this woman’s work

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?)