Mom, times nine

The next day, Helen, shaking with anticipation, lifted both arms and spoke her first, high-pitched English word to her adoptive mom: “Armpit?”

It was three decades ago that Greene, an accomplished writer who lives in Atlanta, first embarked on motherhood. She would give birth to children Molly, Seth, Lee and Lily. And for many mothers, whose lives we celebrate today, four children might have been plenty.

But when Greene’s oldest went off to college and her nest began to empty, she and her husband felt a deep desire to start refilling their roost. When she miscarried during an unplanned pregnancy at age 45, Greene realized just how much she still wanted to expand her family.

So, over an eight-year stretch beginning in 1999, Greene and her husband adopted five children — a boy from Bulgaria, and four children, including Helen, from Ethiopia. Greene became mother to nine.

Among other things, that’s meant a front room knee-deep in Lego blocks not just for years but decades. It’s meant being an elementary school mom for 21 consecutive years, and all the cupcakes, gift-wrap sales, school musicals and soccer games that entailed. It’s meant overseeing both sibling battles and bonding.

It’s also meant times of challenge, doubt and heartache. In her new memoir, “No Biking in the House Without a Helmet,” Greene describes trying to keep a grip on her family, being terrified it might get too big and capsize, fearing that adopting older children from orphanages might be too great a risk.

But this Mothers Day, looking back on her experience, Greene says every one of her children, whether homemade or foreign-born, has been a revelation and a treasure. She’s enjoyed the thrill of the ride of motherhood, even when facing near collisions. She loves to see the sparks in her children that shape and give meaning to their life. In return, she says, that has given her life meaning.

Kids as muse

Growing up in Macon, Greene, who is Jewish, was fascinated by the large Catholic family up the street. The family with seven children always seemed to have so much fun together.

Greene, in contrast, had a single sibling, a younger brother.

After Greene and her husband, Don Samuel, a prominent criminal defense attorney, had Molly and then Seth in the early 1980s, there was little question they would keep going.

“I wanted to rock the boat,” she said.

She and her husband were overjoyed by parenthood. The high started with their first born and never waned.

“I was blown away by the intense love we had for Molly. Once we got over the mind-numbing exhaustion, we were shot into this stratosphere of joy and we have never come down,” she said.

An esteemed writer, Greene reveled in her children’s creative energy, their imaginary play — from building towers with Legos to pretending to be a three-legged fox to leaping on an outdoor trampoline. Her house was bustling, busy, noisy, sometimes chaotic. Toys everywhere. Blankets-turned-caves in the dining room. She loved it.

“There were these riches underfoot. The readiness for make believe. It felt nourishing,” she said. “There was this creative immersion, this joyful concentration. I was a writer at home with an office and it blended well. Writing was my escape, but when school ended, I was ready to stop.”

The environment helped Greene write a few critically acclaimed nonfiction books: “Praying for Sheetrock (2006),” “The Temple Bombing (1997),” “Last Man Out: The Story of the Springhill Mine Disaster (2003)” and “There Is No Me Without You (2007),” the story of an Ethiopian orphanage for children left parentless by AIDS.

‘Why don’t we adopt?’

When Greene was 45, she was surprised with an unplanned pregnancy. At first, she wasn’t so sure she was ready for another child, one so much younger than her other kids. Then she miscarried, and the moment revealed that another child was precisely what she wanted.

One night, seeing his mournful wife lying in bed, her husband said: “If we really want another child, why don’t we adopt one?” And soon, they started the process.

Greene was compelled by the stories of plight in developing nations. She had seen it, written about it, was deeply moved by it. But she also knew that impulse alone could not be the driving force to have more children. A humanitarian urge can fade fast, she says. Sometimes by the fifth tantrum.

Adoption, she believes, works only when the need for a child to have a new family combines with a family’s desire for a new child.

Greene’s expansion of her family began in 1999 with Jesse, a small 4-year-old boy at a Bulgarian orphanage. After bringing him home, she quickly noticed classic orphanage behaviors: He rocked himself at bed time, he had a high threshold of pain and he sometimes clawed at his own legs and arms. No one had ever read him a book before.

She noticed something else troubling, too. Something basic. Jesse didn’t know how to play. The world of make believe was foreign to him. At the orphanage, his life had been about surviving, getting enough to eat and drink, not playing with other children.

