roots | and then there were four

This year, the focus of National Adoption week is siblings – as around half the children waiting for a family are siblings.

I’m not going to tell you that adopting siblings is easier than adopting one, that would be crazy. It isn’t.

When my husband returned to work I was scared. I felt woefully unprepared to cope with two children vying for my attention. I needed eyes in the back of my head, a nose like a sniffer dog, seven pairs of hands and was worn out by it all. My life felt like an exhausting roundabout of nappies, meals, tidying up, refereeing fights, supermarkets, naps, bottles, laundry, nappies, trying to understand their sort-of-words, more tidying, another meal, more nappies, baths, stories, bed and more.

When Bubbles went to pre-school for a few hours, I suddenly experienced how much easier one child would have been. Not just a little bit easier, but soooo much easier. With just Nibbles, there seemed more space, more time to do things, more time to even think, less to do. So I can understand why you might be thinking of adopting one child.

But there are upsides. Things that you can only get if you adopt siblings.

LOVE

They’d only been with us a few weeks and Nibbles was upset. We had no idea why he started crying in the car and nothing we said or did, not even my most soothing rendition of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” was working. Two-year-old Bubbles asked him to “hold my hand.” She stretched out towards him, touching fingers between the car seats in a moment of joyful tenderness I will never forget (captured in the photo above). The impact was immediate. His tears stopped and he smiled.

When everything else was strange, unsettling, weird, when their new home didn’t feel like a home at all, they had each other, they had love and that helped them feel safe. Their love for each other is massive, unbounded, magical. With siblings you get share a love that goes to the moon and back.

HISTORY

Their lives and the people in it have changed so much in the few years since they were born. They’ve experienced trauma and separations. But one person has always been there for them, always been part of their lives. We were somewhat late to the party, but Nibbles and Bubbles have always had each other. Their history started and continues together. And through this history, they’ve learnt that you can trust some people to be there for you through it all.

SUPPORT

“What did he say?” I would ask her, all confused. When Nibbles spouted sentences of jumbled consonants and vowels, when I had tried all the combinations I could think of and was running out of patience, Bubbles would often know exactly what he was trying to say.

She was our go-between and not just for translation. When he was confused and upset in those first wobbly weeks, in a way we could not mend, a big hug from his sister was all that he needed to know that things would be okay.

INDEPENDENCE

Nibbles and Bubbles are inseparable (most of the time). They invent make-believe places and games that take them into the depths of their imagination, with a healthy borrowing from films and things they have read. Together they play, they explore, they invent, they create, they cut and stick. They learn interpersonal skills when they are too noisy or boisterous, don’t play nicely and learn the consequences when they hear the dreaded “I don’t want to play with you.” They learn to compromise (if often a little late).

It feels safer when they are together, because they look out for each other, so I relax and give them leeway, to stay in the park on their own for a while, to grow to their capabilities (rather than being limited by my fears). Sometimes their gang of two isn’t open to me, and yet as much as I pout, they are growing faster together. They need me less and less, because they have each other as a co-adventurer.

GROWTH

With a big sister, Nibbles has run to keep up. Sometimes literally, sometimes with his words, with behaviour, eating, skills and play. He wants to copy her and she loves to help him with his reading, or things he struggles with (it used to be zipping his coat up), getting washed or showing him how to dry up a sharp knife without hurting himself.

After years of waving her off at at the door, he couldn’t wait to start school, to do the things she has done. And one day, as I keep hinting, he will be faster than her.

SPEED

We always wanted a family, Andy and I. Not just a child but a family. And by adopting siblings, we created a ready-made family overnight. It wasn’t easy, but it’s what being a family meant to us. Andy and I were a little family; Nibbles and Bubbles were a little family; and then we became a new family of four.

Within six months, we had got over the early wobbles and were finding our feet. But when they ask you at Matching Panel why you want to adopt siblings, don’t say “because it’s quick”!

CONNECTION

They share their very DNA. They don’t look the same, yet there is something in their make up, a connection beyond skin, beyond looks, beyond shared experiences. They will always have someone to talk to about being adopted (I might want it to be me, and it might not be). Someone who understands what it is like to be them. Nibbles and Bubbles know they belong with each other (and now with us), and they ‘get’ each other in a way that only siblings can.

Being with each other, feels like home.

AND MORE…

The way they play with each other is infectious and before you know it, I am shouting “giddy up” as we canter to school on the back of imaginary unicorns. They might be double trouble, but they’re also double the hugs, double the happy-tears of pride in their achievements, double the joy, double the giggling at jokes too. With a child in each hand, I feel balanced, rooted through their touch to my life at a whole new level. They have multiplied the love and laughter in our home many, many times over.

It wasn’t until I wrote this list, when I sat down and really thought about all the magical and incredible ways that these two lives, these gorgeous people have added to my family that I really understood what it was that we did when we adopted siblings. I wouldn’t change it for anything. They are my family and I am their mummy and I have never been prouder.

