Instant Mom (10 page)

She cries at night before she sleeps for those few precious minutes. My mom gives me good advice: sometimes kids just need to cry it out. So we hold her and soothe her and tell her she’s safe.

I’m holding my daughter now in her room, rocking her in my arms, trying to get her to sleep. I can feel her body giving in to the swaying. Delectable smells are coming up the stairs. My mom, in that seemingly bottomless well of mom energy, is making Greek meatballs at nine
P.M.
Whatever Ian doesn’t devour when he comes home from work will be frozen for another meal. I wonder if everyone has these emotional buoys to cling to when they adopt? Does everyone have sisters, a brother, sister-in-law, brothers-in-law, and a dad calling and giving advice and encouragement? I hope everyone has a mom who fills their freezer with baked delights and full meals in Tupperware containers. She tells me my siblings have already mailed gifts, books, and clothes. I am so lucky that I have this foundation under my somewhat shaky legs. I whisper in my daughter’s ear now “So many people have been waiting for you. So many people love you. You’ll meet them all.”

Within a few days I have to go to work. Yes, really. It’s not like I can call in sick and believe me, I tried. With almost no sleep, I get to the set and although I feel light-headed—okay, I’ll say it, almost high off the thrill of my secret—I don’t tell anyone that I am a mom. I can’t explain why I keep it quiet, other than I am still processing it. Also, in my haphazard plodding trek toward motherhood, after so many things falling through and not working out, I am fighting back illogical fears she’ll be taken from us. Yes, even though I am sure she’s my daughter, plus she is legally emancipated. But truly, I think I don’t say anything because it feels so special. To say it out loud almost feels as if it would ruin the delicate beauty of the story. I just want to keep it to myself for a while.

I have barely slept; I am saying my lines in a haze and only thinking about my daughter at home with my mom. I can’t wait to get home. Later, I just lie down beside her in bed and inhale her scent of chalk and shampoo, even as she does elbow me in the ribs to get away from her. I breathe her in: she’s real.

This hazing of no
sleep isn’t good for any of us, so when I finally have a day off filming, Ian and I leave our daughter with my mom so we can go to an appointment we really need. Our friend Tamara, super organized and well read on this mom thing, recommended a site called SleepyPlanet.com, which has connected us with a children’s sleep therapist.

This therapist is sympathetic and within minutes reveals she used to work with kids in foster care. We describe how our daughter will not let us hold her but will clutch our fingers as she sleeps. When she does wake up, she hastily checks her surroundings. If she can’t see us in front of her, she screams in terror. Yet she fights sleep, trying so hard to keep her eyes open. The therapist explains why our daughter is sleeping for only a few minutes at a time: she is afraid to wake up and find she’s not with us anymore. This breaks my heart. Now we know as much as she’s pushing us away, she doesn’t want to leave us.

As strenuous as it’s been, this information makes my daughter even more impressive to me. She doesn’t know us, so her survival tactic is to stay awake and keep an eye on us so we can’t try out a demon-worship ritual on her. She simply won’t let herself relax and sleep. She’s like a vigilant soldier in a foxhole, keeping one eye on the enemy at all times. The lack of sleep is taking its toll on her. Sometimes there’s just no reasoning with her. She careens around the house like your drunk college roommate who won’t give up her car keys.

The therapist gives us little tips such as setting a routine timed to the minute, the same every day. As in: bath from 6:00–6:20 exactly; read books until 6:35; bedtime at 7:00
P.M.
She tells us TV is not good for any of our brains before bed because of the beta waves. Most important, she advises us to do the opposite of letting a baby “cry it out.” She says to do anything we can to make our daughter feel as secure as possible. She counsels us that it’s okay to rock our daughter to sleep and to give her as many bottles as she asks for. Most significantly, she advises we don’t sleep in the same bed as her but rather to put another cot in the room right beside her bed. And no matter what—to never leave her alone in the room at night. This way no matter when our daughter wakes up, she will see one of us there in the exact same place we’d been in before she nodded off and this may help her anxieties lessen.