“I had no idea if he was going to turn out to be a regular kid or if we were at the top of a staircase that would descend into years of confusion and difficulty and loneliness and chaos,” Greene writes in her book.

Greene found help — it came from her other children. One day, Seth, who was 15 at the time, filled up a water balloon and encouraged Jesse to toss the balloon over the side of the porch.

Greene was nervous about what Jesse’s reaction might be at seeing the balloon suddenly explode into fragments.

“I was holding my breath ... and Jesse got it,” Greene recalled. “He had this look on his face that said, ‘What a wonderful country!’ ”

Eventually, Jesse would discover Legos, and spend hours building elaborate ships and designing pirate islands.

Keeping past alive

Ethiopia seemed a logical place for Greene to turn to next. The country, ravaged by the AIDS epidemic, is home to millions of orphaned children.

Helen was among them. But as an infant and toddler, she’d been lovingly reared by her parents, who taught her to read by the time she was 4. She remembered helping care for her dying mother.

Helen’s adjustment to her new American family was very different from Jesse’s. She was playful and made friends easily. She excelled in school and loved to read.

But she also was haunted by the loss of her “first mother,” sobbing during intense spells of grief and sadness. Once, she collapsed into tears and asked why her mother had to die.

“I know why ... she died,” Helen said. “Because ... she was very sick and we didn’t have the medicine.”

“I wish I had known you then,” Greene told her, holding her. “I wish I could have sent you the medicine.”

“But we didn’t have a phone,” cried Helen. “I couldn’t call you.”

Greene talked openly with Helen about her biological mother, and asked her to share stories about their life together. She talks with all her internationally adopted children about their birth countries, and embraces the cultures of their homelands, from food and music to art and literature. She has tried to connect her adopted children to biological relatives.

One night before bed, Helen asked about heaven. Was there one heaven above America and another above Africa?

Greene told her she thought that would be overly specific, and that heaven likely floats around.

“In heaven, will my first mother live with us?” asked Helen.

“Yes,” said Greene. “Yes, she will. We’ll all be together.”

With that, Helen peacefully drifted off to sleep.

A ‘perfect’ Mother’s Day

After expanding her family to include seven children, Greene thought she was done. Then her son Lee, while volunteering in Ethiopia, called home and suggested they widen their family again. He’d met two brothers, Daniel and Yosef, who were 12 and 9.

“I already feel like they are my brothers,” said Lee. Greene couldn’t say no.

These days, Greene and Samuel have five children at home, all teenagers. They attend four different schools. Most play in highly competitive soccer leagues, something Greene jokes about in her new book in a chapter titled, “The Jewish Guide to Raising Star Athletes.”

At 58, Greene almost bounces with energy, and seems much younger. Still, there’s just so much any one mother can do. Realizing she needed help, and that her Ethiopian children were homesick for the spicy food of their homeland, she hired an Ethiopian woman to prepare traditional cuisine. She also hires college students to help shuttle her children to soccer practices.

In this moment of the “tiger mom,” Greene embraces a nurturing parenting philosophy no tiger mom would abide. She believes it’s important to find your child’s passion and to nurture it. She doesn’t demand A’s in school, but does expect what she calls “good citizenship.”

Her children have chores and get allowances. But she also fines them when they don’t pull their weight.

“If the children don’t do their chores, there’s no anger. Instead of getting mad about doing the recycling because my kids didn’t do it, I think, ‘I just saved myself 10 bucks.’ ”

Today, Greene plans to get up early, and hopes to enjoy a home-cooked dinner prepared in her honor. She misses the days when her children were little, and gave her misspelled handmade cards and clay figurines only a mother could love. In her front sitting room, even the Legos are gone, replaced by a pretty glass table.

But as her children get older, one thing remains — the element of surprise and the love of play. Recently, one of her children found a bike no one wanted and rode it in the house, providing her with a laugh — and the title of her book.

Her only other plan for Mother’s Day is to be with her kids and just see what happens.

“For me, a perfect day would be in which most or all of us have been swept up in some silly event together. A driveway basketball game ... is a perfect example: more and more of us running to join, the competition fierce, the sympathy for mom’s losing throws touching, the jostling and stirring up dust, and having it all continue into the dark and then all coming in for ice cream.”

“That,” says the mother of nine, “is a perfect day.”