Going the long way, sort of
Until about six weeks ago, we had planned on hopping in the car tonight to begin an epic family trek up the coast. We need to be in Lake Tahoe by Sunday at 2:00 PM because we are attending our first family camp with Pact. More about that later.
The idea was to meander up the coast, stopping when we wanted, wherever we wanted, playing it all by ear. We were going to pack snacks. We were going to play car bingo.
We were going to sing songs and have bonding family time, creating memories that Ruby would cherish for the rest of her life. Of course, that is the ideal version. The reality could have involved threats of pulling over and letting mama out of the car immediately so she could walk home. And in fact, this is likely closer to the reality, since, as luck would have it, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation chose this very weekend to close ten miles of what is arguable the busiest freeway in America, the very one we would have needed to take to get to our destination on time (and don’t believe that photo in the article for a second; the 405 rarely looks that barren).
So serious is this closure, that the DOT has, for the last six weeks, been begging people who do not live in Los Angeles, not to come and telling those that do, to stay home. The closure of this freeway will impact every other freeway in surrounding the general LA area. Which is why we ended up buying overly priced plane tickets. Although, they were less expensive than the divorce that might have resulted from any attempt to drive under these conditions. And fortunately, we’ll still have what is supposed to be a two-hour drive. Bingo, anyone?
If you’ve ever taken the I-405, then you know well the impulse to want to stab yourself in the face. And you also understand what that means for anyone needing to get anywhere this coming weekend. It means something like this:
Semantics
Wednesday’s homework assignment:
ADOPT A TREE! At school, we have adopted a tree to observe through the seasons. You can do the same with a tree in your neighborhood. A good tree to choose is one that you can easily visit. Maybe there is a tree that you walk by every day. Get to know your tree. What shape is it? Feel its bark Can you reach around the tree? Look at its leaves. Does anything fall from your tree? Are there any clues that any animals life in or visit your tree? A piece of yarn or string can mark a twig on your tree, so you can look for any changes that happen to the twig in the winter, spring, summer, or fall. Enjoy your tree; no other tree is exactly like it.
The thing is, my daughter’s class is not adopting a tree, the Sigma Pi fraternity did not adopt a highway and pet-lovers around the country are not adopting animals. You can choose a tree, sponsor a highway, and rescue a dog from the pound. But adoption is the serious process by which families are formed, creating a bond that is the very same—though so many can’t seem to fathom it—as a biological connection. Adoption has nothing to do with a certificate given when you purchase a doll at FAO Schwartz and it has nothing to do with group visits to the perennial around the corner.
The insistent co-opting and trivializing of the terms “adopt” and “adoption” is insulting to families touched by adoption and, more particularly, is confusing to young adoptees. And their friends, too: Just try explaining to an inquisitive 5-year old why your skin doesn’t match your child’s skin and then tell them they’re going to adopt a Ficus.
I am disappointed in the language of this particular homework assignment and want to say something to the administrators, but I really do not want to be That Mom. I’m going to think on it for a spell. In the meantime, please excuse me while I go water my kid.
Families: Who needs ‘em?
This picture was taken when Ruby was three weeks old, during my second week of mothering. It was early in the triathlon of late night feedings, diaper changes, and the seemingly endless shooshing of a crying baby, and already Sam and I were exhausted. We’d had 36 hours—not 9 months—to prep ourselves for parenthood (the last minute crash course in swaddling proved to be clutch). But this isn’t a competition.
Regardless of allotted nesting time, I think what we were experiencing when my cousin snapped this photo is universal among new parents: While we were nothing short of elated, there was a sense that we’d been hit and flattened like silly cartoon characters, by an 18-wheeler that missed a hairpin turn after careening down an 11% grade slicked with black ice. The impact on our lives was so stunning, I didn’t even hear the warning screech of air brakes. One minute, I wasn’t a mother, the next minute I was. And this photo, which I’ve posted before, exemplifies that for me.
