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Real life is kind of taking over all my time and thoughts right now. I'll be back to blogging, but I need to focus on some other stuff for a little bit.
And meanwhile, since I know you all need an extra dose of Cute in your day, here are some pictures of the boys from last week:
Our neighbor girl, who is nine years old, is generally a casual kind of kid. Last summer Sparkle saw her outside wearing a dress one Sunday afternoon. I don't think we had ever seen her wear a dress before, and this dress was kind of formal, like a junior bridesmaid dress or something.
Sparkle was a little baffled. He asked her, "What are you wearing?" Then, "Why do you have a dress on?"
We took advantage of the opportunity to teach Sparkle a bit of etiquette.
Now he knows that the polite thing to say when he sees a lady who is dressed up is, "You look lovely."
Since that day, he has never once missed telling me, "Mama, you look lovely!" every time I wear a dress or skirt.
(All together now: Awww...)
"So, was his birthmother really young or something?"
This question is definitely the most frequently asked regarding the first families of our children.
I was prepared to be asked about the boys' histories, but the wording of the question surprised me. Within a few months of bringing Sparkle home, we heard this question several times, phrased almost exactly in this way.
We think that those who ask are really wanting to know, "What's the story? Why was he available for adoption?" Perhaps it occurs to them that it might not be an entirely appropriate question, or they don't know how to ask. Their assumptions about first mothers are that they are all young, poor, and single. So they ask, "Was she really young?" assuming that we will confirm what they are already guessing about the women who gave birth to the boys.
We never answer that question, by the way.
(I'm hoping to get to how we do respond later.)
Part of the reason why we don't tell anyone (even close family) much detail about why our boys were relinquished is that it's none of their business. Why do they want to know? Curiosity? Will it change how they treat the boys? Will it change what they think of them, or of us?
Aside from the fact that no one else really needs to know why the boys were available for adoption, we want the boys to be the first ones to understand and express their own stories. We want them to know more about their first families than anyone else. We want them to be able to work through their own feelings about their relinquishments without the baggage of other people's opinions.
How can adopted children think about their relinquishements or first families objectively if all their lives they've heard from others that they are AIDS orphans, or crack babies, or illegitimate children, or a hinderance to their first mother's life and education, or unwanted by their country because of their gender?
(You realize that I'm just listing several stereotypes, none of which are specific to my children in particular.)
As we were preparing to adopt, I read a story from an adoptive mom that really shaped our decision about keeping the boys' stories private.
Here's what happened:
A family adopted a five-year-old little girl who was relinquished for adoption because her mother had died and the rest of her family was unable to care for her. Before their daughter came home, the adoptive parents were so excited about their lovely daughter and the whole experience of adoption that they told a lot of people why their daughter had been relinquished.
Because her English was not great yet, the family did not realize right away that the little girl didn't know that her mother had died. And I guess, apparently, they didn't really communicate her story to her very fully.
After she had been home for a while, a neighbor child asked the little girl, "Why did your mother die?" The little girl said something like, "She didn't die, she lives in Haiti." And her playmate told her, "Yes she did. Your mom told my mom that she got sick and died, so you had to go to the orphanage."
So that was a pretty horrible experience for the little girl, of course. She grieved for her mother, felt terrified of what might have happened to other relatives and friends she had assumed where alive and well, was angry with her adoptive family for hiding the information, and totally didn't trust her adoptive parents for a long time.
Long story... Obviously, that was NOT the experience I wanted for my kids, whatever circumstances led them to be placed for adoption. At that point we hadn't even started the adoption process, but we made the decision that we were not sharing our children's stories until they were ready to share them on their own.
This is getting really long (I can't believe anyone will really read all of this!), so I'm going to split the rest of this into another post. In Part 2, I'd like to write about 1) How we keep their stories private without making first families seem like a big, scary secret, and 2)What we do say about their first families to the boys and to other people.
(Whew!)
