Monday, March 19, 2012

Integration

It was Saturday evening. Clementine was 2 days old. Sam and Pete were playing with Thomas trains on the floor of the play room while Elise rested on the couch and I sat next to her in our orange rocker from Ikea. Clementine was sleeping in the bouncy chair in the kitchen.

Sam bounced up and declared that he was going to draw a picture of our family on the chalkboard. He drew the four of us when I asked, “Where’s Clementine?”

Visibly stumped, almost as if he knew he’d erred, he replied, “I only drew the family in this room.” Nice save. He repeated himself, as if to reassure us that he hadn’t forgotten her, then drew a tiny stick resembling a clothespin that was supposed to be Clementine.


We never thought it would be easy for either of them, Sam or Pete. With so much new and so much changing, it is more important than ever that their worlds do not change. It doesn’t help that Sam got sick a day after she was born, and what was going to be already challenging became truly Herculean, but what we want to happen instantaneously, integrating five individuals into a seamless whole, will take time. As I reminded Elise, Sam doesn’t remember a time when there was no Pete, and neither Pete nor Sam will remember a time when there was no Clementine.

On the way home today from the med unit, all three of our brood lined up in the back seat of the Subaru in their respective car seats like sardines, Sam cooed softly to Clementine from his perch on the hump. It was her first time in a car seat and she was clearly not enjoying the novelty
of the experience. We stopped at Oba on the way home so Elise could buy some fresh fruit and vegetables. Shortly after the engine came to a stop, Clementine started crying. Sam tried consoling her, just as we had coached him to do. I turned on the radio. Neither worked, but I told Sam that was okay. He tried and sometimes babies just cry and there isn’t anything we can do about it.

He seemed to understand. It wasn’t so long ago that he was a
baby himself, you know.

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