this woman’s work

The incident I’ve been blogging about happened months ago and the fall-out happened weeks ago. So why blog it now? Well, because Madison brought it up and frankly it’s been on my mind (like crazy) since it happened.

She misses the wife in question and she misses the kids. She wanted to know why she didn’t see them anymore. I told her because we didn’t want to be around [husband] and that [wife] & [husband] were a package deal. (I think she knows that [wife] is angry with me, too, because lord knows we’ve talked about it often enough around here — poor Brett helping me process the thing to death.) I said, “Do you remember why I’m upset with [husband]?” And she said, “Yes, because he said…”

Me: Do your remember what he said?

Madison: You say it.

And you know, I didn’t want to say it. I wanted her to say, “I have no recollection and would rather skip over here and play with my dollhouse and smile all the live long day!” I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to say it because she couldn’t remember and wanted a reminder or if she couldn’t bring herself to say it. And I was hoping it was the former and that I could find a way to wriggle out of it. Like, “Oh! She doesn’t even remember! I’ll change the subject!”

This is where the goodness of blogs come in. I thought about Susan Ito and John Raible and Jae Ran Kim and Sang-Shil Kim and all the other transracially adopted adults who have shared their stories. If I changed the subject, she would take on the shame and there’s no way that I want my daughter taking on any shame from this. I knew I had to be the one to say it so I did, I repeated what he said and my daughter screwed up her face, shoved her forehead into my arm and started to chew on my shirt.

“He doesn’t like me because of my brown skin,” she said. “Does he not like [his child]? What about [his child]?” Then later, “YOU like brown-skinned babies!”

For the next 24-hours she’d bring it up randomly. She’d talk about how mean [husband] is because of what he said. Mommy, remember what he said? And why did he say it? Why was he mean? Then we’d list all of the grown-ups we knew who are nice and NOT mean. Because, I told her, most people are nice but some people are mean. It’s how the world is. We are lucky to have so many nice people around us and the mean people? Well, once we find out they’re mean, that’s the end of that!

I understand why parents don’t want to address this stuff because I don’t want to address this stuff. I want to pretend that she’s over it, totally forgot it, has moved on with her life and that it’s not even a blip on her radar. But I agree with you all that our reaction is the only thing I can control and that she needs us to say it out loud and react in no uncertain terms. She needs to know that we have a zero-tolerance rule about this and that there are no do-overs for racism and that we are always unequivocally on her side.

One of the first people I talked to about it was Pennie. For one thing, she knows these people and even if it hadn’t involved Madison I likely would have told her ‘cuz, you know, we talk about my friends and her friends and our dealings with them. But I also told her because she’s Madison’s first mom and because she’s an African American woman and so I doubly value her input. Being naive, what surprised me was how not surprised she was. Sad, disappointed, angry — yes but surprised? No.

My white world (myself included) had this “but she’s so young! why does she have to deal with this now?” sad reaction but my of-color world had this “ahh the inevitable has happened” resignation and sadness reaction. So when Madison asked me to say it, I channeled the mothers of color who I know (online and off) and knew they wouldn’t try to get out of it. They wouldn’t squirm and try to pretend it didn’t happen or try to distract her, they’d say it and face up to the truth, which is that it was said, my daughter heard it and yes, she still thinks about it.

(What prompted this was having a fall-out with a park friend — someone she barely knew — who said something 4-year old mean, which made her remember every mean thing anyone ever said to her finally landing on this one and focusing on it like crazy. This is the first time she’s brought up her concerns about the other kids in the family.)

(One more thing — the reason I password-protected the other post and not these latest ones is because the password-protected post got into other family members reactions and I wanted to keep that un-googled.)

Please go check ‘em out and share your wisdom!

If any adoptive parents are still reading this gargantuan post, what helped you during the emotional rollercoaster of waiting?

from Heather at Production, Not Reproduction: Q&A: Dealing with the Wait

When I look back at the time we were waiting, I remember feeling calm and dreamy and other worldly. I think it’s the only time in my life where I’ve actually achieved a level of zen because even though I sometimes felt impatient and sometimes felt blue, I also felt like those emotions were superficial.

We didn’t wait as long as some people and we waited longer than others. We went into the pool sometime in the summer and Madison was placed with us early the next April. Our profile went out a lot. Most of the time we knew when it went out because our agency did pre-calls — basically if there was anything that might be an issue for us, the agency would call and get explicit permission to share our profile with that expectant family. Then when the woman chose someone else or chose to parent, the agency would call us back and let us know. Then we also had the match/unmatch when the first mom who chose us decided to parent. Our profile went out at least fifteen times (because I think we made a dozen copies and then part way through the wait our agency called to ask us to make more).

