You can take the boy on vacation, but the Attachment Disorder comes along for the ride. He has generally been in great spirits – happy and loving and compliant. Still, every couple of days, the enormity of his circumstances bubbles up and overflows – the lack of routine, the new people, the absence of television – and he lashes out like caged, rabid bear. With ragged uncut nails. OW.

Right now, before anyone else is awake, he lays in his bed playing Pokemon Nintendo games, which soothes him more effectively than a Valium. It’s his way of mentally preparing for the day, the unknown odyssey that lies between the only really certainty in his life: sleep.

In CC’s garden, there’s a plant called Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate. It hasn’t bloomed yet, but its enormous oblong leaves dance in the breeze, reaching up toward (duh!) the garden gate, green and shiny and perfect except for the intricate designs carved by feasting bugs. Yet the designs separate the leaves from each other, giving each one a uniqueness that will never be replicated exactly.

I think it’s so much like the boy.