Moderate Damage

As I write, Ruby, our beloved 2006 Toyota Camry is being given the once (maybe twice) over by our trusty mechanic. There’s nothing wrong with her, per se, but like every other important addition to our family, Ruby has a troubling backstory.

It all started the other day when I noticed a very slight and brief shudder in the front end at a stoplight. Because I suffer from acute buyer’s remorse, I notice minutiae like this for at least a couple of months – until, that is, I sully the car with errant scraps of paper, muffin crumbs, or spilled coffee. And then I just roll with it. But for now, I’m hyper-aware and vigilant. So, the shudder was noted and filed away in the “things to fret about” file in my brain. And then I noticed that the driver’s side door has a little catch to it when I open it…more than the other doors (and you know I checked them all). And there’s a little bit of what looks like white paint along the edges of both front fenders – hardly noticeable to the unworried eye, but glaring now. I said to Nancy: “I’m pretty sure Ruby was in an accident at some point,” in the hopes that saying it would make it not be so (as if I could fool the fates so easily). So, I did what I should have done before buying the car: I ponied up the $24.95 for CARFAX and checked the vehicle history on-line. Sure enough: on February 11, 2007, Ruby was involved in a front end collision in Warren County, Ohio, resulting in “moderate” damage. And so it has come to pass that I am now on an obsessive quest to find out everything I can about what happened. I have the accident report number, but calls to the Warren County Sheriff’s office and the Ohio State Patrol have yielded only assurances that these offices did not handle the case. So, now it’s on to local police departments. I want facts. I want pictures. I may even want a new car, depending on what my mechanic says. I still love Ruby; but cars, unlike kids, don’t usually recover from “moderate damage.”

This fact-finding mission reminds me in some ways of the process we’ve gone through with David and Trin in order to find out what kinds of damage were done in the past. Information about their medical histories was sketchy and sometimes contradictory for a long time. We had all sorts of questions that no one seemed able (or willing) to answer with any certainty or accuracy: How bad were David’s injuries that led him to be taken by DCS? Did Trin ever actually test positive for meth? Or was she taken as a precaution, merely because of exposure (her bio-mom did, in fact, test positive twice during the last three months of the pregnancy). A couple of weeks ago, we got to go through all the files on the kids and got answers to most of these questions. It was an exhausting and sobering couple of hours. The results, happily, were that the extent of damage done to the kids was less than we had imagined. More disturbingly, the extent of the bio-parents’ pathology greatly exceeded our expectations. The damage there is much more than moderate.

Both Trin and Dave are outstripping everybody’s expectations these days, in a good way. I’ll give you a little illustration of just how cool these kids are. On Saturday, we went to Turkey Run State Park for a hike and some lunch. It’s a longish drive (about 50 minutes) and, I’ll admit it, the kids were horrid for the entire 50 minutes. But when we got to the park, they stepped up their respective games. Dave got off to a rough start. He was raring to go, but fell early and skinned his knees. After that, he didn’t feel much like walking and we had to carry him pretty much the entire way (2 miles). To make matters worse, he fell sound asleep at about the 1-mile mark and became a 30-pound sack for the rest of the trip. But he is the single most beautiful boy when he sleeps, so it all balanced out. Trin, on the other hand, found her hiking groove and walked much of the way. Her crowning achievement was climbing all 70 steps that led back to the parking area after crossing the suspension bridge over Sugar Creek. Need I remind you that she is a mere 18-months old? Everybody sing along: “Come all without, come all within. You’ve not seen nothing like the Mighty Trin!”

Dave’s shining moment came a little later as we ate lunch at the Turkey Run Inn. At the tender age of 2.5, he has mastered (I mean mastered) the art of using silverware. He ate his entire lunch with his napkin in his lap, using his fork, and didn’t drop a single piece of food. Stud! And lest I make the mistake of downplaying his physical prowess by concentrating on his table manners, I would also like to point out that he is both the fastest runner of all the 2-year olds at day care, as well as the best jumper. In fact, his new favorite activity (besides watching “blue choo-choo,” aka Thomas), is climbing on top of a box in the kitchen (about a foot off the ground), getting his balance, and jumping off. He typically lands about two feet from the box and sticks the landing every time. I’m working on teaching him how to stand up straight and raise his hands as the final flourish of his flawless dismount. Now if we can just get him to put his pajamas on without a fight…

So Dave and Trin are doing great, resilient little munchkins that they are. “Moderate damage” be damned! And with any luck, Ruby will be one of us for a long time to come. As for Peanut and Fast Eddie, we may never figure out what the hell’s wrong with them.