early to me; it's either five and a half months true age, or three and a half adjusted. It's one more way of showing me that each child is their own, on their own schedule, with their own blueprint.

J is becoming himself.

I'd hoped hoped that this would calm his spirit; he'd been cranky. Make that CRANKY. But no luck there. There may be more teeth coming in; there's a bump to the left of his front teeth, which again would be off schedule. (We'd expect his top two teeth to come in next.) Or he may just be CRANKY. I understand why doctors prescribed valium for mothers in the past. The good old days...:)

His adoption seems stalled. His mother hasn't changed her mind; she still wants to give up rights. It seems the issue is paperwork and red tape. Sad how a little one's life doesn't tip the scale when weighed against these.

Any other parents out there who've fostered or adopted know this feeling of being terminally on hold. You go day in and day out, feeding, loving, losing sleep, and in the back of your mind is always the thought "What if...". You say, "Good morning, son!" and a little piece of your heart reminds you, quietly but firmly, that in the eyes of the law, he's not your son.

Funny, if we were in a less-advanced country, we could pass a generous amount of money to some official and speed this up. But no, here we cannot bribe. We're simply at the mercy of overworked, overwhelmed people who can't be inspired to move him to the top of their list. We don't look so advanced when you look at it that way, do we?

How many more milestones will we celebrate with J while in limbo?

In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.-From the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy

I receive a daily quote email from charityfocus.org, and this news tidbit was included several days ago:

Dublin -- there is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape. There are taxis and buses. Every other person is talking into a cellphone. But there are no plastic shopping bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life. In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts. Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. [ more ]

Click on the link above for more details, such as the fact that in January of 2008, more than 42 million plastic bags were used worldwide, and the figure increases by more than half a million every minute.

I'm in awe of Ireland (the bag-tax edict is enforced throughout the entire country) and hope they get more press and kudos for their change.

Now, I believe, like Thoreau, that the government that governs the least governs the best. But this is one example of an intervening government that actually did some good! I'm having a hard time reconciling those facts; it's uncommon.

On a personal note-we reuse a number of our bags for doggie and kittie cleanup. But we still have many more bags than even that requires.

Can this be done here?