Yes, it was an up and down thing but the downs weren’t all that hard. The calls (and the matches) were possibilities and it was easy to get excited about the possibilities but I felt like we were waiting for the right situation and if something didn’t work out then I’d remind myself that it just wasn’t right. Not that it didn’t make me wring my hands with impatience but again, those feelings felt superficial.

I also knew our wait might be longer because early on our social worker told us that my being Jewish was a barrier for some of the people considering our profile. Some of them wanted Christian families (not half and half families) and others didn’t even really understand what Jewish was so they passed us by. I felt like this was good because we wanted someone who felt comfortable with us and so the more reasons there might be to say “no” to us, the more reasons someone else (the right someone) might say “yes.” (See what I mean about the zen? And is it happens, Pennie particularly liked the pluralism of our family. And she also liked that we had a child, which is something else that not everyone who read our profile wanted for their child.)

So what did I do to make the wait go by more easily?

• Daydreamed, about baby names, mostly. (Ironic when you consider that we didn’t end up choosing Madison’s name.)
• Folded and refolded and refolded the baby clothes and cloth diapers. (I remember this, especially because I did it at least once a week and I looked forward to it the way Noah looks forward to ice cream for dessert. This is ironic, too, because Madison ended up being too big for most of the clothes and diapers that we had!)
• Talked to my friends who, happily, listened.
• Read about adoption.
• Talked to our very nice, very patient, very kind, very understanding social worker.
• Worked out, wrote, blogged, played with Noah, chattered to Brett, homeschooled, gardened, etc. (You know, the rest of my life.)

Once we matched with Pennie, things definitely got less zen-friendly because it got so complicated. I was very aware that I was a part of something (her decision) that I shouldn’t have my fingers in but I also needed to respect her need to have contact with us before Madison arrived.

(I’m not going to get into that right now because this post is supposed to be about the waiting.)

Anyway. The waiting was the easy part because I was able to be passive and I liked being passive and feeling the world move on by me, taking me to the next place I needed to be. It got hard when I was in it.

As an aside? I’ve also never felt closer to God than I did when we were waiting. I had absolute faith but when Madison came home? Well, I haven’t really recovered my faith since then. I think it was an innocence lost kinda thing.

[Backstory: Madison is trying to get me to hurry up and make chocolate chip cookies. Her tone definitely started out wheedling.]

Madison: Oh you are such a nice mommy! I love you! I love you better than Pennie!

Me: I know you love me and that makes me happy. But love isn’t a contest — you don’t have to love me best or love Pennie best. You can love us both differently. Sometimes me more and sometimes her more. You can love differently.

Madison: I love other people.

Me: Yes.

Madison: I love Daddy. And Noah. But who I really love is my Cousin Violet.

Me: Yes, you love Violet. That’s nice.

Madison: And I love my Cousin Lucia.

Me: You love both your cousins. Sometimes you love Cousin Violet best and sometimes you love Cousin Lucia best but you love them both and you love them both differently.

Madison: And I love Pennie.

Me: Yes, you love both your mommies. Sometimes you love me best and sometimes you love Pennie best but you love us both.

Madison: I love all my cousins and I love all my mommies.

Me: Yup, that’s how love is.

[For the record, I made the cookies after dinner and so her little ploy didn't work but it led to this nice conversation.]

Recently Madison’s been asking about her birth dad. (I know, I know, he didn’t give birth to her so he’s not her birth dad. I should say first dad but that’s not quite right so then I think bio dad but Madison says birth dad or birth daddy or birth father so we’ll go with that. Ok, let’s start again.)

Recently Madison’s been asking about her birth dad. She wanted to know if he was dead. He’s not dead but he’s not here either. So we talked about that. We talked about why he isn’t here. It’s hard to find 4-year old language to talk about why he isn’t here when I only have part of the story and the parts of the story I have aren’t the kind of stuff you share with a 4-year old. So I leave it with, “He hasn’t made very good choices and one of those not good choices is that we haven’t gotten to meet him.” That’s when she asked if he’s dead.

