Rough day

It's been a rough day around here. This is an unschooling journal first, but since I'm doing the writing here, it's also by nature a repository for my thoughts. And my main thought today was, "Is it over yet?" Fifteen years ago today I held my 3-day-old daughter for the last time. I rocked her in the hospital nursery and sang to her, under the watchful eye of the nursing staff, and then I said goodbye to her. I sincerely hope that it wasn't a final goodbye, but it was goodbye for at least 18 years. That evening, at the stroke of the 3rd day mark, I signed the release papers for a wonderful family to adopt her. I had hand-picked these people to raise my child because I didn't think I could. Hindsight may be 20/20 but I'm still not sure we could have survived together. I was an emotional and spiritual wreck. Two years later when I had my next daughter I was still only barely fit for motherhood, but at least that time there was a good father involved that could take up some of the slack while God worked with me a little more.

Today I find myself thinking, "If Becca were still mine, I'd be letting her drive right now..." I have no doubts that her parents and older sister are proud of the young woman she's becoming before their eyes. Her sister, Lisa, should have graduated from high school this year and I'm sure Stephanie (as she was renamed) is helping Lisa get all geared up for college. I also find myself thinking about the future. In three more years, Stephanie will be eligible to enroll on the national database for adoptees and birthparents. She'll also be able to get my contact information straight from the adoption agency's records. I find myself wondering if she'll want to do that. A part of me hopes that she does, to satisfy my own longing to connect with this beautiful girl. Another part of me hopes that she's so happy and secure in her adoptive family that she never gives me a second thought.

I haven't really quite been myself for the last several days, though, because thoughts of Stephanie are crowding everything else out. I've been pushing back against the emotional well-spring by throwing myself into unschooling, the "unschooling crowd" that Heather Young introduced me to, and generally trying to keep myself too occupied to dwell on the bitter-sweet thoughts of Stephanie.

In fact, bad mom that I am, I let the kids sleep in today until they wanted to get up. For Mindie that was about 12:30 and for Shannen it was 2:30. Mindie went with me and helped me pick out a new router and set it up. Shan spent the day with Harry Potter, working on her British accent until it was time to go to her second audition for "Narnia." About the only obvious learning either of them did today was looking up a handful of words. Mindie is working on a "sketch by numbers" set to practice shading techniques and mentioned that she "graduated" this section, which Shannen promptly looked up. Meanwhile, Mindie wanted to know why Sherlock Holmes always said "Elementary, Watson..." and looked that one up.

And in news that isn't, the hubs is crabby. Not that I blame him. It's a crummy time to be a farmer around here and Murphy is taking unholy glee in demonstrating the supremacy of his law by breaking every farm implement in sight several times a day.

So that's our world right now. Probably not really worth blogging about, but there it is.