I leave myself messages…forgiveness and love

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being yourself, exchange student, joy, relationship, writing

Sometimes I find I’ve left myself messages. Breadcrumbs to follow to where I need to go. Apparently it is too scary to go directly from point A to point B so I must leave myself writings, blog posts, or essays, a whole book I’ve written, or stories of my life before, so that I can find them and read them and know the truth of what I must do. I must get myself out of the isolation I live in even though to you out there it must look as though I am terribly engaged. I am but I’m not. I must share the book that I’ve written. I put it on the shelf for some years and decided it a great exercise, but not anything anyone needed to know. That was a trick. It seems I needed time to catch up in my heart with what I wrote from my head. Leave myself some breadcrumbs to follow. Stories about how I used to be lost in the world so I can see that I am not anymore.

My boy came back from a year away in South America, yesterday. Waiting for him at the airport was like waiting to give birth. I tried to be calm, not make a scene, that’s what he asked for, so okay, but let’s let it be whatever it is. So we waited and watched, grew anxious, and then thrilled at the sight of him, and grabbed him to us in a tight four-way hug all around, all of us together loving each other like I have never known before. I did it. I created a family that loves out loud, that cares and misses and loves together. I am sure of it because when I laid eyes on him tears burst to my eyes and I thanked god for the gift of this day. This day where my world is fantastic and joyful and great. I thanked god as the plane landed, that I have made it to this point in my life where I can see the changes in myself, perpetuated forward through my children.

When I read some of my stories I am shocked at what I see. A girl so lost and alone and confused. I left myself these stories so I would have no way of convincing myself it happened any other way. Seeing my son come home to us after a year away, us all truly joyful on his return, is a message to myself, a breadcrumb to follow. I have come from far away and live among others now and can see that my kids love me and love me and love me. I am not lost anymore.

Calling all exchange students

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being yourself, exchange student, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler

Our Taiwanese exchange student gave a ten-minute presentation to the sponsoring Rotary club yesterday at a luncheon. She talked of her first few weeks with us and of missing home. And then about the long, 24 hour flight, and getting on the plane at sixteen and stepping off at seventeen, it having been her birthday the day she left Taiwan. Before she knew it she was talking about feeling really scared and uncomfortable her first days in America, and of coming to me for consolation. She seemed to surprise herself and got choked up, barely able to continue. I saw the crowd react to her bravery at traveling so far from home to live with strangers.

Since we cook a lot she had lots of pictures of my kitchen in her presentation including my homemade French onion soup, a surprisingly great looking apple tart and a soba noodle dish on a platter. She shared pictures of her prize winning Halloween costume my husband put together for her and of other routine happenings around here such as decorating the house during the holidays and trips to Canada to see my husband’s family. She had pictures of herself in her first snow squall and of tubing in feet of fluffy fresh powder. She even had a picture of a little pile of Christmas gifts we gave her. She didn’t say anything that really struck me as so out of the ordinary, just a description of what we do everyday and how we live that has been such a novelty to her.

But a funny thing happened afterward. The moderator and then one of the next speakers to the podium each remarked that they too would like to be an exchange student at our house because it looked so good. I can’t figure what it was that made it look so appealing, or if it was in her way of telling the story. Maybe I just like the idea that my mundane life is actually the fantastic one I dreamed of long ago that my ears are tuned to hear all about today. I asked my husband and our girl on the ride home in the car, was it the food, or was there something else that had people praising us for our family and life?

Whatever it was, I liked it.

Loving life, just as I hoped for my boy

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being yourself, dreams coming true, exchange student, express feelings, friends, inspire, joy, listening, outlet for emotions, piano lessons, play, playing guitar, words, writing

I just watched a video of my son, Andrew, posted with his buddy, Theo from Minnesota, who is also an exchange student, and they are singing their hearts out specifically to their parents from across the globe. For me there is something about hearing singing, especially lone voices, that makes me very happy, and to have it be my own boy, well, that is fantastic.