Yesterday I realized that it's National Delurking Week! Yikes, only two more days to ask you to delurk! Please introduce yourself in honor of the holiday. If you need something else to say besides "hello," try answering one or all of these questions (partially taken from Letters from the Zoo):
1) If I could only read one book this entire year, what should it be? (In other words, what book have you read and loved and think I should read, too?)
2) If you had $100 to spend just on yourself, what would you do? (No donations to charities-- this hypothetical world is without war, poverty, or disease.)
3) Do you have a blog? If you let me know where it is, I'd love to stop by.
Question #1: The Frequently Asked Question that far and away tops the list for our family is, "Are they twins?" Every time we step out the door at least one person asks this.
(I wrote a bit about why this question bothers me about a year ago. Here is a link to that post.)
Interestingly, the questioners are 100% white. We've been asked this hundreds of times, and yet never once has a person of color asked if they are twins. Hmmm...
There is a lot of interest, particularly in the China adoption community it seems, in finding siblings or twins of children who have been adopted. I'm pretty skeptical of the whole undertaking, partly because based on this "are they twins" experience with our boys, I don't trust the ability of white people to objectively evaluate whether people of color look alike or not.
Question #2: A second very common question is, "Are they brothers?" I invariably answer, "Yes."
Adoptive parents have a number of strategies for handling intrusive questions. Some parents might feel OK with saying, "They are brothers now, but Sparkle was born in South Africa and Pumpkin was born in Indiana." Some parents might respond with a question like, "Why do you ask?"
For our family, we invariably just answer the question, "Are they brothers?" with a polite but simple, "Yes."
I know that the questioner really wants to know if the boys are biologically related, but we decided that it doesn't matter what the questioner wants to know. What matters is what the boys hear in our reply.
If we allow the questioner to become the most important person in the exchange and answer every question of their idle curiosity, I think the boys will hear that we agree with the questioner that their connection to each other and to our family is open to interpretation.
We have some other ways of trying to strengthen the bond and connection between everyone in our family.
We really emphasize physically and verbally the connection between the four of us as family.
Probably every single day in our home, either Beloved or I will comment, "Oh, look! Our whole family is here in the kitchen!" (Or, "Our whole family is here in the bathroom!" which I'm sure any parent with toddlers can testify happens way too often!)
We hold hands around the table for dinner time prayer, deliberately to create a visual and physical connection to each other.
If Beloved and I are talking without the boys, and absolutely certainly if we are sitting together or hugging, the boys want to be a part of that. (Sometimes Beloved will actually say, "Let's see how long we can sit on the couch together by ourselves." I don't think it's ever been more than about 30 seconds before at least one of the boys joins us.) If one kid comes to join the hug, we'll make a point to say, "Oh no! We're missing one person in our family! Where is Sparkle?" and make a really big, happy deal of it once we are all together.
When Beloved arrives home and the boys come running, he lifts them both up, one in each arm and yells, "How many boys do I have?" And both the kids yell, "Two boys!!" They repeat this several times, and it is one of the greatest father/son exchanges I've ever seen.
Some of these things may seem really obvious. But you know, I think it should be obvious that the boys are brothers, and yet that gets questioned all the time. Maybe it's not so over the top to be deliberate about giving the boys the message that they belong together, they are brothers, and that our whole family belongs to one another.
(I'm hoping to do a bit of an "Adoption FAQ" series here over the next few weeks, starting with "Can white parents successfully raise Black children in the U.S?" If you'd like to suggest questions that you have yourself, or questions your family hears often, please let me know in the comments. And if you'd like to answer the same questions on your own blog, put a link to your answers in the comments.)
A big box arrived last weekend from Pumpkin's first mom, R. She made each of the boys two pillows featuring construction equipment, sports equipment, or Cars characters.
The boys were thrilled!
Sparkle now says that his old pillow is "too cold." (What?)
R. also sent a bunch of toy cars, which are now scattered all over the house. Pumpkin's favorite is the garbage truck, which he is holding in the first picture.
It was fun for the boys to get a package in the mail. And is was absolutely wonderful that R. sent gifts for Sparkle, too. He definitely feels a bit sad and left out sometimes because we don't get to talk to his first mom on the phone.
Hooray for presents!