She wanted to know what he looked like so I told her what I know. I told her that I wish I’d gotten to meet him or had a picture of him. I know his vital statistics — the kind of stuff you’d get off a driver’s license. I told her that I don’t really know what he looks like but Pennie does and she can ask Pennie. I don’t know if she will — she’s shy about this stuff. But this time I think she got that he’s white because she asked if that’s why her skin isn’t as dark as Pennie’s. (Smart kid, eh?) And I said yes, that’s the reason. Then we compared our skin some because she wanted to do that and then I told her his nickname and it’s a funny nickname so we laughed about it a little bit.

This means this talk was also our first sex talk because it’s when she learned that it takes a man and a woman to make a baby. I mean, I brought all of this up because I think I said, “It takes a man and a woman to make a baby and that’s why you have a birth mommy and a birth daddy.” (We have talked about birth daddy/birth father before.) She said, “Is Daddy my birth daddy?” And I said no. We have talked about this before but see, I don’t think kids always get this stuff all at once. For example Noah was listening in and even though we have told him all of this before, he still acted surprised about some of it. He hears the story once and gets one part. He hears the story again and gets another part. It takes repetition.

I also think a kid’s natural magical thinking can change the story so it’s important to tell it over and over again. Like Madison asking if Brett is her birth daddy. I’m sure she wants Brett to be her birth daddy, even more so now that her mad 4-year old love affair with her dad is rearing it’s developmentally appropriate head. Maybe she’s imagining that he is. Maybe this imagining is so compelling that she forgot the real story. So we talk about it. This time she is obviously listening harder because she thinks about his skin color in relation to her own skin color.

We’ve been talking a lot about adoption lately anyway after quite a bit of down time. Like recently I had a non-adoption related meeting with someone who happens to be adopted and so in the course of our non-adoption related meeting we talked about it. (Because really I’d rather talk about adoption and hear people’s adoption stories than I might want to talk about, say, tupperware or exercise regimes or new home buying or a myriad of other topics.) So when I got in the car when Brett and Madison came to pick me up and Madison said, “Who’s that?” pointing to the woman I’d been meeting with, I said, “That’s [insert name here] and she’s adopted like you. Do you remember what that means? It means she has a birth mommy and a birth daddy like you.”

I bring up other people’s adoptions because:

1. I want her to know that adoption is something that a lot of people experience.

2. I want her to know that adoption is not something that’s only a kid-thing (that adults are also adopted people).

Madison is also suddenly very interested in L’s story (AmFam’s L) likely because she’s seen L a few times at the park unexpectedly and she’s been reminded that L is also adopted. She is intrigued that L doesn’t know who her birth mommy is because L was in China and was in an orphanage. I told her that some children who are adopted have spent time in orphanges and others have not. I’ve reiterated that she has not. (I think that as she begins to hear other adoption stories that she might get confused that adoption is done only one way so I think it’s important to tell her these other ways but at the same time remind her of her own story.)

There haven’t been any great big emotional adoption stuff going on for her lately — it’s mostly been these kinds of factual, casual conversations but with more interest in the fact than she’s had in the past. It’s interesting to me though that now that she’s nailed down who Pennie is, she’s branched out to think about her bio dad. Doesn’t this seem to fall right in line with a non-adopted kids’ developmental process? All mommy-mommy-mommy and then at around four looking out and seeing this whole other world around them?

It’s one of those not open/open adoptions where the families are seeing each other but the child has no idea who the other family is. In other words, everyone knows that the visitors are the child’s first parents except for the child.

You can weigh in with advice over there.

I am always surprised by the way people say, “My child is fine” and the proof is that the child either had no more questions or didn’t bring the subject up again. Silence isn’t always golden. I really do think it’s our job to bring stuff up in a “Hey, do you ever think about…?” kind of way. I’m not talking about hounding the poor dears but if we don’t bring it up how will they know we’re willing to talk about it? We can’t put all the risk on our kids. We have to assume some (lots) of the uncomfortable discussion burden ourselves.

(Listen, the way that Noah is, if we didn’t periodically bring up adolesence and s-e-x talk the kid would think the storks found babies under cabbage leaves. It’s our job to make sure he isn’t forced to live in ignorance just because he’s too shy to ask.)

Last night I had a dream that I met Madison’s first dad only he was someone other than who he really is. And I was so relieved that I finally met him and that I could see where Madison got this and that and in my dream he was kind and loving and open to being a part of our family. I had Madison on my hip (she was just a baby) and I was talking to him and looking at her and he was surprised because we had all thought this other man was her father (the one who is in real life) and it turned out to be so much easier. We were all surprised.