When I was young I always said my kids would have to play piano, or sing, or dance, or somehow have an outlet for expressing themselves besides just talking. I worried about whether anyone would be listening to their talk, because no one was in my childhood, even though I knew it would be me who potentially might not be listening. So to me, it seems wildly important that kids have some kind of art because unless you are a writer words are inadequate to express the inevitable frustrations of life. I insisted my kids take piano lessons for at least five years because I know that that’s enough to really learn how to play. Being Andrew, after the piano lessons he moved on to learning drums and then guitar, and then singing and athletics, and eventually to flying away to live with people in another world.

Seeing Andrew so far from home, locating a guitar for himself, and a buddy to sing with, and serenading us across the internet could not be sweeter. In so many ways it tells me that he is fine and doing well and loving life just as I hoped for him.

Kids are the same everywhere

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being yourself, change, exchange student, express feelings, friends, friendship, inspire, relationship, security, South America

My boy in Ecuador posted his first real disappointment of his exchange trip recently and our hearts go out to him. One of the other exchange students, a boy from Norway, and Andrew’s friend already, left the program and went back home. It was clear from the pictures posted and the activities that they shared that they had become fast friends. Andrew had already even told us he wanted to go to Norway next summer rather than come home in order to visit this friend and work on the family’s fishing boat! But the young man left due to a family emergency back in Norway leaving our guy very sorry to see him go. He said in his post that after going to the house to say goodbye he returned to his own family and just went to his room and cried.

I know because I did it when I was fourteen, that it is hard to suddenly be out of your element and in someone elses world, adrift. Our boy is doing great at making friends and going to school and adjusting to the cultural changes, but a large part of his success is in having comrades, that is other kids going through precisely the same kind of separation from family, and the immersion in the new culture. It is hard so they encourage each other through it. We see that with the Taiwanese girl staying with us, that she is so animated and happy after spending a day with the other inbound exchange students. They lift each other up. The absence of Andrew’s friend is a real loss for him and we wish him a new friend soon.

When kids are scared

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change, exchange student, express feelings, fear, friendship, inspire, listening, parents, play, relationship, repaving the street, security, teacher, trust, words

When kids tell us their fears they are also telling us they’d like some help reinterpreting them, reframing them so they are not so scary. That’s what kids expect from adults, for us to be leaders, and people that show the way to something better. So when I hear my neighbor friend, who is eight, say that she is afraid the trucks repaving our street will wake her up in the morning (since they start their work before dawn), I see an opportunity to show her how to manage such daily interruptions in our otherwise secure world.

For me, the trucks repaving the street are fascinating. They are the people who know what to do with hot tar and rollers, as well as the people in cars who might be in the way, so it is all quite interesting to me. Maybe that’s a way to reframe the scare. To share our own experience. But that may not be enough since grown-ups see the world so differently than children.

I might also be inclined to agree with my friend that the trucks are big and noisy, but that they are happily doing their job of improving our neighborhood while we are safely in our homes doing our jobs. I might tell her that one of her big jobs as a child is to learn, so being woken up by the trucks might be their way of letting her know it is time to learn about them, and the repaving of the street. If I were her mom I’d tell her, “If the trucks wake you up, come get me and we can look out the window and learn together.”

When kids do things that scare you to death

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being yourself, control, exchange student, express feelings, fear, inspire, mother, parents, play, pole vaulting, security, skateboarding, South America, trust, words

Okay, we keep getting scary blog posts from our kid in Ecuador, and I am telling myself it is okay. No need to talk me off the ledge, or anything, because I know that words are quite powerful and that’s all this is, words.

Words have the power to convey so much if you let them. Love. Fear. Mistrust. Doubt. Words are big.

So, he’s not sure he wants to pole-vault because the taxi ride to the far away city where the coaches are is notoriously fraught with knife-point hold-ups. Yeah, that’s a real stumbling block. The death threats en route to your sporting event. It is a leap of faith for me to imagine that my kid is mature enough to manage this, but really I trust he is in good hands with the people watching over him. I am imagining that the words he uses are loaded and that he, as usual, gauges his actions to keep himself safe. After all, he is deciding not to use the knifepoint hold-up taxi service, and what great judgment that shows!