And it reminds me, every time, of a conversation I had with a representative from my HR department two months before it was taken. I had called to find out whether I would qualify for maternity leave once we were matched with our baby, and was told that I would not. “You’re not really a mother,” the representative told me. “Maternity leave is for women who have babies. Because they have to heal. You’re not healing from anything.” I hung up in disbelief and anger.
But I let it go and when Ruby was born, I took 12-weeks off without pay so I could not really be a mother. My husband and I borrowed 3-months’ worth of salary from my generous in-laws so that I could not really make and wash bottles, not really change diapers, not really attend doctor visits, not really pace around my dining room table for hours and hours with a crying baby in my arms, so I could not really rock her to sleep. I had support—certainly not from my employer—that allowed me the luxury to not really bond with my new child, to not really sit in my rocker with her or lie in my bed with her naked body curled like a ribbon against mine, to not really have her perfect ear pressed as close as possible to the beating of my heart, a sound I hoped was something close to the white noise she’d known in her birth-mother’s belly.
Today, a court ruled that the Massachusettes Maternity Leave Act, a law from the dark age of 1972, affords a woman 8-weeks of maternity leave following the birth or adoption of a child. After that time, she is not protected by the law and can be fired from her job. An excellent policy for children and parents as far as I can tell.
Apparently, I was lucky to have absconded with an entire 12-weeks of unpaid leave without fear of being fired from a place that clearly undervalues me to begin with.
Aftershocks: Don’t believe the current bad rap on adoption
Within a week after the news that Torry Ann Hansen had put her 7-year-old adopted son alone on a flight to Russia carrying with him her resignation letter, we received a thick envelope from our adoption agency. I thought it was a request for a donation, so when I read the contents, my stomach dropped.
The World Association of Children and Parents (WACAP*) is one of two agencies that facilitated Hansen’s adoption. That WACAP initiated a conversation with its families about the controversy speaks volumes about the organization. WACAP is renowned for its integrity and rigorous practices. It is one of the most—if not the most—highly regarded agencies in a business whose regulation can be slippery.
While reading the material WACAP sent addressing the situation, I thought back on our vetting experience. Our adoption was domestic, so I’m not too familiar with the protocol for international adoptions, and I wondered about the similarity between Hansen’s approval process and mine. In retrospect, like a woman who gets an epidural, it didn’t seem that painful. Yet, given what I knew, the connection between Hansen’s actions and WACAP’s requirements simply didn’t add up.
I scoured the Internet for more information. I rushed to dig out our paperwork, kept above Ruby’s closet in boxes stacked behind a plastic bin of family photographs and one crate filled with dusty books from college. I went to the computer archives and opened file after file, each containing some part or another of six months’ worth of information diligently culled as proof we were qualified to parent.
I was scavenging half-a-year of my life, every detail of which had been agonizingly but necessarily white-gloved, gold-starred and notarized. Looking back, I remember being at times resentful of the invasion of privacy and at others straight-up angry. I had, it turns out, forgotten the pain; to this day I adore the quaint remark, “If I can’t get pregnant, I’ll just adopt.”
Yes! Just!
Sam and I had to answer—separately—51 multi-part essay questions. We exposed every aspect of our lives from the time we were children (describe your parents’ marital relationship while growing up, what you feel was missing in your childhood and what you would do differently) to how we view ourselves (discuss your experience with counseling, therapy or personal growth practices). They even excavated our sex life (discuss your efforts to conceive biologically, including infertility, diagnosis, assisted reproduction therapies and their results and how you have dealt with your inability to have a child).
We were asked to defend our future parenting style (discuss how you plan to discipline your child and how you will spend quality time with him / her) and contend with possibilities (what is your understanding of your responsibility / commitment to an adopted child in whom special needs have developed following a placement and what do you think being a good parent means?).