When I woke up I had that in-between feeling that I could somehow make my dream true if I just held onto it hard enough but then my eyes opened and I knew it wasn’t like that at all.

I don’t give these particular details on the blog so the most I’ll say is that I’m sad for everyone around Madison’s first dad. I’m sad for Madison and for Pennie and for him because he doesn’t know what he’s missing. And I’m sad for me a little, too, (selfish as that is) because I want to know him or at least see him. As Madison gets older and her face changes, I can see this whole other family in there and I feel so frustrated. But the situation is what it is and I just hope that at some point we can have some contact.

And now I’m off to stalk him on the internet — I’m eternally looking to see if he has a myspace or some such account but so far no luck.

Roni said I should blog this: “[H]ow can you work with someone who thinks so little of the adoptive parent-child relationship?  I know a few other mommas who can barely hear her name.” (I don’t read this as accusatory as it sounds — I think Roni’s genuinely curious and I kinda wondered when/if someone would ask me about that.)

To refresh your memory:

The most incendiary notion in Baby Love may be that, for Ms. Walker, being a stepparent or adoptive parent involves a lesser kind of love than the love for a biological child.

In an interview, Ms. Walker boiled the difference down to knowing for certain that she would die for her biological child, but feeling “not sure I would do that for my nonbiological child.”

from the NYT.

I’ve got to admit that I was surprised that Ms. Walker chose my essay for her anthology and I’m not sure why she chose it although she is nothing but complimentary not just about the essay but about my role as Madison’s mother. So even though she herself feels that she couldn’t love an adopted child as much as a bio child and even if she wonders if it could be true of anyone, she’s certainly been respectful of my relationship with Madison so there’s that. But the other thing is that lots and lots and lots of people feel this way only most of ‘em don’t have the platform of the NYT to share their feelings about it. It doesn’t bother me.

Here, I’ll tell you something funny. Once Pennie and I were talking about a mutual friend who recently adopted a baby internationally. Pennie said, “Wow, I just can’t imagine doing that. I don’t think I could love someone else’s child.” And I started laughing and she got embarrassed because, well, it’s pretty funny, don’t you think? I mean, that’s irony right there for you.

I’m sure there are a lot of my friends, family members and readers here who doubt they could love a child who was not biologically related to them as much as they could love their “own” child. Heck, I had to ask myself that question plenty of times and even still I worried I might be wrong. From caring for other people’s kids for so long, I knew that proximity goes a long way but in the dark of the night, I wondered. The gut-wrenching, instinctive, heedless love I had for Noah — would it appear? Would it take time to grow? Show up right away? Or (I’d cringe, wondering) would it always be a shallow echo?

As it turns out, proximity doesn’t go a long way — it goes the whole way. Did I ever write about the dream I had when Madison was brand new? There was a flood and we — the kids and I — were swept up in it. Without thinking I grabbed Madison because she was baby and she couldn’t swim and I watched Noah bob further way but knowing I’d made the right choice because he could swim. I woke up safe in the belief that my worries about loving were for naught. I love them both. Instinctively. Neither one is more my child.

But it’s hard to really and truly know that if you haven’t done it. Of course people — especially people swept up in that first-time love for a biological child — may not believe it. And of course someone who has raised a step child may mistakenly believe that they are the same thing (step kids, adopted kids) when there are barriers in most step relationships that can get in the way of bonding and make it a harder, slower (but certainly not impossible) trek.

So it doesn’t bother me. Although it does bother me to think that there are people who can only see Rebecca Walker in the context of this one statement because I sure don’t want to be seen in the context of a single statement (especially because I make such ignorant ones sometimes).

Finally, if I refused to work with all the people who fundamentally disagree with me I’d be out of so many jobs that I’d be living in a van down by the river. Especially if I weeded out all the folks who differ with me re., adoption philosophy seeing as how I am, apparently, a freak show. (My friend last night told me this. She assures me it is true.)

I’ve said before that I’m not threatened by these statements but I also get that Madison might be. My feeling about this is that she’s going to have to learn how to deal with it because statements like that aren’t going anywhere. People feel how they feel and we are all of us prone to assume that if we feel that way, everyone else must feel that way, too. Madison will have to stand up to that and I figure my shrugging it off will do more to reassure her than if I was demonstrating that I felt threatened by it. (How can I be threatened by something so fundamentally wrong about me and my daughter?)

