Growing Family

The Mom-Mobile

A couple months ago I was at a meeting with some other adoptive-mommy friends. We made every effort to talk till the last possible second, as we buckled our kids into their six five-point harness seats. Amie into her sporty Subaru outback, me in my beloved Audi wagon, and Jamie in her mini-van. Before leaving, Jamie backed up and put down her window to hang out and say "now girls, I know what you're thinking - you wish you were rocking a mini-van like me!" before she wheeled off.

We cracked up, and I held my keys lovingly, the keys with the first keyless entry feature I had ever owned. I drove home with my sunroof open, blasting (well, to kid-appropriate volume) my Bose stereo, feeling my car glide down I-40 towards home.

I've been anti-mini-van from the get go. In thinking about having a large family, I have worried about how to get them all around without owning a van. I have friends who have custom vans that fit, like, 15 people because their families are THAT BIG. Whoa.

Yesterday, the strangest thing happened. I was sitting on my porch, watching cars go by while the kids played with sticks. I was keeping my eyes peeled for a car that could seat seven. (I've seen one big SUV since being here, one in the Escalade/Yukon/Suburban size range) Then I spotted it! A small Honda wagon, like an Odyssey, but more compact. "That's it!" I thought. A mini-van! What a splendid idea!

Somewhere in the last five months, I seem to have lost the hate for the mini-van! Maybe it's the complete removal from American excess. Maybe it's the challenges we're facing in growing our family, and my increasing clarity over how much I want more children and how I want to raise them. I don't know, but suddenly, a mini-van just doesn't look that bad.

I think I'm growing up.

Transracial Adoption and the Grocery Store Checkout

Why do half of the stories about strangers asking stupid questions, occur in grocery checkout lines? There must be a bizarre aura emitted from the scanner, that addles people into saying strange things.

Today, the checkout lady asked (as they frequently do), "Is he your son?" (sometimes it's "are they both your children?). I smiled and nodded, absentmindedly, emitting my "I am not interested in discussing my family with you, stranger" vibe.

She watched us for awhile, over the bags, before saying "he looks like his father, and she looks like you." Okay lady, whatever floats your boat. Again, the absentminded nod and smile. If that's what makes the most sense to her when she sees my brown skin-hair-eyed boy and my blond-blue-pale daughter, well cheerio.

I've actually heard that one before. I always acquiesce. My children do look like me and their father, and I feel no need to clarify that the father my son looks like is not the father my daughter looks like. I am especially wary of the grocery line questions. There is no where to move off to, and nowhere to remove your child to when a stranger's questions start to make them squirm. If the "bug off" vibe doesn't work, or the silent treatment, a clear "mind your own business" is the last resort. Today, my lack of interest in her interest seemed to do the trick.

Friday Musings

I'm sitting down at the keyboard, with no plan of what to write...let's see what comes out of the keys.

It's been a very busy week or two. We've done stuff/seen people ten days out of the last eleven. That's some kind of world record for my home-body self.

Today, hanging out with a newish friend that I've spent quite a bit of time with, considering the length of time we've known each other, she was asking more about my background and how I grew up. She asked me again, as she has before, "how did you become who you are now, from the way you grew up?" She can't quite put together how my history leads into my present. And honestly, when she puts it that way, I feel a bit confused myself.

I am reluctant to talk too much about my childhood on this blog. I don't want to be cast as the poster child for an experience that other people could label with the heavy adjectives of "fundamentalist, conservative, home-schooled", as the connotation of those buzzword doesn't fit who I am at all. Today my friend asked me "did you churn your own butter?" Yes, once, for fun. It WAS fun. We put milk in a glass jar and took turns shaking it for FOREVER until we finally got it to thicken into cream, then butter. "Did you have a pony?" Yes, and a horse. "Did you read a lot, way out there, by yourself?" My whole family has always consumed massive amounts of reading material.

It was a bit of a rough transition from that world into the one I live in now. No one from my family (my parents included), live the way we lived while my siblings and I were growing up. There were ways that my childhood experience seemed lacking, and yet I feel so enriched by the experience as well.

