Posted on by JJones

Off the Wall: Your Superhero

When my husband and I were asked if we’d consider adopting my first cousin’s three year old daughter, my husband’s first reaction was, “Are you crazy?”

I knew enough to keep my mouth shut after that and let him think it over. Two days later we were driving , and he asks, “Is she potty trained?”

Now mind you we had three children 15 months apart, and had three in diapers at once, so potty training was a  traumatic experience .

I answered, “Yes, she’s potty trained.” That was enough for him. He said he’d handle all the paperwork, I just had to drive from Florida to North Carolina and get her. Easy enough, drive 16 hours and be in North Carolina by 7:30 AM to meet the lawyer.

I had only met Jessica a few weeks before at my grandfather’s funeral. She was tiny.  And at first she just hid her face from me. But when I went to my elderly aunt’s home where she was living, I found her watching Blue’s Clues.

My aunt was looking for her shoes, so I asked Jessie, “Where did your shoes go? Did they walk to the creek?”

She looked at me with a serious expression and said, “Shoes can’t walk they don’t have eyes.” It made me laugh and I pretended to be a shoe walking into the wall which made her laugh.  But after that, all day I had a tiny shadow.

When we were going through pictures my grandfather had kept of me, she said, “That’s Jessica.” I had to correct her and tell her it was actually me. This seemed to put her in a ponderous mood. But that day she decided she wanted me as her mommy. Her biological mother had passed away in a car accident six months before, and my aunt explained Jessica had shut everyone out, till that day. My aunt was in her seventy’s and she knew she couldn’t take care of Jessica much longer, and my cousin was unable to care for himself, let alone a tiny little girl.

So when I got the call asking if we’d take her, my answer was, “Yes!”

Jessica is now a preteen and she asks a lot of questions about her biological parents. I answer what I can, but some of the answers we both have difficulty with. Recently we took Jessica to see the Superman movie, Man of Steel.  She loved it. Now as you can tell from my blog I am a major comic book, and superhero geek. But I don’t think Jessica has the same fandom, rather I think she related to Clark.  I had always told her, that I believed she was with us for a reason, that she had so many wonderful gifts she could offer the world.

I remember looking over at her when the 13 year old Clark asks his adoptive father if he could still pretend he was his father. She had that same ponderous look on her face she had the first day, drawing it all in, processing. Later in the car we talked about how what made Superman so great isn’t his biological parents (and superpowers) , but how much his Earth parents loved him. The Kents taught Superman to have a heart and an understanding of what was right.

You see when you adopt a child, they need your patience and your love. I have always told her we were gifted because we got to pick each other out. You love your child, support your child, and understand they have questions, and they do carry some confusion. In her case she carries anger with her biological father, for not giving up drugs and being her dad. But when it comes down to it, like Superman she makes the choices to who she is ultimately. And adopted or not, she is my daughter. My Supergirl. It is just a learning process for both of us.

If you are considering adoption know that as you watch your child blossom into the superhero they may become, you play a big part in the choices they will make. Give them your heart and they can fly.

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Off the Wall: Spidey Scenes

Spiderman
Spiderman

“With great power, comes great responsibility.”- Stan Lee (Uncle Ben)

I don’t mean to always tie my ideas to some totally geeky, but awesome character such as Spider-man or Yoda, but I tend to see connections often in pop culture to reality. Sometimes through fiction (books, comic books, movies…) we can learn hard lessons while having fun. Spider-man was like that for me. I loved him growing up. I was even jealous when my brother got Spider- man underoos (superhero kid’s underwear from the 80s) , and I could only have Wonder Woman!

It broke my heart when Spider-man failed Uncle Ben (I don’t mean Uncle Ben’s rice)  in all his incarnations over the years. I just held onto Uncle Ben’s quote, “With great power, comes great responsibility.”  I know I don’t have super powers, but I defined great powers, as my own strengths. To me it meant if you can do something to help you have the responsibility to do so. In later years I was over stressed and exhausted from taking this idea too far. My husband told me you don’t always have to help, sometimes you can say, ” no.”  I turned to him and quoted Uncle Ben. He said, “Honey, that’s not what that means.” Now this is still debatable. But he did have a point, you can’t always help, if you overload yourself,  you just end up being  no help to anyone.

So I’ve made a small change to the quote, “With great power, comes great responsibility, to always prioritize what you can do to  help to others.”   

Okay it’s not short and sweet, but I do think now I am a better support to others, because I am not spread to thin. I still cannot climb walls,  and I doubt I’ll be designing any web fluid anytime soon. But there is something to be said about using our abilities to help others, while being aware of our limits.

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Off the Wall: Commitment to Dreams

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
-C. S. Lewis

My father is a dreamer. I believe he just started out that way always dreaming. My grandmother was very protective of him and kept him sheltered, but she couldn’t tame his need to question the norm and dream big. Growing up with a dad like mine I caught the dreaming bug early. But it took along time for me to grasp what it meant to truly be committed to a dream. You see that is a big part of making dreams come true, you have to be committed.

When I was in my mid twenties my husband and I were having some trouble, and I found I was extremely unhappy most of the time. I asked my father what is the most important thing in the world? I wanted him to say happiness or adventure, instead he said commitment. You see he already understood that without commitment there can be no passion, without passion, dreams fade. Needless to say he was telling me that happiness comes with commitment. It took me a long time to grasp this, for a while I thought well that’s a cranky answer. But sometimes we have to find our passion to our commitments.

Earlier today I was talking with a man about this very word. He was saying that we are committed to so many things in life, ball teams, our favorite music band, our cars, and the list went on. I thought well yes this is true to a point, but I don’t like my ball teams much when they loose, and my favorite bands keep changing, as for cars if they don’t work I don’t like them. But this is because commitment is far more then just liking something. It’s like jumping out of a plane, you are committed to this action and have faith that your parachute brings you down safely.  But you have to make the effort in order to fly, or fall gracefully in this analogy.

So I personally believe that dreams can be the fire that pushes us forward. But without commitment the lack of passion will let them just be flitting nice thoughts. To make a dream come true you have to really put yourself into it. And there is never a time you are to old to dream, or continue dreams, or to even find something new. Sometimes the longer it takes us to reach a goal the sweeter it tastes in the end.

Now if I can just remind myself of this each day.

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