Havin' A Ball

Midstate U12 took the top trophy this weekend at the Morton Pumpkin Tourney -- awesome weather, and kids having a fun time!

Steps in The Journey

While roaming the house, searching for kids, checking the quality of their chores, and taking joy in the things in the post immediately prior to this one, I stopped to look at these two shadow boxes in Chad and my bedroom.  The one pictured to the left is full of mementos obviously from Hunter and Baylor's newborn days.  The shirts are, specifically, what Monkey and Snickerdoodle wore on the days they each came home from the hospital.

The frame shown below contains the T-shirts I designed on-line in anticipation of our trip to Pittsburgh to be matched officially with Anna and Jameson, and they wore these tops the day we drove the final leg of the trip to our Cluver home.  The black "positivity" bracelet was a gift to me from my sister, Remy -- a band I wore for strength every day of the year we waited between the January 2010 airlift and the January 2011 permission to join our family with theirs.



Whereas Hunter and Baylor's items signify new lives arriving upon this earth, Anna and Jameson's collection represent a new family coming into their lives.  The second youngest child in her Haitian family, Anna became the oldest of her new, second family, and Jameson, once the baby, became a middle child in ours.  This "coming home" was marked with changes for far more people than when Chad and I simply became parents for the first time in 1999 or when we added Hunter's first sibling in 2003.  In Anna and Jameson's coming to our home, they were simultaneously leaving their Haitian home.

I hope that we have and that we will do justice to their journey, not simply cherishing their culture and respecting that they have a first family, but honoring always the dignity of each person in all of these relationships and remembering that "home" is a complicated place.

The Evidence

 One of my favorite things about being a parent is witnessing the artifacts left around the house that give evidence of kids' personalities and imaginings.  Yes, I want things simplified, decluttered, and streamlined (that's inherent in MY personality), but I've learned from enough not-so-type-A persons how to "be" and to see beauty, fun, and humor in the messiness of life.  I am thankful for those lessons, and the on-going challenge  .  .  .

Rather than interpret these still lifes from real life, I'll let you play the role of anthropologist  .  .  .

Yes, it's getting interesting.

The photo below is context for the artifact two below.

Sixteen

That would be our Anna -- our Beatha Anna Samedy Cluver, that is. She had dinner (Mi Jalepeno) with friends followed by a movie and slumbering over on our family room floor.  The roses were from her dad and I, and we also telephone Haiti to talk with her her Haitian mom, her first mom, Manman Bonithe.  She's so thoroughly American and deeply Haitian.  I can only imagine the energy it takes to have both lives residing, growing, and thriving inside one body, mind, and soul.  It's incredible.  And fascinating.  Despite the struggles and foibles that she, like all of us, humans, may have, she's a pretty impressive young lady.  Sure, she's gaining in knowledge and skills with dance, piano, percussion, language, and math, but the depth with which she studies everything, reflects upon matters of human rights, and desires to see things become better -- moving.

Um, yes her birthday IS the fourth of July, as posted in the Washington DC entry, but this mama thought she'd already posted these images way back in the summer.  Uh, no, apparently I had not.  So, a little game of catch-up!

Fourteen

For at least 11 years running, candy critic Hunter Glen has held jelly beans as his #1 food choice, and since 1st grade, the Kiwi bird has been his mascot.  It's delightful to this mama that certain things don't change too quickly.  This includes his negotiating for his birthday dessert of choice -- a cookie "cake" with ice cream candy bars and a side of Jelly Bellies  .  .  .  Jameson teases him regularly that he has to be careful not to get diabetes.

Mama was pleased, also, that her teenager still found satisfaction in other things of childhood -- the wooden gun and vintage Star Wars figures in gift shops at Disney World (that surpassed his souvenir allowance last spring break, and thus, were held for birthday gifts).

What's that sitting atop the shelving unit in the boys' toy room, courtesy of Aunt Remy and Uncle Chris?

Oh, yeah!

The first child to enter my life, I challenge you to take the bull by the horns to lead your life, 

to be brave enough to be kind to all others even when it's difficult, 

and yet, in these growing processes, retain a touch of childlike joy. 

Look What Came in the Mail!

Miss Anna wrote to Malia Obama to express her fascination that they share the same birthday -- July 4th.  It has seemed no small thing that the current White House granted the permission for Anna and Jameson's specific flight of children to enter legally the United States following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and that Anna (and the president's daughter) were born on the day of U.S. Independence is only the start of commonality.  Anna had been fascinated by Chicago ever since her time living in the group home in Pittsburgh, as she found super cool the preteen show "Shake it Up, Chicago," and has loved every trip we've now taken together into that fabulous city -- the hometown of the First Family.  That the reply was, of course, not a personal script from Malia appeared unsurprising to Anna, and she was all smiles simply to receive in the mail a letter addressed to her on White House stationary inside an envelope with the return address seen above.  There are these moments when one can relish living in a democratic republic and have that rare reminder that there are times that we do, indeed, have a voice.  Someone (even if not the specific, famous recipient) reads our words, and a response (even if simple) is given to us.  This tiny thing seemed to give to Anna a sense of personal empowerment -- a point of arrival for a young lady who is yet processing through the citizenship bureaucracy.  We're not always exactly just a number.  She is Anna, and somebody on the White House staff knows it.

My Tropical Queen