We got letters of reference and medical exams. We were fingerprinted, background checked and interviewed—together and individually—multiple times. Meanwhile, 14 women I knew became pregnant, three by the “Oops!” method of family planning. When we finally brought our baby home, we had to send a Personal Letter of Acceptance.
“We did review all information about Ruby that was provided to us,” I wrote, “and have no reservations about taking on the lifelong commitment of being her parents.” At that point, all the other stuff fell away. We had a daughter. We were in.
And so was WACAP. They continued to follow up intermittently for a year with additional visits from our social worker, plus phone calls and e-mails making it known they were available if we needed anything. They underscored the network of support. Based on my experience, and though our circumstances were different, I have little doubt that Hansen’s vetting by WACAP was equally as thorough.
In a column on boston.com last week, E.J. Graff wrote of two tragedies in this story. “The little tragedy is what happened to Torry Ann Hansen’s 7-year-old son…. The big tragedy is that Russia may respond by suspending adoptions to the US.” Already, Russia has temporarily suspended WACAP adoptions, leaving matched children and adoptive parents in limbo. To be sure, waiting to hold the child you’ve been matched with, who has taken up residence in your heart, is the most excruciating part of the process. But to Graff’s tragedies, I would add another—the (misguided) bias against adoption—as a possible third. People turning away from adoption because of misperceptions would be the worst thing that could happen.
In 34 years, WACAP has brought nearly 10,000 children home to their forever families. Of those adoptions, only 1 percent has resulted in disruption. Of course, zero would be the more preferable percentage, but we don’t even see that statistic among biological parents—see the U.S. foster-care system for proof—and the media isn’t exactly clamoring to cover this story.
WACAP is doing good and important work. But the process isn’t perfect. How honest prospective parents are with their agencies is only going to be as honest as they are with themselves. It’s tough to vet for that.
As for Hansen, who knows what her story is? I’m going to say she got in over her head—that she was too scared, too stressed or too embarrassed to seek the help that was there for her. This doesn’t excuse what she did, and the repercussions of her deplorable choice remain to be seen. It is my hope, though, that people will recognize that Hansen’s unhappy ending is not the norm. It’s our happy one that is.
*To read WACAP’s full response, go here.
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)
Going Rogue or Somewhere Over The Rainbow
I had dinner and drinks last night with two friends from my adoption group. One of them has three adopted children. Her eldest, a 7-year-old son, is from Haiti. My friend went there to meet him when he was ten days old. She lived there for 100 days, as is the requirement of all adoptive parents. She and her husband stayed at the Hotel Montana, a place she will never be able to revisit because, like most of the buildings in Port-Au-Prince, it was flattened in the January 12th earthquake. Her son’s homeland is demolished, his people suffer more than they did when he left there and what remains is part of his story. The anguish this tragedy has caused my friend and her family cannot be understated.
Not surprisingly, the number of orphaned Haitian children has spiked exponentially, with parents going so far as to relinquish their kids to orphanages in the hopes that they might receive food, water and medical care. It’s a terrible problem, the solution to which will require leadership, international cooperation, many open hearts and some innovative thinking.
However.
An overflow of “orphans” does not mean there is a giant green light in the sky giving the go-ahead to any Tom, Dick or Job who fancy themselves in God’s image, to swoop in and label children with name tags, tell them they’re going to Disneyland and secret them off to be raised up right. Even if they were “just trying to do the right thing,” as their spokeswoman initially claimed. And even though they have since admitted they knew what they were doing was wrong. Does that bear repeating? Yes, I think it does, and in all caps, too:
This group of self-important crusaders—without adoption experience or proper paperwork or association with an orphanage or even knowledge of international charity—people who probably didn’t know two weeks ago whether Haiti was to the West or East of Boise, KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING WAS WRONG.
Another term for it would be “illegal.”