We take the therapist’s advice and begin to set a routine. But after so many days of no rules, it’s not easy. So we try to make it all fun. Everything becomes a singsong game. I am now in her bathroom singing, bouncing, and flailing around like a clown with no bones, “time to get out, time to get outta the bath.” I stink at this; nothing rhymes.

She’s okay with that as long as I clap. She likes the clapping and dancing and singing. She allows me to hold her and lightly swing her around the room, as long as I am singing.

We literally move into her room. This evening we put her to bed at 7:00
P.M.
, and I am lying on a little cot, surrounded by magazines, books, and a bottle of water. I tell her I, or her dad or grandma will be right here all night. Sure enough, our daughter wakes up every two minutes to check if I’m really here. I am. When I need more bottles of milk or to use the bathroom, I text Ian so he or my mom can take my place on the cot. A pattern emerges: our daughter bolts awake but sees one of us there in that extra bed. So she falls back asleep. She goes through six bottles of milk a night. We keep giving them to her. Sure enough, over the next few days, the two-minute sleep intervals turn into twenty minutes, then slowly into an hour at a time. She is visibly becoming more trusting.

This is why I described getting back my energy before filming
My Life In Ruins.
There is no way I could have done this when I was feeling weak: every night, I swing her in my arms for as long as it takes for her to feel sleepy. This segues into a list of everyone who loves her. I tell her all her new cousins’ names, her aunts, uncles, friends. All the names become a singsong mantra of how many people love her. Her eyelids get heavy, but she keeps them open. She fights sleep as hard as she can. Sometimes, this takes hours and my arms ache. No matter how fit I thought I’d become, this is hard because we didn’t have a seven-pound baby to begin with, to work arm muscles up to carrying the weight of a toddler. I am immediately rocking over thirty pounds, and my shoulder muscles rip from the weight. But to see her slowly relax and her mouth form that angelic pout is worth it.

On this night she is really fighting sleep and now pushes against my shirt. My buttons are too pointy. Without hesitation, I rip off my shirt and rock her against my chest. The skin-to-skin contact calms her. I feel like a cavewoman standing here rocking my baby without my shirt but . . . oh yes, she is sleeping.

We’re slowly introducing her
to a few friends. As I confide to my cousin Nike and close friends, such as everyone of Core, plus Sean Hayes, Rita, Tom, John, and Gary that I’m a mom, their cheerful, bordering-on-ecstatic responses surprise me. I become conscious of how much they all knew I needed this but hadn’t pried.

Some days are great. We see progress in every way. Some days are steps backward. We try to not worry, and we try to be patient even though she is still not speaking. Plus, she still doesn’t sleep for longer than an hour or so.

Today our friends Rose, Tracy, and Suzy come over and as I open the door with my daughter in my arms, I have to fight back the urge to scream, “Isn’t she cuuuuute?” Instead, I calmly say, “Sweetie, these are your aunties.” Rose gives her a toy. She chucks it at Rose’s chin.

Oooookay, not a good day. My girlfriends assure me they understand. I can see they do and how excited they are to see her. But, yeah, the lack of sleep would make anyone incorrigible.

It gets worse later that afternoon. She keeps throwing things, testing us again to see if we’ll get mad, if we’ll reject her. A sharp toy car glances off my shinbone. It is taking every bit of patience I have to not throw that toy back. I just pick it up and ask her to not throw things. She stares up at me, daring me to get mad. She doesn’t speak, but I know she understands. I tell her I’m sad and show her it hurt. She decks me once again and runs away. I’ll admit it—this is hard and I wonder if it will ever be less chaotic. Am I going to be defeated by this three-foot holy terror?

The doorbell rings; it’s
Kathy Najimy holding a cute stuffed teddy bear. She, Dan, and their sweet pre-teen daughter, Samia, come in, beaming beatitudes of exuberance which illuminate my own mental fatigue. Our daughter shyly peeks around the corner. I see her through their eyes: she is naked except for a diaper, her eyes are curious, and even though she just punched me in the crotch minutes before, she is truly perfect. I can hear Kathy and Dan’s voices are thick throated, but they keep their tone even and just say, “Hi, how are you?”