Homeschooling gave me the opportunity to do so much. I got to explore interests to such a deep level. Nature walks, art projects, imaginative play, and reading, reading, reading. I found book work to be a bit tedious, but the life we led, out in the country, was a canvas for our childhood imaginations. We lived in a safe world there, where we could walk for hours in the woods, play down at the old mill catching crawdads and cooking them over a fire we built at the river's edge, playing house in an empty log cabin on our property...then, at a later house, finding a coyote's den with two cubs, exploring acres of pasture, sleeping in a tobacco barn under the sweet smelling leaves, sleeping on the trampoline, waking up cold and covered in dew. We were city folk, transplanted to the country, delirious with the fresh air and the freedom.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my own children and how to draw a bridge between the dreams in my head, and the choices I make in real life. In my head I see a kind of Pippy-Long-stocking meets Anne of Green Gables (and other fantastic L.M. Montgomery characters) meets The Chronicles of Narnia, childhood for my children. A cornerstone of that dream is a large, interesting house with nooks and crannies, and unexpected windows. Then, the house must be full of children, either permanent family members or those seeking temporary solace in a warm, happy home. Our table must always have space for the traveler, and under our eaves we should always be able to fit in one more sleeper. Then there's pets - they should be many.

I want a boisterous, happy, tangled life, full of joys and tears and whole-hearted living. I want "scope for the imagination" (Montgomery, again) in our living. While I don't plan to home-school my own children, I want to achieve the same opportunities for creativity and experimentation that I had.

How do I do that in the city (or country), as part of a school system, and a neighborhood, or a community? I experienced it within my family, wild and free, living following our fancy, out in the country, unfettered by any social system. Can I achieve that within the context that I am choosing to raise my own family?

Hm. Don't know. Must try.

On the whole topic of children, for anyone still interested in the process of expatriate adoption, good news for ex-pats! American citizens living abroad can now pursue domestic infant adoption, regardless of their "domicile" or "habitant resident" status. Unfortunately, that doesn't change things for us, as the wall erected between us and adoption is standing on the Australian immigration side of the issue, but it is a big hurdle overcome for other families.

My parents come in, count 'em, 9 days. SO EXCITED. We're going to take a road trip to Nelson's Bay to stay in a cabin in the woods, near the beach. The park is part of a nature preserve that harbors Koalas, amongst other things. How cool is that?

We've felt the mornings getting warmer. Although the setting is different, I can instinctively feel, in the change of the light and the temperature, that spring will be coming soon. I wonder what it will be like?

Lots on my mind. Lots of brooding. Sighs. Questions. Reading. Dreaming at night, before I fall asleep, and then some more before I wake. I'm dreaming of birth and labor, stretching and beginnings.

What will our lives be like?

The Closer

So, I'm a fan of the show The Closer but this week's episode really upset me. It's a murder investigation show and this week the victim was a 13 year old adoptee from Russia. Spoiler alert, be warned.

The character displayed all the "classic" symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder, the prize-winner of potentially scary developments in adopting a child that has experienced trauma. To me, RAD is my greatest fear when I consider adopting older children, though children adopted quite young can go on to exhibit symptoms (and it certainly isn't confined to children that are adopted). I think most adoptive parents, and probably the general public, can think of some horrible situation they've heard about where a family adopted children that wreaked havoc and violence in the home. It is a truly scary disorder.

The case is resolved when the investigator maneuvers the parents into confessing to the murder of their son. The father admits that after the first blow, he was overwhelmed by his feelings that the boy "wasn't mine, he wasn't from me" or something like that. The mother wept that the boy was so horrible, they were so trapped.*

To me, the truly unfortunate conclusion of the episode was that the main character, along with her partner, have a discussion about buying a house that will accommodate children in the future, or not. She votes against the larger house, and by extension, children. Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but as the character is at the end of her potential childbearing years, (they have explored her entering menopause in previous episodes) the message came across loud and clear: if adoption is our option for children, and adoption includes the possibility for a child with RAD, better go without children rather than risk that possibility.

