August 25, 2017
As usual, I don’t know where to start. Did I write about graduation? That seems like ages ago already.
Roshan and Isa graduated from William Allen High School in June. It was pretty awesome!
Shortly after that Ghani, Hedayat, Nolan and I headed to Chicago area for the big Umoja soccer tournament. This is an annual soccer tournament that is put on to bring together Shia people from around the US, Canada and Europe. The trip was quite an adventure for all of us.
We stayed about 15 minutes from where Nolan grew up in Elgin and got to see some old family friends. (We had amazing deep dish pizza and Nolan’s oldest childhood friend took 16 of us out for a super fantastic Afghan dinner.)
Our boys had three friends from Michigan join us, and then two more joined us (so yes, seven boys in a hotel room!). they were all so happy to be together and they had a great time playing soccer. Four of the five boys who joined us in IL were new to Nolan and me – and they were just as delightful as the other boys we have met.
Nolan and I took four of the Michigan boys on a sightseeing trip to Chicago. We went to Navy Pier and took a boat tour. One of the boys had never been on a boat, and the others had only been on the very scary boat ride that got them from Malaysia to Indonesia – so this was a really great experience for all of them. We all had so much fun.
It was a fabulous trip, and we were very sad to say goodbye. So it was a very happy surprise when, the morning after we got home, four of the five Michigan boys showed up at our house in PA at 7 AM. They were not quite ready for the visit to be over and had a few days more of vacation time from work, so they came for a visit to PA.
It is funny how when we had two boys, and they asked us to take 2 more, we weren’t sure how we could handle it and now we can have seven or eight, and when we are back down to only four, it feels very quiet and lonely.
The eight boys went to the park and played volleyball and soccer – they had a picnic and wanted to camp out at the mountain – something they did a lot growing up in Afghanistan. They pitched their tent at my parents’ house but eventually decided to sleep at home. And on the last day of their visit, I took the four Michigan boys on a day trip to NYC and we had a super time.
The program works differently in Michigan. These guys all come in and spend a year in a group home and then they either go to a host/foster family or into an apartment. But they don’t have an experience of being part of a family. Their host/foster families go on vacations without them, they don’t plan their vacations around them. The boys are more independent when they get to the foster home, so it is a different and more distant kind of relationship. They don’t have what we have.
So this experience had me feeling a bit like Wendy Darling from Peter Pan – with all the lost boys. And it feels to me like such a gift to be able to play that part, even a little bit, with these amazing boys.
We were still riding the high from that amazing adventure when a weird and troubling thing happened with our neighbors. It is a long and weird story – I will try to make it brief. We were woken at 3:30 in the morning by a police officer who said that our neighbor was outside in the alley screaming for Nolan to come out. So our behind the alley neighbor was ranting and raving accusing our boys of having thrown a dead opossum at his head at around 8 pm, the previous evening (none of our boys was home at that time and none of them had ever even seen this neighbor, nor had they seen a dead opossum). The story just got weirder from there with laser pointers and opossums stuck in blinds and us buying the Hess mansion… The neighbor was obviously having mental health issues and the xenophobia and anti-immigrant – I am not sure what to call it – the ugliness that is passing for politics these days combined with the mental illness led to this bizarre encounter. The police were very nice and were very clear that the neighbor was having mental health issues. The whole thing was bizarre and unsettling and since then we have not seen our neighbors at all but it is sad that we have to be afraid for our boys’ safety from our neighbors.
Right after this, we were off to the beach at Ocean City, MD. This year we went with my mom and the Shackelfords, and the Laudens – so there were the four Lauden children, three of our teens and seven adults. We had a great time and had a really lovely spacious house. The kids and our boys had so much fun together and I got to go jet skiing for the first time. I never thought much about it, but I told the boys we would go, so I went and oh-my-gosh-I-had-so-much-fun! (They are really fast!!!) We played Uno and dominoes and tried to keep the kids from zoning out on their phones. We went mini-golfing and sailing and the boys hung out at the boardwalk and my mom and Margaret went grocery shopping every day. It went too fast.
We had barely unpacked from the beach when Mom and I were off to Dublin, Ohio for the Irish Festival. The weather was great and it was a good show. We came back, exhausted, but with not much time to recover. Things picked up with four gigs in the seven days we have been back and lots of orders to fill and inventory to make.
In the midst of all that it wasn’t too surprising that Nolan and I both forgot our anniversary… thanks to my mom for remembering or we probably wouldn’t have thought of it until next year! So it was our 9th anniversary and anyone who has known me for a long time will know how amazing that is. Next year we are planning a big party to celebrate our 10th anniversary. And no, I don’t really believe it has been that long because I am definitely not that old!
So this email is a bit newsier because I am trying to cover such a long time and so many different things and I apologize for that.