And my daughter breaks into a stream of gibberish, complete with gestures and arm movements. Using sounds like
ha-ka-bakakakabah
that are not words, she tells them her whole story. It really seems as if she’s saying, “Okay, I lived somewhere else, right? And people took care of me.” Kathy perceptively says, “Uh-huh, and then what happened?,” and this little creature responds with the
ha-ka-bakakakabah
sound, her own language, and it’s got the cadences of, “And then I met these two people, see them, one is a lady and one is a man, that’s them, and now we all live in that room, that room right there! And did you know I have a dog?”

The expression on Kathy’s and Dan’s faces is as if they’re witnessing a miracle. We all take in this charming, brave little creature standing here effervescently telling us her whole life story. This little doll in the diaper is so sublime we all have to blink to be sure she’s not a hologram.

The next day, I tell the social workers everything, not worrying about being judged, and overall how it’s going better. Now they advise we take the next step in letting our daughter know this is permanent. It’s time to name her.

• 11 •

What’s in a Name Anyway?

After a few weeks
, our daughter is simply not as mad at us anymore. She is sleeping better and eating well, making eye contact and smiling more often.

Plus, she is funny. Her response to humorous things is explosively joyous. She turns the handle of that new jack-in-the-box toy and of course the creepy clown pops out at her face. But she thinks it’s hilarious and now gets our visiting adult friends to turn the handle, reveling in their startled expressions.

Sure, she plays typical kid games like peekaboo and hide-and-seek. But she also has a very mischievous side. When Ian is calling Manny to go for a walk, she covers the dog with a blanket and makes a face, pretending she doesn’t know where he is. She likes to hide behind the curtains and pretend to scare me. Her eyes light up when we laugh.

We read her a book called
Good Night, Gorilla
. At the moment the zookeeper’s wife realizes all the animals have escaped from the zoo and are in the bedroom with her, all together, we make an “Ehr?!” sound and do a double take. She knows it’s funny.

One day Ian was walking toward her but tripped over Manny, slip-sliding in his socks across the hardwood floor and finally landing on his thigh with a loud
thunk
. We’ve been married a long time so, yes, I laughed. I was surprised to hear another laugh. The kid. She knew it was funny to see a grown man go down hard, and she really cracked up, rolling backward onto the couch and kicking her feet up.

For my entire marriage, there has never been a cold drink taken from the fridge by Ian or me without it first being put against the back of each other’s neck. If I see Ian looking the other way when I have a cold drink, I have to do it. I can’t help it. His startled reaction to the icy cold on his neck is even better if he’s been sweating.

So today when Ian sees me facing our daughter, my chest puffed up like an old country yenta as she slurps the chicken soup I have lovingly made her from scratch, does he revel in the tender moment of mother and daughter? No way.

Instead, he takes a cold water bottle from the fridge and of course puts it against the back of my neck. And of course I jump. Well, this delights this little girl. De-lights her. She thinks it’s the funniest thing she’s ever seen. So Ian does it again, and she laughs and laughs ’til I have to stomp hard on his foot to signal him to cut it out.

So two minutes later, when I am facing the other way getting her a cracker, she presses her cold milk bottle against my arm. I am not acting. It’s cold. I jump, then turn and see her laugh. She is pretty pleased with herself.

Ian and I look at each other. We saw it that first day and there’s no doubt now. We recognize a kindred spirit—we may have a class clown on our hands.

So we’re all getting used to each other. But we can’t call her “sweetie” forever.

For that reason, as she finishes the soup, I look at Ian . . . now? He nods “do it,” and I oh-so-casually lean into her.

“Evelyn?” I murmur.

Evelyn was my beloved grandmother’s name, and I am trying it out on my daughter to see if it’s a fit. But my daughter doesn’t respond. I try it again.

