Notre Rose Céleste (Second in a series)

It was a very rainy evening when we made the trip to the adoption agency in Allentown where Rosey’s birth mom would present her beautiful infant to us.  Rosalina, Rosey’s mom , was a courageous and selfless sixteen year old who knew how difficult it would be to care for her newborn daughter in light of all the medical  issues the baby was facing.  Rosalina was alone , and as she introduced us to Rosey, I sensed in her a profound sadness, a grief for the loss of a child she had helped to create, grief that most likely  would find an eternal place in the heart of this young mother. (When we arrived home and changed Rosey’s diaper for the first time, we discovered a note in her sleeper.  The note, written by Rosalina, said,”I love you. Mommy.”) We could not have our joy without her sorrow. This is this because that is that. It is with deep humility and gratitude that we received Rosey into our family.

Rosey was off to a fast start; In her first week with us, Rose took a trip to the Philadelphia Zoo, went shopping at the Springfield Mall, and then met and was held by the Phillie Phanatic at a “fun day'” at  Fair Acres nursing facility in Delaware County. It was life in the fast lane and she didn’t even have a driver’s license. It was “baby’s day out” everyday.

We would soon discover that our sweet little rose from heaven was not without a few thorns. That first week, after her whirlwind days, she slept like a baby each night. Then the party was over.  During the nights that followed, Rosey cried like a baby, drank like a very thirsty baby, and was awake all night, just like a newborn baby.   Dexter and I were sleep-deprived . We took turns tending to Rosey in the night.   At times, she was inconsolable. We took her for long  midnight drives or literally walked the dark streets with her. What we thought was an insatiable appetite was actually an insatiable thirst.  It would take until July 25th to ascertain that something  was awry with the little rose.  Blood tests revealed  high sodium levels caused by a medical condition called diabetes insipidus. This was just one effect of many related to her underlying condition, Septo Optic Dysplasia. The diabetes insipidus was also the cause of the unquenchable thirst. The pediatrician called and strongly urged us to get Rosey to the emergency room as soon as possible.  We took her to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and so began a two week hospitalization.  She was poked and prodded, scanned inside and out, right side up and upside down. She was stuck for blood draws every fifteen minutes.  After all that, we learned that our little Rose would most likely never see, never walk, suffer seizures, and basically be a hot little mess, a little baby “freak” who would fit right in at “Freak Haven”.  There’s no contracts with God. We were given the blessing of this heavenly flower. She was a miracle to us, but one whose prognosis was becoming more grim as the days went by.

From day one, we believed Rosey came to us by way of the intercession of Saint Therese of Lisieux aka “The Little Flower”.  So, we placed an image of Therese in Rosey’s hospital bed and commended her to the saint’s  guardianship. In time we learned something that was indiscernable to all the medical scans and testings. Rosey turned out to have angel wings. She continually reminds us that “all the way to heaven is heaven”.

Notre Rose Céleste (First in a series)

Adoption policies have standard criteria regarding the age of parents who wish to adopt infants. For someone who is over the age of forty-five, it is almost impossible to adopt a baby . At age sixty, you’d have a better chance of winning the power ball and being struck by lightening twice. Unless, of course, it is a one-legged baby with half a brain. Then a parent of any age can buy one get one free. The adoptive parent themselves don’t even have to have legs or brains. Why wouldn’t the most challenging children be offered to the elderly?  Fortunately, this policy worked in our favor when we sought to adopt an infant in our golden years. Each of us even had a full set of legs and at least a brain between the two of us.

It was Thursday, May 21 2009.  We received the call about a baby girl not yet born. The tests in utero showed that she lacked a corpus callosum and most likely had a club foot. Club foot we understood but corpus callosum? It sounds like a botanical name for a Gerbera Daisy. What we googled wasn’t very pretty and the kids that lacked corpus callosums were funny-looking little things. We really didn’t care.  We knew love would conquer all and this little baby to be would be the cutest ever!!  I am pretty sure a mother hippopotamus has the same thought as she waits for her baby hippopotamus to be born. And so we agreed to take the baby, missing parts and all.  We were excited and spent the next few days eagerly awaiting the call that the little one had been born.  Her name would be Therese in honor of St. Therese of Lisieux aka The Little Flower, to whom we are fondly devoted.