The now-jailed Americans are members of the Southern Baptist Convention, an organization “which has extensive humanitarian programs worldwide,” according to the Associated Press. Which begs the question: With the many “extensive humanitarian programs”—aka, bribery in the form of salvation in exchange for acceptance of a Western view of God but let’s not split hairs—wasn’t there a more appropriate and organized outlet for these nice folks from Idaho to display their do-goodery?
Something tells me they didn’t need to airlift themselves to Haiti to find what they were looking for. Like Dorothy, they could have gone into their own backyard if they wanted to be heroes. I suppose it does help one’s image as The Great White Hope if you’re saving impovershed black kids, as opposed to white ones. Memo to the Renegade Ten: Though perhaps not in the potato state, there are plenty of the former in the foster care system right here in the U.S. of A. In fact, they wait approximately 9 months longer for a placement than their white counterparts. Sure, 9 months is a longer wait than a flight to Haiti. But hopefully, it will be less time than the sentence you receive.
These selfish, presumptuous people, who knowingly engaged in child trafficking, have put unnecessary stress on the decimated Haitian judicial system and will end up doing the same here in the U.S., where they will likely be prosecuted. They hurt proper adoption practices in Haiti, which are currently stalled. They are taxing the relief efforts of organizations on the ground, since now they need to be housed and fed and looked after, which is to say nothing about the one who has required medical attention. And now their lawyer has the balls to say they’re being treated poorly, that “[t]here is no air conditioning, no electricity. It is very disturbing.”
Disturbing about covers it. I feel really sorry for their plight. They must be suffering so.
Like a timeout for a toddler, they should sit in that jail cell until rainy season so they can contemplate the nature of what they did in their Lord’s name.. They should be left to feel a little bit hungry as they think about the entitlement which led them to believe that rules and laws and formalities and bureaucracies don’t apply to them. Then they should be brought home, prosecuted and sent a bill for expenses.
Who wants to place bets they get off with time served and glowing interviews on all the morning shows?
All hail Tweezerman. Now: What to do about this growing up business
After attending a kindergarten forum last night, Sam and I headed to our favorite neighborhood bar for some decompression. Wasn’t it just last week that we were bringing a baby home from Chicago? How is it possible we’re getting her ready to go to school? And is that really a gray eyebrow growing in above my left eye?
My favorite bartender took one look at me and whipped up my favorite cocktail, which I sipped as I plotted an uptick in naked dancing. There is going to be an exponential increase starting ASAP, before Ruby is old enough to be self-conscious.
And I finally weigh in on Anita Tedaldi
I’m late to the party but that’s because I’ve been mulling it over and doing a little background research.
Better late than never, though. So, I’ve begun over here.
There will be more.
Grateful
One comb out, a few tears, a great new stylist and 3-1/2 hours later (no, that’s not a typo), this is what her hair looks like. She chose the “clicky-clackies” and her birthmother chose me.
Dear Busybodies:
She is my own and I am her real mother
*********************************************
The first night we met Ruby, she pooped in Sam’s hand. It was 11 p.m. in a rented apartment in Chicago. We were exhausted from an entire day of travel, preceded by two sleepless nights spent absorbing the holy-shit-we-have-a-kid realization that most people have nine months to make. Just three days earlier, we were all, I know it’s late, but do you wanna go to the movies? and I think I’ll take a nap before dinner and Forget about dinner. We’re grown-ups! Let’s have martinis and ice cream! It was like we’d slipped through a wormhole and were suddenly wandering around in a parallel universe with zero resemblance to our previous life.
And now here we were, broiling in the oppressive summer heat, two fools crouched on the floor in our underwear, brought to our knees by an 8-day-old human. “How does the diaper work?” we asked each other. We were flailing. Badly.
That’s because we didn’t front load by consuming the What to Expect series like most anticipatory parents. Noooo. Instead, we took an intellectual approach and spent months educating ourselves about raising an adopted baby. An adopted black baby, to be exact. Swaddling’s for the birds, we thought. We will know how to discuss feelings of abandonment!
