Unraveled

Wasn't sure I wanted to write this post. Wasn't sure I ever wanted to reveal the secret. But here we are.

Ten years ago tomorrow, my adopted son took an unauthorized field trip. My son ran away. Seven months later, my 14-year-old adopted daughter followed suit.

I think almost every nearly-18-year-old yearns for freedom, independence, a place of their own and no parent watching over them like a hawk. I certainly did. I flew the coop at 15 but was returned to sender about three hours later by my dad's best friend. The Chief of Police.

I was upset because my dad didn't want me wearing jeans. (I wore them EVERY day.) I wanted to pick my own clothes! His reply? "Why didn't you just ask?!?" To this day, I'm still attempting to claim the Queen of Denim crown.

My son's desires weren't quite as easy to fulfill. He wanted to return to his roots. He wanted an end to his pain. He wanted answers. Oh, and he wanted to smoke cigarettes without mom getting on his case.

Both of my kids (as well as seven others I fostered who weren't available for adoption) came from difficult backgrounds. Both were adopted at an older age. Both had special needs. Both struggled with memories of their former lives. Both wanted answers I didn't have. Both wanted normalcy. And both wanted the holes in their hearts to go away.

I went into adoption thinking I could heal anything. I thought with enough love, stability and structure, the pain would subside. I thought I could love away the sense of abandonment and betrayal.

Because I had some baggage of my own. The woman who gave birth to me abandoned my family when I was four years old. I didn't understand why she left me. I kept waiting for her to come back. Thirty years later, when I finally met her, I wondered why I wasted so much time wondering. I was blessed to grow up the way I did. My new mom, the one with three kids of her own who married my three-kid dad, is the most awesome mom in the world. To me, she's my mom. She's the one I aspire to be like. She raised a mixed brood not all her own and never made us feel as if we were not hers.

I thought I could do the same. I dreamed of ending the cycle of abuse. I took in what they called "throwaways." The older kids no one wanted. The "unadoptables." I wanted to be like the family in "Who are the DeBolts, and where did they get 19 kids?" I wanted to be a mother, and I couldn't do it the conventional way. So I rescued older special needs children. Or at least, I tried.

I prayed to be entrusted with children who needed to be loved. And that's exactly what I got.

I've learned over the years some pain doesn't go away. Some damage doesn't heal. I've learned some ghosts never stop haunting.

This is a year of anniversaries for me, and I thought the skeletons in the closet were long gone. I'm happy now. Really! I'm married to the most wonderful man on the planet. We have jobs, a home, a garden, bicycles, cameras, a computer, crochet hooks, plenty of yarn and thread and some of the most beautiful mountains, wildflowers and sunrises in the world. What more could we possibly want??? What more could I possibly want?

For my kids to be happy. For the pain to finally go away.

When I first began writing this post, it was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek explanation for unraveling a sweater tomorrow. I thought I could come up with a couple of giggles and breeze through tomorrow the way I've survived the anniversary the last five or six years. Current real-life circumstances, however, prevent laughter. I will not share details. I've always believed my children's challenges are not my dandelion seeds to scatter in the wind.

Unraveling is a healing thing. I know because I've done this before. I had been working on a beautiful snowflake sweater when my brother died. He never saw the sweater. He likely didn't even know I was making it. Because it was the project in my bag when the phone rang, I guess it absorbed the pain I couldn't bear. I couldn't look at the sweater. It hid in a thick bag in a box in a corner, surrounded by other boxes so I never had to look at it.

Until the Winter 2010 Ravelympics. I had struggled with the Winter Olympics every four years because I love the Olympics, and I love winter sports. We had tickets for three events in Salt Lake in 2002. But my brother died. I went to a funeral instead. I wrote an obituary instead. In retrospect, I'm so honored my family chose me to write it. Yet at the time, it seemed to be one of the most painful things I'd ever had to endure. Perhaps, in part, because just three weeks earlier, my son had run away, and I still had no clue where he was, whether he was even alive or if I would ever see him again.

The Ravelympics give knitters and crocheters the opportunity to win electronic medals for competing in events such as Skelegurumi, Mitten Moguls and Sock Hockey for projects started and completed during the Olympics. In theory, you work on projects while you watch athletes triumph. I have no television, so I got a LOT done. I earned 11 medals. Because snowflakes don't take long. Almost like cheating.

It gave me a chance to love the Olympics again. It released the painful memories trapped deep inside for eight years.

My favorite medal, my most meaningful medal, was not a snowflake. For the Aerial Unwind, crafters were to unravel an incomplete project with little chance of ever being finished so the yarn could be crafted into something new. I unraveled the sweater I'd been working on when my brother died, and something about the process brought a part of me I didn't know had died back to life. Creating something new, something cherished, something finished, something enjoyable, from what had once been so painful to look at, was like rebirth for me.

And so now, I am doing it again. The Summer Olympics likely will feature another Aerial Unwind, but this particular project can't wait until summer. It will happen tomorrow night.

I had been knitting a sweater for my son for his 18th birthday. Simple stockinette stitch, nothing complicated, because I was trying to finish it in time for his birthday, just two months away. Wednesday night he came home two hours late. Thursday night he came home about four hours late. Friday night, he never came home.

I've seen him six times since then. He says now he's sorry. He says he wishes he'd made different choices. Now that he's gotten to know his birth family, he says he understands how much I sacrificed. He says he appreciates what I did. What I tried to do.

Yet he's still running.

Neither of us can undo the past. Neither of us can change what has happened.

But I can change this sweater. I can undo this UnFinished Object, this UFO. Tomorrow night, it becomes a great big giant ball of yarn. Thursday, that ball of yarn goes to charity. Within a week or so, that ball of yarn will be something keeping a homeless person warm during Colorado's frigid winter. New life. Rebirth. A hole filled. Hearts soothed.

Thursday is the first day of the rest of my life. I intend to spend it well.

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