He has shown me since he was little that he too does not want to injure himself. This is the notion that has kept me sane. I can see that he is on my side of this thing, equally invested in preserving his own life, and that it is not entirely up to me to point out life’s hazards, even though he sees them and measures them where others would leave them be. When he used to skateboard down the street using his hands instead of his feet, I could see how controlled he was about his movements, even as his head wobbled inches from the ground as he traveled downhill at breakneck speed. And truly he rarely got hurt.

That’s how I keep calm when I read the blog, realizing that he has a track record of preserving his own life thus eliminating the need for me to do it for him, not to mention the thrill he must get using powerful words such as “knifepoint” and “hold-up”. Looking the other way is quite useful too.

In answering his frightening blog posts I offer to him some equally powerful and scary words myself: “We are looking forward to next summer when you move back home.”

My boy is the one who rode his tricycle down the deck stairs

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being yourself, control, exchange student, express feelings, fear, goals, inspire, joy, natural talent, parents, play, pole vaulting, South America, trust, writing

Okay, below is the kind of thing I read on my son’s blog periodically as he experiences the cultural exchange in Ecuador. Provided he lives to look back on these kinds of thrilling events he surely will see that he has learned some things along the way. But really, as a parent, I must train myself to look at this through new eyes. He is eighteen and typically he’d be in college by now and I would know nothing of his foolish escapades. Also, it helps that he has conditioned me since he was born to look the other way when he tries to injure/kill himself since so far he has failed to do either despite being quite daring and fearless. So, take note while your kids are little, if they have the “T” factor, I believe it is called, that inspires them to take risks greater than those you and I might take, it might be a good time to wallow in the delight of being able to personally inform them of the danger, unlike when they will be off to college or other such places tasting the world on their own. In other words, it is when they are young and scaring you to death that it is best to teach them how to protect themselves. We steered this son towards daring yet controlled feats like performing live on stage, and sports like pole-vaulting, to help channel his wild energy.

Here’s Andrew’s blog post for yesterday, and really, I woke up today still thinking about it:

A really big sport in Ambato is downhill. Its literally just taking a mountain bike with shocks and riding down the side of a mountain. There are paths but they look like this ——___——- and the bike wheel fits in the ___. So there is no room for the pedals. And it is extremely hard to break because youre riding on very fine dirt. Mateo and David brought me to try it. You have to pay someone with a pick up truck to drive you to the top of the mountain. From there we started the descent. It started off easy, not very steep and only a few random holes in the ground that I had to jump over while speeding down a hill. But the next part was terrible. I fell head over the handlebars 4 times. I almost rode off the side of the mountain. I had to jump off the bike because the breaks werent working. Towards the end, I was riding and passed a cow tied to a tree. I didnt think anything of it because it Ecuador, but I then found myself in danger. A dog, almost definately rabid, jumped out of nowhere and ran at me barking. It got very close but then was pulled back by the rope by which it was tied to another tree. It was freaking out. Then when I tried to run away more dogs, without leashes, came running, barking, at me. I had to bark at them and wave my arms while I walked backwards up the hill. It turns out I had taken a wrong turn into someones farm/hut/land(?). I got to the bottom of the mountain bleeding,
bruised, sore, dirty, and almost rabid.

The good thing about this post for me it that Andrew is still Andrew and clearly is having a good time exploring what it is to be on his own. Thankfully he spent his childhood teaching me what to expect and I am hardened against the horror of this scene. Or maybe it was my own childhood that took away my fears of getting hurt. To read a story from my childhood called, “You Could Get Electrocuted Doing That”, go to “You’ll Get Over It, Jane Ellen”.

