Our Halloween Visit

The visit this Halloween went well.  Sunny and I flew in on Saturday, and flew out Sunday night.  I scoured the web for coupons and specials and got very good deals on the hotel and rental car.

It's enjoyable spending time with Sunny's foster family. They're incredibly nice people and their family is large, boisterous but harmonious.

It's just that their environment really gets me down.  They live in a solidly middle-class, very white suburb.  It's a great place to be a little kid. Neighbors know each other. It's safe to play in the streets. But when you get to be a teenager, especially someone like me, it can turn into hell on earth. From the age of about 8 to 15 I lived in a similar environment.  Towards the end I simply refused to leave my mother's house at all.

It's in a different region, but it inspires the same familiar feeling of dread.

Plus, the food is awful. The regional food is practically inedible. I'm not going to sing the praises of Southern food -- it's mostly overcooked, oversalted and overgreasy -- but at least it has some taste.  If I can have a pork chop with some collard greens and fried okra I won't complain.  Even a barbecue sandwich is acceptable. When I visit Sunny's family I have to carefully plan out my meals. My only real options are chains: Cracker Barrel, Chipotle and Subway.  I don't know what I'd do without Cracker Barrel. Sunny's family mainly eats massive amounts of pizza, pasta and mashed potatoes. I would never refuse food in a formal dinner setting, but it's often a "make yourself a plate" situation there, so I'm usually able to duck out politely.

Being a food-snob burb-trauma victim makes the visits increasingly rougher. Once a year is more my speed.  Sunny's foster mother and I also discussed sending Sunny up there for a week visit as an unaccompanied minor. I think that's what we'll definitely do in the future, but I'm not sure if he'll be ready yet next year.

The family really goes all out for Halloween.  They had a corpse on the roof, and a collection of animatronic witches and bats on the porch.  I told their oldest son about how nobody trick-or-treated in my neighborhood, mainly because there are a lot of Baptists and others who think Halloween is anti-Jesus. He told me that the one time he was in Georgia he hung out with some "country boys" and was pretty amazed at how they would hellraise all week and then go to church on Sunday.

Their neighborhood was full of trick-or-treating kids and everyone had an incredible time. Sunny was Darth Vader. Toward the end of the night, he had to use his lightsaber to fight off a whole squad of Imperial Stormtroopers.

My other problem was that we had a fire drill in my office the Friday before Halloween.  I walked down an ungodly number of steps. That day, I was fine.  On Saturday, I woke up with agonizing pain in my calves. I could sit, I could stand, but anything in between and it felt like someone was stabbing me in the calves with a fiery poker. I could barely bend my legs.  I started walking like an arthritic penguin.  On Sunday, my back pain came back in full force, because I hadn't been maintaining proper posture. I could barely move. I was trying to spend a lot of time bonding with BB but I couldn't even pick him up.  It was so frustrating.  In order to fly back to Atlanta carrying our luggage -- luggage that included many pounds of Halloween candy -- I bought some compression bandages and wrapped my calves really tightly, and even then, it was tough.  My back pain finally went away on Monday and my leg pain went away a few days later.

I didn't want to show Sunny exactly how badly I was hurting. Little kids like it when their parents are a little bit off their game, because then they can show off being useful and helping out.  But they can get panicky if they think their parents are really not doing well; it's upsetting to their worldview.

BB looks great. He eats and drinks constantly, and is very active.  Some of his favorites activities: pushing his toy truck around the house, spinning things around, tipping over the trash can, dancing up and down, throwing himself down on a blanket, getting tossed up and down.  He's still not saying any words yet (he's 16 months old) but he does make happy sounds and frustrated sounds and excited sounds.  He plays nicely alongside other children.  In contrast, Sunny's foster mom's grandson, who is a few months older, is much more advanced developmentally but also likes to run up to people and hit them and throw things at their faces!  It's still kind of cute now, but hopefully he'll grow out of it soon.

Sunny and BB got to do some bonding, which was very sweet.  Sunny didn't have the patience to play with him, but he would stop and kiss BB on top of the head whenever he ran by.

On Sunday, Sunny went out with NN to a local playground.  They also hung out with his uncle, the one that Sunny used to think was his father. NN told me that her ex-husband, the disagreeable grandfather, even showed up, although he didn't interact with Sunny that much (this was the grandfather that threatened to disown his son, Sunny's uncle, if he adopted Sunny).

After we got back, Sunny was on pretty good behavior.  Then it fell apart on Wednesday.  He had a very long fit that night, although there was really more crying than hitting involved. He had a crying fit in class so that he had to be taken out of the classroom temporarily on Thursday.  He had another two fits on Sunday.  There's definitely some fallout from the visit.

We have an intake appointment at a promising new therapist office next week.  We're not looking into the ABC of Atlanta right now because we're really looking for play therapy, not attachment therapy, but thanks to anyone who left suggestions anyway.  This week is shaping up to be tough because Guy is going out of town for the rest of the week.  Sunny is NOT going to handle that well, no matter what we do and how we prepare.

When I walked into our office tower the Monday after the trip, it gave me a sense of shameful joy to notice that a quite a few other people were still walking like penguins.