Adoption Muse

The Sea Star

In her first week of kindergarten, Belle was asked to put 3-5 things into a plastic Ziploc baggie that described herself. She chose a dried sea star given to her by her sister Alice's birth mom, a plastic toy horse because she had just watched "Felicity: An American Girl Adventure" and a photo of herself and Alice with Belle's birth mom and birth mom's sister in Hawaii.

I asked Belle how she would describe each object to her classmates, and she said she would describe the photo as being of herself and her birth mom. I told her that some kids might raise their hands to ask, "what's a birth mom?" and she said she would tell them, "a birth mom is someone who births you and an adoptive mom takes care of you." We even role-played this scene a few times, with me being a kid in her class asking "what's a birth mom" in various tones of voice. It was fun and she seemed very confident.

After school that day, I rushed over to the teacher, who herself is an adoptive mom, to ask how it went. She sort of blinked and said, "Actually, no one asked about that at all. They all wanted to know about the sea star!"

Paying for Motherhood

It was an idyllic scene: one daughter asleep already, arm flung over the bed, while the other daughter carefully prepared her baby doll for sleep, tucking the doll into its wicker cradle and covering it with a little blanket. I watched her calmly from my rocking chair, listening to her pretend story as she talked aloud while looking at her doll:

Belle: "Raggedy Ann is this baby's mother but actually, I take care of her every day and put her to bed."

Me: "Are you her adoptive mother?"

Belle: "Huh? Adoptive...I'm not her babysitter. Actually, Raggedy Ann birthed her and then I had to pay money to be her mother. Her adopted mother."

Me: "Oh! ...I guess some mothers have to pay money to lawyers or counselors for adoption, but no one actually pays to be a mother. Babies aren't for buying and selling."

Belle: "Some mothers DO have to pay. And it cost three dollars." (She finally looks up at me.)

Me: "Then you must have really wanted to be a mother to pay that much."

Belle: "Some babies are slaves. And the Pharoah wants to kill them, especially the first-born if they are boys. And slave babies even get whipped."

Me: "That sounds scary. No one should ever hurt a baby."

Belle: "The Pharoah was an Egyptian but the slaves were not Egyptians. There were more slaves than Egyptians."

Me: "They were Hebrews."

Belle: "This Hebrew baby was whipped on the head but now she's fine."

Me: "I'm so sad she was hurt. It's a good thing the slaves escaped from Egypt."

Belle: "Yeah, but not for a really, really long time!"

A few minutes later Belle was asleep, but I was dumbfounded by our conversation and how she had linked the concept of paying for babies to the concept of slavery. I remembered telling her that Hebrew and African slaves were "bought and sold" and that no human should ever be bought or sold. I am so sensitive about money in the role of adoption that I immediately feared Belle was already wondering about that aspect of adoption, but now I think she was mulling over several things at once (babies, mothers, slaves, human cruelty, bedtime) and in the process, reminded me once more about the need for a kinder world. Note to Self: The Disney movie "Moses: King of Egypt" is pretty intense.

Giving Back

Belle and Alice are starting kindergarten in the fall, Jacob is starting preschool, and I am preparing to enter the Graduate School of Social Work at Portland State University in fall of 2008. Working on The Twins That Aren't novel has convinced me that I am NOT a novelist, although I do plan to finish the book by Thanksgiving no matter what! Maybe it is the fact that I'm finally sleeping through the night that has opened my eyes to see women in my community contributing to child welfare in ways other than parenting. Celeste is doing adoption home studies and working with adoptive couples in Oakland. Jaron is counseling teens in foster care and helping them make their own adoption plans in San Francisco. Viviane is working with CPS in New York City. Amy Jo is training to be a midwife in Portland, and Olivia is training to be a certified nurse midwife in New York. How can I not be inspired and challenged by these women in my life?

Come Out, Come Out!