Some joy to balance the pain

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being yourself, change, control, dehydration, dreams coming true, Ecuador, exchange student, express feelings, fear, friends, goals, inspire, joy, letting go, mother-in-law, parents, play, security, South America, trust, weather

I am feeling a little of the balance of life today. We buried my aunt’s ashes last weekend, and we buried my mother-in-law a few weeks before that, but now, today I am feeling the joy of seeing my son stand happily in exactly the right place. He went missing for a few days, at least at our end here in America, and with warnings of a tsunami on the western coast of South America, and his failure to respond to emails and texts or to post anything to his blog or Facebook, we felt a little alarmed. Where did our kid who contacts us three times a day one way or another go?

When we finally connected on day four he said he’d been off to the coast at a three-day language camp for foreigners intending to study in Ecuador for the year, and there was no WiFi, and by the way, I am busy now and I’ve got to go. According to his blog posts thereafter he’d been terribly sick with symptoms of dehydration as well as had tons of fun meeting people and playing hard.

We will learn to fully let go through experiences like this one I hope. This one is helpful because it seems apparent that we have guided him to just where he needs to be. Or so it seems right now. He is out in the wide world having thrilling experiences. He’s happy, he’s taking care of himself and surviving despite himself. He’s meeting people and learning and growing and finding his place in the world. We could not be happier for him.

So being told he is alive and well, and in his usual way, quite busy having a good time so let me go already, was all we needed to hear in order to be able to rest comfortably in the idea that maybe we have led him to his adulthood ready to go.

Mother’s love is universal

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exchange student, express feelings, fear, friendship, inspire, love, mother, parents

I am suddenly in charge of someone else’s child, whom I’ve never even met, from half-way across the world. She got off the plane last night, after flying by herself 18 hours from Taiwan as a Rotary exchange student. We recognized her from her photos, so as soon as we saw her I put my arms around her, for her mother back home who surely would have done the same, to let her know we congratulate her for making it here and for being so brave. I cannot imagine what it is like to go so far from home, alone, and not really speak the language at the other end.

Her parents are brave too to send her off to unknown Americans to let her learn about our world, without a word directly to us, a giant leap of faith I am not sure I could do. We spoke by Skype to the family hosting our son, Andrew, in Ecuador, but we have not had words or pictures exchanged with Nana’s parents. They do not need to tell us that we will watch her as our own and care for her carefully as we hope the people in Ecuador will do for our son, too.

Nagging my kids sounds like a military drone

Tags

exchange student, fear, joy, listening, mother, parents, relationship, South America

I tried not to bug a lot about setting up a blog before he left, but I did mention it several times as a good way to stay in touch and to let us know how he is doing. My son dismissed me and said he’d keep a log or a journal or a blog or something, but leave me alone about it, Mom. So I did, fearing he’d be his usual procrastinating self and leave it to the last day of his year-long stay with a host family in South America. I quietly left him alone resigning myself to the idea that he might not let me know the details of his stay there, and that that would be his prerogative. After all, he is a cranky teenager. My job is to get him there and point him in the direction of getting the most out of his fantastic opportunity. I told him that directly, that I was trying to help him get the most out of his fantastic opportunity and not just bugging him.

Today, nearly 48 hours after waving goodbye at the Philadelphia airport I see he has posted a lengthy description of his experience so far. It is filled with all the details I need to know that he is fine: he attended a family dinner with what he called ‘thousands’ of people, that a little boy helped him learn to play a card game at the party, that he gave gifts to his hosts, that he is unpacked and relaxed, that he is traveling to a lagoon tomorrow, that he is comfortable and content and that he knows to put the difficult-to-use possessive apostrophe on a word correctly! Yeah, he apparently got many educations under our care and is using them!!

Nagging is not useful for much. I fight it because it tends to be mindless, and droning, and negative. I had a serious conversation once about why a blog would be great, then I brought it up again, but when he told me alright already I was reminded that this is his experience, not mine. Whether my kid won’t stop hitting his sister, or won’t pick up his clothes or won’t create a blog, somehow the message that we care gets through, and I feel that because we have shown respect in others ways he shows respect back by listening, even when it seems like he isn’t.

Here’s the link to his blog if you want to look: andrewinecuador.tumblr.com