It was Sunday night, May 24th.  Dexter browsed emails while I cooked dinner. One of the emails, a forward from our daughter, Suky, displayed a shower of roses and an inspirational text. It had been sent a few days  before but Dexter only now had the occasion to read it. At that very moment, the call came.  She had just been born.  Were the roses in the email a sign from Therese?  Traditionally, roses are associated with favors granted through the intercession of Therese.  We needed no convincing. This was notre rose celeste (our rose from heaven). Soon we learned that her birth mother’s name was Rosalina. And so the baby would be called Rosalina Therese, our little Rosey.

As it turned out, Rosey did not have a club foot.  She did have a corpus callosum, a thin one, but alas, no septum pellucidum. When its all put together, a corpus callosum (CC) minus a club foot(-CF) minus a septum pellucidum(-SP) plus one half a pituitary(+.5 P) equals Septo Optic Dysplasia(=SOD). To us, it sounded like Rosey should be a veritable Baby Einstein. According to the docs, it was more like she would be a another Helen Keller. Either way, no matter how you figure it, it’s all relative anyway, Rosey is our little miracle.

Deliverance

Diarrhea and therapists…and the connection is?  Unless one aspires to a Zen world view, there probably is no connection. In our house, the two have been known to arrive on the same day, and we pray to be delivered from both. Here’s the thing about therapists. They’re not bad people and either are bill collectors, IRS agents, dentists, lawyers and proctologists.  Therapists come into our home to fix our broken kids who apparently can’t do anything right.  They can’t walk right, they can’ t see right, they can’t talk right, they can’t hold the crayon right, they can’t eat right and don’t even try to get them to use a pair of scissors right.  The only thing they can do right is have diarrhea.  They can do that perfectly.  The therapists don’t need to fix the diarrhea.  There isn’t anything wrong with it .

There are all kinds of therapists.  There are physical therapists , occupational therapists, vision therapists, therapists for special instruction, and my favorite, orientation mobility therapists. In our case,  a disorientation mobility therapist might be more appropriate. Therapists are well schooled. They study and become skilled in their profession, hoping to one day be of service to others. It all looks good on paper. They come into our home and after a thorough assessment, inform us that we need to make sure Rosey walks up the stairs alternating feet as she climbs up without holding onto the railing.  We need to accentuate and exaggerate the final letter sounds of words so that Alex can begin to say the whole word not just part of it.  For example, we need to say the word “cat” as “caT” with the emphasis on the final t. So basically, we need to yell the ending of all the words we say to him.  Also, we need to create a traffic light out of paper and when we are getting ready to go somewhere but aren’t quite ready yet, we tell Alex we are at the yellow light and almost to the green light. Really??  This is in a house where often, the first goal is to make sure that everyone not only has a shirt to wear but pants too. Or where cousin Megan’s visiting Rastafarian friend, shows up, dreadlocks to his knees, at our bathroom door searching for his missing ferret.

Therapists come to provide help and for this we are most grateful. There is a trade off, however. There is a loss of privacy and it is difficult to be at home in one’s own home.  On the plus side, Dexter and I have the perfect marriage. With so many outsiders so often in the house we couldn’t have an argument even if we wanted to have one. There is no chance of spending the day on the couch in pajamas, watching soap operas and eating bonbons. (Actually , I am not even sure what a bonbon is.)

We prayed for deliverance but we would be better off seeking the grace to be steadfast at the helm; to carry out each day’s ordinary and mundane responsibilities, faithfully and with love. And even when we don’t feel like it,  putting up with people like therapists who, by the way, are people carrying out their ordinary mundane responsibilities, even when they may not feel like it. No easy life for them when the kid they are trying to work with barely makes an inch of progress, if any at all; when there are more steps back than forward. After all, therapists have their own families, stress and worries and probably are often not comfortable being in other peoples’ homes. They are sacrificing everyday for the good of others and doing it with pleasant demeanor and a smile, whether they feel like it or not.