So we studied about loss, identity and connection, about transracial parenting, white privilege and black history. We took classes and watched documentaries. We learned about the racial hierarchy of adopted children and listened as black adult adoptees discussed the experience of being adopted outside their race. Determined to do right by our future child, we scoured the Internet for resources. And we sifted through reams upon reams dedicated to the importance and care of black hair. We had no clue what a receiving blanket was, but we were prepared for anything.
Except, of course, the need for receiving blankets. And, too, for what we’ve come to refer to as The Soft Serve Incident when—after having been parents for an entire three hours—Sam put his hand where the diaper should have been, in an effort to save the carpet.
After that, we jettisoned our course of study in favor of the less compelling but more pertinent 900-page User Manual. Still, as much as our kid just needed to be fed, clothed and cuddled, all of our diligent research came in handy when faced with every looky-loo and inquisitor who crossed our paths in Target. It was a prep course for something that one cannot prepare for. Truly.
Today, after four years of public parenting and being some sort of perceived expert on All Things Black for too many sheltered people, I admit, it can be tough to remain pleasant. I want to be an advocate for adoption, a staunch ally in the fight against racism and, mostly, to model the best possible responses for my child. But I sometimes struggle to find my balance between kindly addressing curiosity and lashing out at stupidity. I want to be approachable, but I also don’t want to indulge a never-ending cascade of questions from strangers while I’m in the pool helping my kid learn to use her big alligator arms. Not that alligators have big arms, but she doesn’t know that and the imagery is working.
Here’s the thing: Sometimes I just want to hurl my fantasy responses at the too-many nosey barkers of the universe.
I understand, Woman at the Zoo, that your brother’s wife’s uncle’s third cousin’s step-daughter is thinking of adopting if she can’t get pregnant with her second baby. Nevertheless, I will not tell you how much our adoption cost. Incidentally, did you crap yourself in the delivery room? Did you have an episiotomy or did you tear? Do tell!
I know that Ruby and I don’t look alike and that to some folks, this has all the excitement of a 12-car pile-up behind a jack-knifed big rig. But do you really need to know whether I like the color of her skin? Because I’ll tell you right now, Lady at Home Depot, I’m not so much digging the pasty look of yours. Also, you have a booger hanging out of your right nostril, which I would discreetly mention, but I’m not going to, since now you need to know whether I intend to tell my child she was adopted. My answer is: Un-unh. Shhhhh! It’s a secret between you and me!
I, too, learned that black absorbs heat while white reflects it. That doesn’t mean black people get hotter when out in the sun. Last I checked, 98.6 degrees is the normal temperature of a human being who isn’t fighting an infection or in the throes of a new love affair. And to the Woman Who Just Couldn’t Drop It, UVA and UVB rays cause cancer. Sunscreen is for everybody! Oh, and I promise you, there were actual black people living in England in 1968. Don’t argue, there were. They just didn’t live in your neighborhood.
No, I’m not babysitting. No, I’m not “just like Angelina!” And, no, you may not stroke her hair in wide-eyed wonder (though, had you asked first, the answer might have been different). And not that it’s any of your business, Mrs. Electric-Scooter-Rider at Henry’s, she’s not a crack baby; nor does she have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. By the way, are you riding in that thing because you’re fat or because you’re lazy? I mean, in my opinion, you really could stand to do a little walking.
Look. I know you have questions about why my family looks the way it does. But if your question has to be prefaced with “I don’t want this to come out wrong…” or if you feel a little skeevy before you ask, it’s probably best to simply go on wondering. And if you can’t bear the not knowing, I suggest you jot a note to consult Google when you get home, and let me be just another mom parenting her child.
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)
An Adoption Story, From Chicago Public Radio
I think everybody should have to do the Bead Exercise.
And I think everybody should
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…which you have to do if you want to know what the Bead Exercise is.