Hope and Heartache

All I ever think about are my three awesome children, so I’d like to tell a little about them. First, I’ll tell you about my oldest daughter, who is now 11 years old.

My oldest daughter is just amazing. She has always been extremely intelligent, and she has never ceased to amaze me. When she was two and a half, she was reading well. At three, she learned how to write and do addition and subtraction, then she taught herself cursive writing. She has always been very inquisitive, and she has her own insights and opinions about everything. She thinks outside the box and questions everything. I remember one time when she was three, she came to me and said, “Mama, why do they say that there’s 24 hours in a day?” I rolled my eyes and sarcastically replied, “Uh - because there are!” She got this stunned look on her face and said, “How do they figure that? There’s about 16 hours in a day and 8 hours in a night”. I just looked at her and thought, “Yeah, you’re right. How old are you?!?” She skipped kindergarten and started first grade when she was 4 years old. Even then, she was always at the top of her class. After a couple years at school, she kept complaining that school was too boring and the other kids were so immature. It got to be a problem, since she no longer wanted to go to school, so I went to the school to see if they had some kind of gifted program for her.

The school sent her to Cleveland to get evaluated by a psychologist when she was 7. The psychologist administered 2 IQ tests and an achievement test. They determined that her IQ was 186 and that she was performing at the 7th grade level. So then I asked the school to put her in a gifted program to keep her interested. They told me, “We don’t have a gifted program. We get federal money for learning disabled students, but we don’t have any funding for gifted students”. So then I went to her teachers and asked them to give her some extra, more challenging work. Her math teacher was great. He gave her advanced books and worked with her outside of class. The other teachers weren’t interested. Soon, it got harder and harder to get her to want to go to school, since she was always complaining how bored she was. So that’s when I made the decision to take her out of school and homeschool her. I homeschooled her and her siblings for two years.

Homeschooling was great for the kids and for myself. I have a penchant for science, so we did weekly science experiments. We dissected sheep brains and learned about the nervous system. We swabbed different areas of the house, grew the bacteria in petri dishes, and analyzed the dirtiest areas in the house. We gathered samples of various laundry detergents from our neighbors and tested them in test tubes to see how much organic matter and protein each one broke down (amazingly, the cheap generic brand at Giant Eagle performed the best, with the expensive Tide coming in second!). I spent my nights creating interesting, hands-on activities for them for the next day. I made a big jeopardy board with questions and topics from each grade level, and every Friday, we invited the neighborhood kids over to join in the jeopardy games, giving out prizes from the dollar store for the winners. Learning had become fun for all of them, and they especially looked forward to the Friday jeopardy get-together.

We took field trips, as well. We did an experiment to see how garbage breaks down. We took plastic bags, paper products, and organic matter and placed it in different areas. One batch got buried in the ground. Another got nailed to a tree to hang in the sun. Another sat in a bucket of water. After 2 months, we took all the garbage and analyzed which garbage deteriorated best, which didn’t, and whether the buried, soaked or sunny garbage did best. After that, I took the kids to tour a landfill, and the worker showed the kids exactly what happens to the garbage that we throw away and how a landfill is set up. It was funny, because the guy told me, “I’ve worked here for 18 years, and I’ve never had anyone come to take a tour and see what we do here!”. My oldest daughter, especially, soaked up information like a sponge.

My oldest daughter has a photographic memory. She can hear or see something one time, and she never forgets it. Never. I learned about her amazing talent at an early age. She was two years old, and we were at the store. She wanted a specific toy, but I didn’t have the money to get it for her. So I told her, “I can’t today, but I’ll get it for you later”. She didn’t say anything more, and we left the store. I quickly forgot about it.

Seven months later, we were back in the store, and she went to the exact same toy she had asked for. She said to me, “Can we get it now?” I said, “Well, sweetheart, I don’t have the money to buy that for you now”. She said, “But you promised!” I said, “I didn’t promise! What are you talking about?” She said, “Don’t you remember? It was June 23 in the afternoon. It was sunny outside. We came here and bought toilet paper and computer paper, and I asked for this and you told me you’d get it later. Well, now it’s later. Will you get it for me?” I couldn’t even respond. I just stared at her, thinking, “Wow. Are you an alien? How do you do that?” I bought her the toy. And never again did I ever use the excuse, “Oh - we’ll get it later”.

I speak Japanese, and I often spoke various Japanese phrases to them. The middle daughter wanted to learn Spanish, but my oldest was interested in Japanese. So I got index cards and labeled every object in the house in English (for the youngest boy), in Spanish, (for my middle girl), and in Japanese (for the oldest). And then we;d practice speaking and asking questions in those languages. One day, I took a nap upstairs and when I woke up, I came down to make supper. When I came down the stairs, I saw my oldest daughter sitting on the couch. She was reading a book, and she looked up at me and said, “Konnichiwa, haha. Genki desuka? Anata ga nemui desuka? (Japanese for, ‘Hi mom. How are you? Are you tired?”). I hadn’t taught her those words, so I just gaped at her, then I realized that the book she was reading was one of my Japanese conversation books. She read it, memorized it immediately, and spoke it with the correct accent and everything. She has always amazed me.