I took home some of my on-site work to edit it since I don’t need to see the products to fix my mistakes. Apparently I have this crazy idea that articles like “the” and “a” are not needed in today’s modern product write-ups. Re-reading my copy has convinced me that I was mistaken in this belief.

Last night we talked to Pennie on the phone. She’s moving to a new apartment at the end of summer and Madison was worried that she wouldn’t know where Pennie lives so she double-checked about that and was reassured. Pennie also got a new PINK laptop and Madison is anxious to get a look at that, lemme tell you. When Madison signed off she said, “Bye-bye, birth mama!”

When it comes to adoption language I think people ought to be able to call themselves what they want to be called. And I feel pretty darn cool about using “first mom” in the official capacity of talking generally about adoption because:

1. I know this is what many mothers want to be called when we are talking generally about adoption;
2. I like the way it shakes up preconceived ideas about MOTHERS by asserting primary — first — motherhood to women who place/lose children to adoption.

But in our regular, everyday experience of Madison’s adoption we use birth mother/birth mommy/birth mama (most often Madison uses “birth mama”) and I like this, too, in fact more than I would like first mama. Why?

Well, I was thinking on that last night. For Madison, her first understanding of Pennie as her mother was that Pennie had been pregnant with her and gave birth to her. This is so essential, you know? She was around two when she understood well and truly that she is OF Pennie and she has great respect — as do all little kids — for the tremendous intimacy of being OF her mother. I feel like preschoolers are such little pronatalists and Madison was no exception. For the past couple of years she and her friends have been fascinated with pregnancy and birth and Madison — like the rest of them — talks about when she herself will be pregnant and give birth. While she certainly is a fan of mine, being as she’s a fan of motherhood in general, she naturally has awe in spades for Pennie her BIRTH mama, the mama who made her and grew her and birthed her.

While she has struggled with sadness that she doesn’t look like me, she has also become more and more proud that she looks like Pennie. Yes, it’s scared her but it’s also undeniable that she was adopted, that she was born to one woman and then came to live with another and lately she’s been owning that with assertive pride. I don’t know if this will stick around but we’re celebrating it while it’s here.

I don’t know if, for her, first mama would have this same complicated connotation. I mean, sure, she would still have this all about Pennie but calling her “birth mama” is all wrapped up in her love and recognition of who Pennie is to her.

Her reaction to Nina Bonita is part of this. And her recent gleeful excitement when Noah told her that darker skin is “super skin” because it doesn’t burn like his pale, pale skin does.

Her increased affection for Pennie seems like an accurate barometer for her increased understanding and acceptance of her adoption story. I know she got it at two (she was about 2 1/4 on this day) and she has struggled mightily but I see that sad day at ballet class as a turning point. Since then she’s been talking more about skin color and she’s been putting more on us. She’s also been asserting herself as a black person. (She uses black now whereas before she more often said brown skinned although she does still use brown skinned.) For example, she has told many people about the ballet class and rolled her eyes saying, “I told mommy, I want a class with more black kids.” Then she saw a show with African dance and said, “THAT is what I want to do!” Before when we brought it up she was very negative about the idea. But she’s noticing and identifying more often with black people in her world.

At the same time, she’s seeking Pennie out more. She’s talking about her more. She’s talking about loving her more. She’s always handed the phone to me after talking to Pennie but now more often she’s coming to take it back.

“She’s my birth mama,” she’ll say as she marches away with the phone.

Lemme tell you, it makes this second mama feel awfully good.

When Kelsey Cartwright’s father wanted to learn about his biological parents, he learned the papers that would tell him who had put him up for adoption were sealed from his eyes.

“We worked for a few years to get it open,” Cartwright said Sunday, a day after being crowned Miss Oklahoma at the 36th annual scholarship pageant in Tulsa.
Cartwright said she will use her father’s experience during her yearlong reign as she promotes open adoptions during appearances at schools and before civic groups across the state.

Cartwright, the 20-year-old daughter of William and Kelli Cartwright, said her father’s search for his past was confusing and frustrating.

“You never know what to do next,” said Cartwright, of Collinsville. Oklahoma has closed adoption laws and procedural and legal barriers keep adoption records sealed — even from adopted individuals who want to know the truth about their biological parents and their own heritage, she said.

“You’re stuck with that. But there are steps you can take to get your file open,” Cartwright said.

Read more here.

I’m not much for beauty pageants but this year I’m rooting for Miss Oklahoma.