It will be six years next month since Gregory and I first entered the doors of the Independent Adoption Center in Pleasant Hill, CA. We'd just found out that one of our closest friends was pregnant on her first month without birth control, and I felt inside my heart that if I had to spend one more day trying to get pregnant, I would explode. In a way, I have never come out of those doors at the IAC, because I have never really spoken up about our experience there. Every year we receive the boring IAC newsletters, saccharin sweet IAC calendars and generic invitations to IAC picnics, but I remain "in the closet" about the reasons I didn't like the agency very much. Then, in the past year, the Executive Director Bruce Rappaport of IAC died and was replaced by a new person, a woman with an MBA named Ann Wrixon. The MBA degree as opposed to Bruce Rappaport's PhD made me wonder if IAC was just trying to become more business/marketing savvy versus more ethically and culturally attuned. I wanted to contact them and speak up, but I wondered if they would hear my voice. Today I finally completed their survey and wrote a personal letter to the new director asking to participate in reforming the agency. I'm grateful to IAC for inventing open adoption in the first place, and for finally asking for client feedback.

Mother's Day

Another Mother's Day is here and it has been five years since we first adopted. On my first Mother's Day we went to the Elmwood Pharmacy soda fountain in Berkeley, CA with Alice riding in the Baby Bjorn. In the photos, there's a big smile on her face despite the fact that she was too young to have ice cream.

I never thought that first year that Alice would be my biggest challenge. I think if she had remained an only child, things would have gone smoother for her. Her sister and brother arrived so quickly, sometimes I feel she is still in shock. Temperamentally, she reacts slowly to change, and has a low tolerance for frustration. Ever since she could walk and talk, she has accused tables, chairs and people of deliberately getting in her way. At least she has a sense of humor when she compares herself to Veruca Salt as in "I want it NOW." And at least she knows what she wants: lots and lots of unconditional love no matter how many temper tantrums have occured on either side.

We've been to two family psychologists, one occupational therapist and three pediatricians since moving to Portland. None of them found anything "wrong," there was no explanation for Alice's constant frustrations, crying, feelings of injustice. Then last month, we had a breakthrough. "If you look at these issues through the lens of temperament," said Nurse Gerri at Kaiser Permanente, "you'll get a clear picture of what's going on." She was right. This Mother's Day, Alice and Gregory snuck out of the house and brought back pastries from St. Honore Bakery in Portland, OR. Alice wrote me a card in her own handwriting that says "I LOVE YAH." At the end of the day, Alice begged me for a story about Harry Potter, after we had already read several books and chatted for a while. "No," I said. "And that's final!" "Well," Alice replied, "I gave you so many presents for Mother's DAY, but now that it's Mother's NIGHT, you're not giving ME what I want!" I have the feeling we will always share unconditional love if not similar temperaments.

TIPS FOR PARENTS

THE FOLLOWING SUGGESTIONS are offered by members of the MAPS Teen Adoptees Group in Portland, ME.

(Reprinted from the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram)

1. Don't over obsess about it. Stop worrying! We are OK.

2. Don't make a big deal about adoption issues in public. If someone says something insensitive, be supportive, but do it mostly in private.

3. Adopted kids go through more and grow up a little faster than other kids. We know about teenage pregnancy and poverty and their implications more than other kids.

4. Get as much information as possible about your children's histories and share it with them. Don't keep information from us even if it is hard for you to bring it up. It is our information.

5. Teach kids how to stick up for themselves. People will say mean things, show your kids how they should handle it.

6. Our birth culture is very important to us. We feel protective of our culture. It is super important to really know the culture of our biological families, because that is our history.

7. One of our favorite adoption books is "A Mother for Choco." We still love it!

8. We are not "just Americans" like our parents and others in our communities.

9. Be honest! Don't hide information, be really open.

10. Prepare to talk about birth parents. We worry about hurting your feelings so we don't bring it up.

11. No one needs to feel sorry for us. We are happy!

12. Regarding teasing: validate, validate, validate! Don't say "I'm sure he didn't mean it." Don't try to fix it. Say, "That stinks!"

13. We feel a little sadness on our birthdays. Some of us don't know the real day and we don't know the story of our birth. Our birthday represents the day someone left us. Adoption Day is the day someone came to get me.

14. Finally, you often ask us how we feel about being adopted. We want you to think about how YOU feel about us being adopted.