One of the other things that astound me about her is her uncanny ability with people and life-smarts. People are smart in many ways. I am head-smart and book smart, but when it comes to common sense and people-smarts, I totally suck. If someone smiles at me and tells me something, I automatically believe them. I think everyone is a great person. She, however, sees right through people’s facades and can read who they really are and what their motivations are. It’s a talent I seriously envy. I lived in an apartment complex at the time, and all of my neighbors were single mothers, most of whom lived off of government assistance or child-support checks. Several of them were thieves. People would come to my apartment, smile and visit. I’d go to the bathroom or go to the kitchen to make them something to eat or drink, only to find out after they’d gone that some of my belongings had been stolen. I couldn’t believe that people would steal, first of all, let alone lie to my face while standing there smiling. When people approach my daughter, she has this innate instinct that tells her if people are kind and friendly or if they’re up to no good. There are people she trusts immediately, and people she doesn’t like immediately. Through the years, I’ve learned that she’s an excellent judge of character, and I trust her way more than I trust myself. She’s always warning me. “Mom, don’t give them any money. She’s lying, and she’s not going to use it for food, and she’’s not going to pay you back”. At other times, she’ll tell me, “She hasn’t said anything, but something’s wrong with her. Find out what it is.” She has this people radar that has always proved to be dead-on exact. She is so much better than I am.

Another wonderful trait she possesses is her courage and her obstinance. She is definitely the most difficult child to raise because of her strong will, but I admire her immensely for it. She has her own well-thought-out opinions on everything, and she will stand and defend them and cower to no one. She doesn’t care about the consequences - she never backs down. One of the saddest examples of this was when her father and I were living together. She was 6 when he left, but before that, she watched as he lashed out and yelled and hit me constantly. She wouldn’t stand for it. As soon as he’d start to get angry, she’d stand and get in front of me, trying to stop him from getting to me. But when he’s angry, which is pretty much all the time, nothing stops him, and he lashes out at whatever and whoever is within range. Time and time again, she would stand there and scream at him, “DO NOT HIT MY MOTHER!”, and she’d position herself directly between me and him. He would scream at her to get out of the way, that it wasn’t any of her business. I pleaded with her to get out of the way, because I didn’t want her to get hurt, but she was determined and adamant, and she wouldn’t move. And everytime, he’d grab her and throw her out of the way or hit her to get her out of the way, but it didn’t matter. She’d get up and come right back, yelling at him and positioning herself between him and I time and time again. Those memories haunt me like you wouldn’t believe, and I hate to admit that it even happened. But it did. She has always stood up for what she believes in, even if it means getting hit and yelled at over and over again. She continues to do this to this day. In his country, she will still scream at him, telling him, “I hate you and I wsh you’d die”, knowing full well that those words automatically bring the fists and the punches and the blood, but she doesn’t care. She will scream it over and over at the top of her lungs directly in his face while he pummels her and tries to get her to shut up. Eventually, he wins, because he’s 175 pounds and has huge muscles, and she’s maybe 70 pounds and less than half his size. She doesn’t care. She states what she thinks, and no one has ever been able to change her opinions on anything. Not just in those situations, either. She is very opinionated about everything, and she will defend her opinions to anyone without backing down. I admire her spunk and her courage, even though she and I have had lots of arguments because of it. She’s my hero, though, and I strive to be more like her.

She is compassionate, as well. Not so much with her siblings, though. She thinks they’re an “annoyance”. But she cares about the plight of people in this world. When she was still attending public school, I had this movie series going. I didn’t want my kids to grow up watching TV and thinking those sports stars or strung-out celebrities were heroes, so every week, I made them watch a video of people they should look up to. We watched movies about the life of Ghandi, Stephen Biko, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela, etc. We also watched movies about various situations in the world, like “Beyond Rangoon” that detailed the harsh life in Burma, etc. Once, we watched an Iraqi movie called, “Children of Heaven” where these two children had to share a pair of shoes to be able to go to school. On her own accord, my daughter decided to ask her teachers at school if she could put donation boxes at school and collect old shoes to send to children in Iraq. They agreed, and she collected quite a few pairs.

After that, she started a Kids Care Club. Every two weeks, she had a bunch of friends come to our house where they learned about a certain groups of people in need. They did fundraisers and collected money to help them. One time, they read about young mothers in Cameroon who had nothing to use to take care of their babies. So she raised some money, then we went to the dollar store and got a bunch of plastic boxes and filled them with items like toothpaste, bandages, baby lotion, etc. Then she sent them to Cameroon. Her goal was to start a humanitarian campaign for young girls in Yemen. She asked her father to help her find a school or some rural girls that she could start a project to help. He refused to help her, and eventually, she gave up on that idea.

Another great part of my daughter is her ingenuity and creativity. She wants to invent things, and she has lots of invention ideas. When she lived with me, I’d get her the pieces and parts she needed, and she could build whatever she wanted. We’d go to Goodwill and get old items, then take them apart and see how they were made and what made them work. She misses that now. When I get to talk to her on the phone, she tells me her latest invention idea and tells me to “write it down” so that when she gets back to America, she can work on it. Her father won’t let her build anything. It’s hard enough trying to get him to give them some pencils and some paper. He complains that “paper’s too expensive” and “all you do is waste it”.

I’ll list some of her ideas here, but they’re her ideas, and when she gets home, she’s going to turn them into reality:

• Genetically-engineered grass that never grows more than 3 inches tall, so you never have to mow it.
• An electronic ear piece with a computer chip and software program in it that will automatically translate whatever language someone is speaking to you in into English.
• Well, actually, I don’t want to give away her ideas. They are hers, and I want her to have them and develop them when she gets home. But she has quite a list!

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here. I just want her to know how special she is and how awesome and wonderful and talented she is. I want her to know deep down that she is unique and that she has so much to offer this world. My biggest fear is that he will get to her and convince her that she’s dirty and “not good enough”, which is what he does on a daily basis. If there was one wish I could have, other than bringing them home, it would be that her God-given spark stays alive - and grows - instead of being extinguished and hidden forever by the outside forces in her life. I love you more than words can say, Babydoll…..