To Have and Have Not

I have had this one aspect to our current place in life rolling about in my head for days and days. Then I read this entry from one of my favorite blogs and then suddenly I had words.
 
Bushel and a Peck

It was as though, reading Christie's words freed my own. That happens to me alot. I am a true  extrovert so my emotions are directly connected to language. Sometimes I can't find words, and then I will read the right thing, or make a silly comment to Leslie and SHAZZAAM! I have words.
And so that's about it. We have this precious boy in our lives. I have a son. There is this other person here enriching our lives, preventing sleep every other night or so, leaving me staggered by the doctor's appointments. Making me dig deep yet again to find even better versions of myself to offer.

And I am happy about this. I truly am. This boy is amazing. He can break your heart, make you laugh and make you feel like you would make better progress by attempting to talk a tree into walking away, all in a five minute stretch.
I have a son.
I am still finding the mother that goes with that son.
I know who I am to Evelyn, I know how to gauge her moods, read her face, comfort her when she cries. I don't yet have that for Liam.

On top of all of the typical adoption/attachment/bonding things we have going on, there is a dimension to it all that is present and it is making things much harder.
We can not communicate with this boy. Now, let me be real here, he has a mild hearing loss so really we can make ourselves heard. It's not that. We are teaching and learning sign language but that will take time. It's that we can not understand him.
He has lost so much, and now even the slightest wish or desire requires so much work to get across. His words are lost in that cleft and they swirl around and tumble out in all sorts of ways and there is no clear way to understand him. I watch him and I KNOW that even though he has seen love, he has been fed well, he has been cared for, there was no one there that had the time to teach him in the area of language- it simply does not occur to him to make the same sound twice for the same thing.

 I can guess at a few things. That he has had so much loss already that he will control this issue to the last? That he just wants to be a kid? That he is embarrassed by this whole thing? Am I right? Am I wrong? Who knows? He does and he can not tell me.
What I know is that these kids loose so much. They have so little choice in what happens to them that this loss of being able to speak his needs, wants and jokes- it just feels terrible.
Think of it like this, he has the mind of  a 2 year old but the physical language ability of an 8 or 9 month old. He jabbers and points and talks and we have no earthly idea what he is getting at. He knows. I see him sometimes, just give up. It kills me.
This is troubling. Not for me. I can work through it. We are working through it, slowly. And I know that his surgery will  help and we will really be on our way then. It's just that he didn't choose us- I would like to be able to understand some of his choices, even just if he wants a certain type of cookie. I am troubled for him I can not imagine how difficult it would be to be in his position.

And so it goes.
A little here, a little there.
And we will get there- toghether.
It's all I have to offer.