Adoption Assumptions

When I told Nora's sister, Irie, (Belle's aunt) that I was sending an appeal to our kids' grandparents for financial help with the kid's expenses, she suggested: "Why don't you ask my dad for help, too? I'm sure he'd help out." I did a doubletake. Adoptive parents asking their kids' biological grandparents for financial assistance! Yikes! Wouldn't that mean Gergory and I were unfit, unqualified, unreliable? Would the birth-grandparents not feel cheated or put upon? Aren't we supposed to be completely self-contained providers? I made a joke about it, but I keep thinking back on that conversation.

There's an unspoken assumption that adoptive parents have more resources than birthparents, right? I mean, if you're doing international adoption, you have to prove a certain income level. When the social worker comes to do your home study, they're probably making sure you don't live in a housing project or a trailer, I'm assuming. And if you do private adoption, you're expected to pay a certain amount of money to the agency or facilitator that goes into the thousands. Which goes along with the fact that many adoptive parents are in debt! And may have parents who can't or don't contribute money.

Another reality is that many birthmothers come from middle class backgrounds and have parents with resources who would feel proud to help out their grandkids. What WOULD it be like for birth families and adoptive families to pool resources in raising children of open adoption? I'm still too shy to find out.

I came first

I can tell my kids are getting older- Alice is five! - because their comments on adoption are getting more sophisticated.

Belle, for example, declared a couple of weeks ago for the first time that she wants to go live with her half-sister Rosie, her birthmom Nora, and Nora's partner Chris. I said something like, "You want to go live with them. I can understand that you want to be closer to them. But you live with me and Daddy, and that's not going to change." Her response was, "Yes, I live with you and Daddy. I'll just go live with Nora when I'm a teenager!" She seemed happy with that solution.

Then another bombshell dropped. Alice asked me how many people live on the Earth. I responded by saying that most of the people on the earth live in China and India, and that's why China has a rule that parents can only have one child, and that's why some families we know have adopted children from China. Belle and Alice had been fighting in their usual twin fashion, so Alice said something about how Nora and Chris could only have one child, and they chose Rosie instead of Belle. I was caught off guard and felt a moment of blankness, then I said something like, "No, that's not true. Rosie was not even born when Nora placed Belle for adoption, so Nora never had to make a choice. Nora couldn't take care of a babay when Belle was born. She wasn't ready to be a parent." Belle, as self-confident as ever, nodded her head. "Yeah, I came first." Oh, man! I am so glad we can talk about these things out loud.

Superman Was Adopted

This weekend Gregory rented the 1978 Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve. As we watched the movie for the second time yesterday, the kids kept commenting on Superman's parents. Alice was sure that Superman's parents did not die on Krypton. She insisted that they were in a "safe bathroom" somewhere hiding from falling debris. When Superman falls to Earth, a nice man and woman couple find him and adopt him. Belle, for the first time, called Superman's original Krypton parents his "real" parents, in a switch from last year when she called her own adoptive parents the "real parents." I suggested that Jor-El and Lara were Superman's birthparents. Alice agreed with this, but Belle was not convinced. It's interesting to note that Superman has three names: Ka-El being his birthname, Clark Kent being his adoptive name, and Superman being his super hero name.

Christian or Jew?

The new burning question, now that the girls are ready for kindergarten is, should they attend religious school next year? In our case that would be Shabbat School, Jewish education on Saturday afternoons at the synagogue. Alice and Belle said to me the other day that they are glad to be "Christian because then no one will want to kill them." If that sounds dramatic, it's because practically every Jewish holiday is about someone who wants to kill all the Jews and then gets defeated. My girls are not alone in this train of thought. Think of all the Jews who converted to Christianity or simply gave up their religion after World War II.

Me and the kids were watching a PBS film called "The Three Rabbis" about the Jewish community in Portland, Oregon - a delightful documentary. There is a segment on a Jewish woman whose Catholic fiancee decides to convert to Judaism. It was at this point that Belle and Alice pointed out that "We are like that family. Mama is Jewish and the kids are Christian!" It is funny, annoying and weird that they have latched onto this idea that they are Christian to distinguish themselves from me, yet, I find it very thought-provoking. Last week I met with Deborah Eisenbach-Budner, Director of Education at our synagogue. She knows a lot of adoptive Jewish families and she commented that the adopted child's religious choices have a lot to do with the adult he or she identifies with most. At four years old, I'm just glad that my children are starting to think, identify, discuss. That's what's important for now.