Soon, Grasshopper!

Court in two days!

Mena’s birthday tomorrow!

It just occurred to me this morning that for the rest of our lives, Mena’s birthday will sort of be a 2-day affair: we’ll always be celebrating our family’s “Gotcha Day!” on the 27th and her birthday on the 26th. That’s kind of neat. Double celebrations are sort of par for the course in our family- my own birthday and my Dad’s are two days in a row, and Father’s Day and my sister’s birthday have always been clumped together too. Why stop now!

The only thing I am kind of bummed about is that I won’t be able to ask Mena what kind of cake she wants this year, so I can bake it. My Mom always did this for our birthdays, and truth be told, even as a little kid, this choice was even more exciting than the presents- imagine! Somebody is asking you what *you* want like a grown up, and poof! It appears exactly how you wanted it! I don’t mean just cake flavours either, it was an entirely decorated edible universe. I remember the “baby cake” best- it was a year when a particular little collection of plastic funny baby figurines was so popular at school; the name of the toy escapes me now, but they smelled softly of baby powder and they were all doing funny things like sucking on a big toe, doing a handstand, lying down with a cute little bum up in the air. My Mom made an entire cake that had a bunch of the babies all doing funny things all over it, and she went to either a toy store or a cake decorating supply shop and got little baby shower accessories like miniature bottles the size of a fingernail and teeny plastic teddy bears and used them also on the cake to round out the tableaux. It was such a hit, all my friends were so excited to have a piece and it was agreed that I had the Coolest Mom Ever. LOL! I knew this would be a tradition I would repeat with my own kids, so having to go to a bakery to buy a store-bought cake is a bit of a let down. I was thinking I could try to find some little plastic “konig” (horse) toys to stick into the icing, but I haven’t seen any the right size here, and it’s almost impossible to shop for anything anyways, with the jumble sale effect in shops as previously mentioned. Mena seems to have that ingrained thing about ponies where she wants to brush their hair, and she finds them fascinating. Again like with the lipstick, I don’t know where this comes from- it’s not like they have lots of little pony dolls at the orphanage, and ditto for beauty routines that could be spied on with the adult ladies. And no TV commercials or cereal boxes for outside influences either. It’s weird. But cute. Ha, the other thing is I think I’m already turning into Geek Mom in like, the record-breaking span of less than 2 weeks- she’s already getting sick of me blabbing on about konigs and it looks like “I’ve been told”. Once we glommed on to this identifiable word, we point them out all excited whenever we see them; if there is a picture of a princess and a konig in her colouring book, then Mom’s Excited Voice comes out and, “We should colour the picture! Oooooh Mena, should we colour this one? Hey? Should we colour the pretty konig? Mena? Yes? Yipppppeeee for the pretty konig! Lookie-look-look!” Etc.

The last time we visited, I was about to reach for the tiny konig on the shelf like I always do with Excited Voice, and glancing at me with both a sense of pity and slight disdain like I was a simpleton she had the misfortune in being shackled to for the endless responsibility to entertain- she wordlessly waved her hand at it in disgust, (like a miniature John Cleeves a la Basil Fawlty no less!) as if she just couldn’t take any more of my village-idiot blathering on about a stupid plastic horse. Ouch.

Yesterday Ois was feeling like crap so he stayed back while I went to visit Mena on my own. Neither of us can seem to shake this cold we’ve caught. It seems like just when the sinuses are finally empty, we catch some new mutant variant of it again and almost instantly, we’re back coughing again and full of snot. I think it’s the orphanage kids who are doing it to us. Somebody always seems to have a sniffly nose in there and with all the hugging we’re doing and what-not, it’s no wonder we can’t get rid of it. So I did the usual routine: collect Mena from her playgroup, go upstairs to the big blue toy room, sit down on the couch and take off my jacket as she does her excited little dance around my purse on the floor because she knows I have goodies inside, then I scoop her up onto my lap like a baby for the feeding of treats which is what all the attachment books say to do. Treats involving anything to do with sucking are best, FYI, because the primitive brain makes the immediate connective link with eating/sucking with the comfort of a parent. So juice boxes are good, sucking lollipops, anything like that. We’ve been doing those tiny kid-type yogurt drinks followed by a cookie. Then when the snack is done, it’s Mena-directed playtime: whatever she wants to play with from the shelves we do. Usually it’s drawing pictures or a page in a colouring book, followed by the game Ois invented of “hide-the-pachenka” (cookie) where she plops down a bunch of tiny, plastic doll furniture and he shoves bits of cookie in any of the parts that open like the little drawers or in the tiny fridge, or the baby bed, and then Mena finds them and eats them. Then we might play with the lipstick and mirror and all of that- until she says she’d like to play outside if her other little friends are out there. So this is what we did yesterday.

I had brought my iPhone as usual, and because Mena loves to dance, I put it on and we danced a bit to Amy Winehouse. Any mistake I may have made with the konig was forgiven by the addition of having the magic powers of making music play out of nowhere (or my pocket) and my Mom Coolness was restored, thank G-d. So we went outside and I was like fresh blood in the water to a bunch of orphanage sharks who all encircled me within 15 seconds wanting to know where the music was coming from. The other caretaker ladies were laughing at this helpless spectacle in front of them- kids stuck to my various limbs like Ukrainian velcro. Then I got the idea of making everyone hold hands in a circle with me, and we all swayed and danced on the sidewalk declaring defiantly that they tried to make us go to rehab but we said no, no, no! More kids came to see what was going on and I added their little hands and our circle got bigger and bigger, then I showed them how to twist low to the ground, then come back up again while the ladies shouted “Americano dancing!” and the kids copied me in peals of laughter. It was the most fun so far I’ve had at the orphanage, and I wish I could have videotaped it- all the little smiling faces and shining eyes and pink cheeks out in the chilly October afternoon with the almost neon yellow leaves from the chestnut trees crunching under our feet as we all danced. Another memory forever.

Here are some of my buddies:

I don’t want to give out any identifying information on the kids, so no names. The one thing they all have in common though is that no matter how deeply sad some of them are in their eyes, (especially Miss Leopard Hat, who is smiling here for the first nanosecond in the weeks we’ve seen her) the moment they know somebody is going to take their picture it’s like an exciting permanent record in time for proof that they are here, they exist, and they matter.

It’s really not just a photograph of something going on that they want to carelessly record for the fun of clowning around with friends and being a little star in the spotlight for a few brief seconds. It’s not a birthday party, or goofing around in the yard, or opening a pile of presents that will be looked back upon years later in a photo album when childhood is long gone. They know they’ll never see these pictures again, much less printed out to be looked at over and over. Maybe that makes it more of a kick in the stomach that you can clearly see that there’s something much more serious going on in their minds and it visibly transforms their faces as they come into focus through the viewfinder: “I am here. I am really here. You can see me. Nobody can forget.”

So I stand behind the camera with my throat buzzing like it’s full of bees and I’m grateful that nobody can see my quickly blurring single eye and I hold my breath and I have faith… and then I just press “click”.