"Did she enjoy the plane trip?"
A tilt of the head and a genuine smile conveyed sincere curiosity.
The question was asked of me by a well meaning woman with regards to my complicated 7 year old the weekend we returned from our first big trip in all of the nearly 5 years she's lived with us.
It fully and surprisingly stumped me. We are rarely in the position of asking if M 'enjoyed' something. We make statements like, "she got through it", "she didn't start to lose it until the last 10 minutes", "it was fine until the second hour", "she mostly listened", "she only swore at her school 5 times today".
That question, "Did she enjoy it?", so simplistic and typical when asked of a child without PTSD, reactive attachment disorder, and anxiety, becomes shockingly complex when asked of a former foster child living daily with all of those suffocating issues.
My daughter is a 7 year old who carries all of these diagnoses and a few more after tricky genetics combined with a tough couple of years in our nation's rocky foster care system.
That word - 'enjoy' - silently implies that the person about whom the word is being spoken is already comfortable and content and not anxious or worried.
I think it's kind of like a hierarchy (remember Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that we all had to learn in some long ago psych class? It topped off with self actualization, but you couldn't begin to get there without first hitting necessities like food and water, etc.)
I think it must be like that - to get to even consider 'enjoyment', someone first has to be in full possession of those other emotions - contentment, relaxation, no anxiety.
But what if a person is almost never any of these things? How do they get to the enjoyment part of life?
That question, so unassumingly asked of me standing in a soccer arena in the middle of a game, has really occupied a lot of space in my brain over the last few days.
Back in the summer of 2014, I drove to my hometown of Beals Island with my 3 kids - well-adjusted 12 and 9 year olds - born to us, raised by us from their first day on the planet - and our nearly 3 year old who'd moved to our home from a different foster home just four months before, born to parents with whom she'd never spent even one night, never shared even 24 consecutive hours.
The four of us went to Sandy River Beach with my Mom. It was beautiful and spacious and cool enough to need sweatshirts. Within minutes of arriving, M (seemingly) inexplicably screamed, cried, threw herself on the ground, laid face down, inconsolable, in the wet sand. It was beyond confusing to all of us - my Mom, my older kids, me.
We did know by then that M could be set off at any moment, and rarely could this be predicted. And when she got to this point, holding her wasn't possible without being scratched or headbutted.
In many situations, for years, I just left.
I have left beaches, restaurants, grocery stores, the bank, soccer games, baseball games, fields, hiking trips. For a couple of years, I picked up a screaming, scratching child, held her hands together with one of mine, balanced her low enough against my hip to avoid getting her forehead to my chin or nose, and just left. Walked out. I have done it stone-faced, unblinking even, an ability I've almost perfected. I have done it while apologizing to adults around me, attempting to maintain a checked tone, which I can typically do if I don't make full eye contact. I have done it a handful of times without managing to avoid crying, which I can do silently nearly always.
M's reaction to beaches remained just like that for about a year. It happened repeatedly, at the ocean, at lakes, at rivers.
In useless hindsight, I can now recognize this as complete overwhelm.
I have no idea if anyone had ever taken her to a beach before she was just about three.
I have no idea what was truly happening in her brain at those moments.
I now know that anxiety rules her entire existence, and consequently, much of mine, as well.
I now know that when she lowers her face, glares at us with narrowed eyes, displays the degree of anger that most people rarely show, that it is too late to really salvage a situation.
I now know that 'enjoys' is a very strong word for a little girl who rarely gets past 'not anxious in this moment,' which would need to be at the bottom of a hierarchy topping off with 'enjoyment.'
I now know that much of the reason she remains uncontrollable at her school is that her anxiety often displays itself as defiance and rage, rather than obvious fear.
I now know that that's a rather common defense mechanism for kids who suffer from post traumatic stress disorder.
I now know a lot more than I did almost 5 years ago, when a kicking, biting, headbutting toddler moved in with us, and our lives were irrevocably altered.
I know this though, too.
I know that in that picture up there, at the top, a small, complicated girl spent more than 20 minutes playing in the waves at Horseshoe Bay Beach in Bermuda, during Bermuda's winter, when the water temperature was about 70°F. I know that little girl was anxious and scared on the plane, anxious and scared in Bermuda's caves, and anxious and scared in the big rented house.
But I know that little girl loved every second she spent in that ocean, on that beach 930 miles from her home state of Maine, on that soft pink sand, in that incredible breeze, and I know that years ago, that wouldn't have been possible.
I know, with 100% certainty, out there in those waves, she enjoyed an experience.
And maybe that's something.