this woman’s work

Did you cry during his acceptance speech? 

I think about how our international standing has just improved and I feel so hopeful.

The popular vote was still pretty close; we have a lot of work to do to bring this country together. (So Brett said no gloating around McCain supporters; he said we have to be good winners.)

Madison loves to see Obama with his little girls. She likes to see when he holds their hands and picks them up. I told her that because the president of the United States is a little bit like our king as elected by us, this means his little girls are now like the princesses of the United States. “And they are beautiful brown-skinned girls just like you.” 

She may not get the historical import yet but she gets the princess comparison. She’s pretty happy about it.

Pennie tried to call when he took Ohio but didn’t think to call our cell (I was at Abby’s with Kristen and Lynne) then we called her when CNN officially announced it. 

Pennie and I bonded about politics four years ago. It’s hard to remember but at the beginning we were excessively careful with each other and we didn’t talk politics. But then when Kerry was running she called me up and asked if I was voting “for Frankenstein or the chimp” and I said, “Frankenstein all the way.” And happily it turns out that we share our liberal politics. She was happy that the kids have been such a part of this election process and liked hearing that Madison helped hang flyers on doors the other day. 

I’m glad and grateful that Madison got to talk to her first mom on that historic night. I’m glad that we both thought to call each other. 

Abby had a great evening planned. The kids had an electoral map to fill out and Kristen and Lynne brought apple pie (raw and cooked respectively). I brought sparkling juice so the kids could toast the winner, which meant that Madison came up every ten minutes to see if we could do some toasting yet. 

I haven’t looked at any of the ballot measures yet so I’m going to make the kids pancakes (we slept way in) and then spend some time trolling the internet. Then it’s off to skating, home to work and later tonight I get to hook up with Andrew to talk politics (probably) and writing (definitely).

Madison’s life is better now that her birthmama is back in town. As we pulled into the airport to pick Pennie up, she sighed and said, “This feels better — having Pennie home.”

After we dropped Pennie off, Madison said that she noticed that Pennie’s pants were falling down. This isn’t quite true. See, most jeans nowadays are low-rise jeans and not every woman has a low-rise body unless she’s comfortable showing some of her tush. 

“So I saw Pennie’s butt,” Madison informed me, exaggerating things.

“Well, how about that!” I responded. “Does she have a cute butt?”

“She does. It’s also kinda big. But not as big as yours.”

I don’t wear low-rise anything seeing as how I inherited my dad’s high waist (meaning my waist is somewhere around my armpits) but now I know I also shouldn’t because I have a big butt. 

Children are precious!

(A note here: I am not at all one of those mom’s who gets her feelings hurt when my children tell me my butt is big, my tummy is squishy or that I’m fat. These things are true and my children say them warmly and usually while patting me kindly or cuddling up. I always say, “Yes, that’s true; my butt is big and I am beautiful.” The beautiful part is technically a fib but they don’t know this because they love me. I figure one of the kindest, most loving things I can do for my kids is to love my own self unconditionally or at the very least fake like I do. So I fake it and sometimes I believe it. Mostly, it works out.)

She’s been listening to all of our old story CDs and these I don’t mind. Her favorites last week were All Spirits Sing, which I can get behind despite the “Tise Old Wurtle” song because of the “Light Up the World” song and then The Seal Maiden, which is gorgeous with not one sour note throughout. But she wanted some new ones so I was going through a forgotten stash of Noah CDs and handed them to her. The one she’s ended up playing over and over and over is a mix CD of old rock and roll and motown that I made for Noah when he wanted to know who this Elvis person is and her favorite song is the first one: Chantilly Lace. And I’m pretty dang tired of hearing the Big Bopper go, “Hello-o-o-o-o Ba-by!”

Also she’s started saying, “I’m not going to cry anymore, Mommy, because big girls don’t cry.” So Frankie Avalon is totally undoing all the hard work of Free to Be You and Me who’s been telling her “It’s All Right to Cry” because crying takes the sad out of you.

Then yesterday she was running around the house singing about cuteness when she suddenly pointed her little finger at me, sitting innocently in the rocking chair trying to read a novel and said, “YOU’RE not cute because you are FAT!”

Well! I was, naturally, offended being to my own mind absolutely adorable as in “worthy of adoration.”

“Who says I can’t be cute AND fat?” I demanded, knowing she wasn’t sophisticated enough to answer, “The media!” so onward I went. “People can be cute and skinny, cute and short, cute and tall and they can be cute and fat.”

She looked doubtful.

“I may not be beautiful like a princess,” I said, acknowledging that there is nothing fancy about me and knowing her love of all things fancy. “But I am beautiful for my own self.” I added that many people who love me, not the least being Daddy, would argue pro-cuteness for me.

Contrite she came and kissed me and patted me and agreed that I am both beautiful and squishy, proving this by squishing me contentedly.

“Can you think of other people who are beautiful and fat?”

She thought awhile and named some people who are indeed beautiful and fat but then she said, “And Abby” only Abby isn’t fat not even by American media standards so then I realized she was using “fat” as a euphemism for “big” as in “grown” and that she brought this up because she’s been talking about things being little and cute like tiny toys, where she’ll go, “Oh that is CUTE!” So she’s not actually being size-ist so much as assuming the definition of “cute” includes “little.”

Still, seeing as how I feel fiercely protective of this girl-child’s self esteem I feel all right about coming out with both arms swinging. My girly is a paragon of beauty but the idiots who publish women’s magazines may not realize this; she’s going to need to be her own source of affirmation.

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?)