Happy tears.

Adopting siblings is the best thing I have ever done. Maybe you could consider it too?

I am imprisoned. Trapped in a tiny triangle of land, no more than a mile on the longest side. The corners are my house, school/ nursery and the supermarket.

My Life Has Shrunk

My days involve walking from home to school/ nursery, and back again. Twice a week, I go beyond that short line with a trip to the supermarket for more cucumber and washing powder, then it’s back to school again. Five days a week, three times a day, I walk along the same route, and it’s a miracle there isn’t a dip in the pavement where I’ve worn it thin.

Whilst the journey rarely varies, every day it’s different, due to the inventive minds of my children. Yesterday we all rode invisible unicorns to school until mine became lame and couldn’t gallop any more (I was too tired to keep up the pace).

I Have Shrunk

But this house-school-supermarket-arrest preys on my mind – I fear I’ll be infected with village mentality, because this patch of land is an island of little significance in the ‘grand scheme of things’ whose centre (in the UK) is the chaotic metropolis of London.

This tract of land is both nothing (a teeny dot on a map) and everything (my entire universe) and my mind struggles with that paradox.

Every so often I strap the kids into the car and make it all the way across town, celebrating that I have escaped the well-worn rut that is my life. Over the invisible fence by – another mile. Woo hoo! I feel like a different woman to the chemical engineer who delivered complex training to big name companies in places like Oslo, Lisbon, Kalamazoo and Dublin.

A New Richness

It’s over a decade since Andy and I moved into this street. Ten years of nodding or saying hello and that was the sum of our acquaintance with the people in this street.

Yet this repetition creates a richness, a new depth to my experience. My neighbourhood has come alive again. I notice the subtle changes from month to month: where the snowdrops grow, the slipperiest corner to avoid if the ground is icy, where the cat with no tail lives and which gates hide barking dogs.

Memories Ingrained in the Pavement

“That’s a fire station” declared Nibbles confidently one morning. As I look to where he’s pointing, I admit that the red double garage looks a bit like a fire station. Now I can’t walk past without smiling at the memory. Over there’s a hole where Nibbles and Bubbles stuffed all the twigs they could find until it was fit to bursting and I had to convince them to find another. Here’s the spot they lay down protesting they couldn’t walk another step.

But it’s more than just familiarity and memories. There are new faces, new names, new connections. Its the people who bring it this triangle to life.

People Make a Neighbourhood

There’s grandma Dee in her downstairs flat. We wave to Dee, and talk to her if the window is open, or mime shivering when the weather is cold. Sometimes we see her at the bus stop on her way to the shops, or sneak a peek at the new wallpaper in her lounge once she has her flat redecorated. Once she invited me in and we talked about our families.

There’s a couple who sit on their front step with steaming cups of tea and cigarettes. One day, when we saw them both on the way to nursery and on the way back, Nibbles stated with wide-eyed astonishment “they’re still there!” I laughed and suggested that they had maybe gone inside in the interim.

Karl tells us about his model airplanes, sharing tales of broken wings or tail pieces and things I know nothing about, with his friendly wagging dog who is stocky and almost never jumps up. When the kids aren’t with me, we talk about his legs and the son he hasn’t heard from in over a decade.

Lydia once shouted at Nibbles for treading on the pebbles on her drive (and I frowned with a harrumph and a ‘what’s her problem?’). But since her initial outburst, she softened. Now she waves, remarks how well behaved the children are, as she tends the flowers in her pots and dusts her china.

New Roots

For years I just lived here. My house is here. That was about it. I introduced myself to my neighbours when I moved in, or they did, then promptly forgot their names.

But the children kept asking “what he called?” about the man next door, until I gave in and asked (on their behalf). He’s Charlie, but the children call him “Mr Charlie” which gives a sense of grandeur and respect I really like. Until they shout and scream “Mr Charlie” incessantly through the window at him as he’s leaving his house, which I like a lot less.

And in peopling the walk, I have found new roots, a new sense of belonging, a new sense of camaraderie with the streets in which I live and walk.

Get To Know Your Neighbours

Try it. Walk to the shop every day to get a paper or a pint of milk, and you’ll discover a whole new world, right on your doorstep. Full of stories, people, smiles, friendships and community. Stop once in a while and say more than just “hello” and you can unearth stories that will stay with you for a lifetime.

I am so glad I have my children, because through them, I have found a new me. A connected me. A me with roots. Something I haven’t felt since I was a child myself, falling into the pond at Mr Moon’s house and playing with the Blocks next door.

In shrinking the fibres of my life in a hot wash, I have found a new warmth, a new hygge that was here all along. A felted mesh of memories, imbued with cosy familiarity, inhabited by people I know. Who knew that shrinking could be so enriching?

and then there were four

tales from the land of adoption

Tag Archives: roots

Two Plus Two Equals More – Adopting Siblings

Shrunk In A Hot Wash