“Evelyn . . .” Now my daughter sharply looks up at me. With a really dirty look. She does not like this name at all.

Ian tries one. He leans in with a name he likes: “Bella?” She now looks at him and shakes her head no. As in “no way, sucker.”

Even though the social workers and therapist recommend we rename her, we’re not sure we’re doing the right thing. But we’d been informed she’d been right beside a kid with the birth name she’d been given and whenever that name was called, our daughter didn’t look up or respond in any way. She is telling us all this is not her name.

Ian and I have scoured baby name sites. We avoid the obvious our-same-three-letters choice of Ani because it’d be so insipid our friends might club us in the head. We try many names just to see if we can get a feel for what suits her. As I said—this kid is opinionated. She gets what we’re attempting now and really lets us know we are not on the right track with the names we’re trying out.

“Clio?” gets a “don’t even think about it” face.

“Dolores” gets a “get real, weirdos” chin-upturned sniff.

We try “Vera,” “Ava,” “Harlow,” “Eugenia,” “Antonia,” “Arden,” and many other names. And the minute we say each, we realize the name doesn’t fit her. Plus, she doesn’t like any of them. She lets us know with that face.

Then I come across a name in a book that means something in Greek that actually suits her personality. It means “something that is joyous and funny.” Ian and I agree to try it out.

It’s the next day and our daughter is playing in the backyard with my mom. Ian and I lean out the door and I call out the new name: “ . . . Ilaria?”

My daughter looks up and her expression says, “Yeah?”

She is smiling.

Just like how she chose us, she chooses her name.

And Ilaria suits her. She nods her head as if to let us know we did okay this time.

So I say, “Is your name Ilaria?” and she nods again and grins. Immediately, we all start calling her Ilaria and she really likes it. It is a fresh start for her now more than ever. Things begin to change even more around here: Ilaria is now letting me hold her more, and she is even climbing into Ian’s lap as she drinks a bottle.

The fascinating thing about
California law is the state will re-issue Ilaria’s birth certificate with her new name and us as her parents. I see how adoptions were able to be kept a secret. However, based on the advice of Dan on his own adoption at birth, the social workers, and our own common sense, we don’t keep her adoption a secret from her. She’s almost three years old, she will remember things. When the social workers advise me to begin to re-apply for the birth certificate, this should allay my fears that something will go wrong, that she will be taken from us . . . except they inform me I can’t actually complete the process until I have the official “finalization day” certificate of adoption. I don’t know when that final court date will be, but I start to fill out the forms. I take out Ilaria’s birth certificate and see her birth date.

Even though many keep their schedules electronically, I still use a Ye Olde Time day planner because I like to write things down. I’ve used the week-at-a-glance Moleskine brand for years and kept them all as journals. So I dig out my day planner of the year of her birth to see what I was doing when she was born. I look up her birth date . . . dang . . . creepy . . . the evening I’d had the heavy discussion with Kathy Greenwood about whether I had given up on being a mother . . . Ilaria was born later that night. The same night her cousin was born prematurely. And, yes, it was that next day I’d started to believe there was a little girl out there waiting for me. I know, I know . . . cue
Twilight Zone
music.

I put Ilaria’s original birth documents and all the documents that came with her into a manila envelope. We’re going to give everything to our attorney to keep for us so there aren’t any secrets in the house. This way when Ilaria is ready, we’ll open up the entire file and learn about her birth parents together. If Ilaria decides to contact her birth parents, we will completely support it because it will be healthy for her.

As I fill out the application for the new birth certificate, it is surreal to list Ian and myself as her parents. It’s actually happening. I am her mother.

I write the name we’ve chosen: Ilaria, which as I’ve described can be translated to mean something fun and joyous. I now add the second name she also has chosen—Isadora—so she can be named after my ever-supportive mom. My mom’s name, Doreen, is derived from the Greek name Dora, which means God’s gift.

Her name is Ilaria Isadora.

After years of us praying to be parents, this little miracle simply appeared.

Ilaria Isadora translates to: a funny gift from God.