All this is a reminder of St. Therese of Lisieux, in her practice of the “little way”. St. Therese speaks of doing not extraordinary things but ordinary things with great love.  Perhaps the trick is not deliverance but to put up with each other and all the “do do” in our lives with love.

Doug Unplugged

It was September 3, 1997, the first day of school.  I arose at daybreak, wanting to be sure to have sufficient time to make special lunches, tailored to the likes of each child, lunches packed with the care and love only a mother could provide.  I would miss the kids for a second or two as they headed off to begin a new year in school.  As I labeled each bag and lined them up along the kitchen counter, I heard the back door open.  What to my wondering eyes should appear but a man, a naked man, carrying only a towel, a small towel, but one large enough to quickly cover things that were not meant for my innocent eyes.  Doug, our tree house dweller, apparently had made his way across the backyard, in his birthday suit. Why would it matter that it was his un-birthday?  He was headed upstairs for his morning shower. I am guessing he didn’t think anyone else in the house would be up that early.  Or, knowing Doug, it didn’t really matter to him if anyone else was up.  You see, Doug was sort of a naturalist, a tree hugger who snacked on seaweed , drove a Subaru Justy filled with rotting fruit, and had a special fondness for the moistness of the morning dew.

Doug entered our life through a “Wrinkle in House Church”. House Church was a fifth dimension of people  who gathered weekly in one another’s homes for prayer and scripture reflection.  Their thoughts could have been the substance for SNL’s Jack Handy. They took scripture reflections to new depths.  All I could think about during these times was “Jesus loves me this I know because the Bible tells me so”. Our Havertown neighbors surmised we’d become entangled with a cult. In retrospect, who could blame them?  House Church in Havertown is comparable to Modern Family meets the Cleavers.

One warm summer evening, as House Church gathered on our deck, Doug  expressed his desire for a back-to-nature lifestyle. My husband kiddingly offered our tree house to Doug. The rest was history. Unbeknownst to us, within days, he took up residence there. When you are getting six kids ready for school, who has time to notice who is living with the squirrels in your backyard? Little did I know, the naked guy slipping through our kitchen that September morning would be living with us for the next two years.

An Introduction: Not the Duggars.

Kathleen Lanctot

Napkin Notes and Coffee Thoughts is based on the thousands of notes my husband and I have exchanged on nearly a daily basis throughout nineteen years of our arranged marriage. Each day I send him off to his job with a napkin note lovingly tucked into his lunch bag. He reciprocates with a “coffee thought” affectionately written in a notebook and placed next to Mr. Coffee. This little ritual is one of many threads that binds our hearts.

Throughout our marriage, napkin notes and coffee thoughts have yielded a journalesque narrative depicting the life of our blended family. We have thirteen kids ages four through thirty eight (see epiphany-house.org); eight grandchildren (two still in wombs) and a veritable petting zoo. But, the notion of family, for us, is larger than our children and grandchildren and pets. Our family also includes an array of offbeat individuals who, at one time or another, have made a home with us.They resemble the diversity of passengers on a Philadelphia Market Line train car.  We are NOT the Duggars.

One of our sons once described our home as “Freak Haven”. I think he was reading Flannery O’Connor at the time. We took it as a compliment. Foundational to our life values is the uniqueness and dignity of every human. It is utterly important to us that our family be comprised of the kind of people worldly standards frequently exclude.

We see Napkin Notes and Coffee Thoughts as a vehicle for telling our family story. We have decided to tell it because it’s a love story that numerous extended family, friends, acquaintances and co-workers have urged us to tell. We are kicking it off today because this is the Catholic Solemnity of the Sacred Heart and it is the Sacred Heart of Christ who arranged our marriage. It is literally a marriage “made in heaven”. For this reason we dedicate the Napkin Notes and Coffee Thoughts blog to the Greater Glory of God. In Jesuit speak AMDG (Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam). So, for all who become readers, welcome to Freak Haven.