So, from my perspective, not only did the writers prey on adoptees and their loss and pain for cheap tv thrills, they also played into parent's greatest fears when considering adoption. I am disappointed in the show, and am pained for any people experiencing adoption who see it, not to mention the general public who doesn't need any more fear-mongering when it comes to adoption.

*I am a huge advocate of special families for special children, as I think Jae Ran Kim phrased it. Many adoption agencies don't have any special requirements for families adopting children with special parenting needs (older children, children with disabilities, children that have experienced significant trauma, siblings groups), and adopting families are often under prepared and lack the resources and support necessary to contribute to the success of placement. Both the children and the parents are ill-served when they enter an adoption without training or resources and I think agencies can do so much better to minimize the stress and difficulty these placements can entail.

Sports-Fear-School and Dancing

Last night I spent some times watching the Olympics, and it got me thinking about my history with sports. Actually, "history" is misleading, as I have never played any sports in my life, yet history is accurate in that I have had a long and tainted relationship with them.

Growing up as I did, a home-school kid living out in the boonies, I never played any team sports. I didn't have any kind of structured interaction with other kids my age before sixth grade, which was when my mom put me in my first supplemental tutorial program. Being a very self-conscious, fearful child, the idea of team sports (with strangers!), seemed dangerous, both physically and socially. So, as soon as the opportunity arose for me to participate, I started looking for ways to avoid them.

Sometime around then, I did do gymnastics and I was doing all right until we got to back handsprings and the uneven parallel bars. Anything that required me launching myself from safety towards a potentially painful landing terrified me, so I manufactured outs for myself "can I go get a drink of water? I need to run to the bathroom. I'm not feeling so great." You get the picture. I made sure to "try" once or twice so I wouldn't look like a quitter, before...quitting.

I discovered ballet when I was about eleven or twelve, I think. I loved it from the beginning. Even in ballet class, though, I was horribly uncomfortable. Class rules said that we should wear leotards and tights, no skirts, unless there was a special exemption. My parents insisted I wear a skirt, for reasons of modesty, and every class I felt myself getting hot with embarrassment as I put on my skirt, standing out in the line of black leotards and pink tights (the same shade on each extended leg).

From then on, ballet became my ticket out of team sports. In ninth grade, I lived in Russia, studying with a tutor, and dancing with a retired ballerina. Upon returning to the States for 10th grade, I decided to go to public school with my best friend at the time. I requested a transfer to go to a school I wasn't zoned for, under the auspices of my interest in their photography program, which was unique to the district. That wasn't too much of a stretch. My dad and brother were both studying photography together and we had a dark room in our basement. I could get into it.

I got the schedule for my classes at the public school. Terrified does not even begin to describe how I felt at the prospect of going to school, for the first time, at 15 (or however old you are in 10th grade). My schedule started with gym. 7 -something in the morning, gym class. I inquired to see if I could opt out, or do something else. I asked my friend if they really made you, you know, do gym stuff in gym? Unless you were on your period, or had a migraine, they did. The day before school started, I decided not to go. It wasn't really right for me. Actually, I was too terrified of going to gym class to try to go to that school, even though I wanted to.

I'm still not sure how it was that I enrolled that same week for a private, college prep tutorial program that met two days a week for other home-school kids like me.  I'm pretty sure they always have a waiting list. Anyway, I remember sitting in the director's living room for my admissions review. She would become one of my favorite teachers, challenging me to read critically and write thoughtfully. I made sure that I could count ballet class as my physical education credits.

In "high school", at the tutorial program, I used to spend study hall sitting in the gym, watching kids play basketball, dodge-ball, soccer; I wanted to play so badly. It looked like so much fun. But I had no tools to cross the barrier I had erected between myself and team sports.

I was a fairly successful dancer, but even there, fear hemmed me in. Turns were always my weakness - the fear of being out of control, looking foolish.

My sister is a soccer player. I enjoyed helping her practice, kicking a soccer ball around the back yard, feeling athletic. I come from a family that is strong. My dad was a star athlete in school, but somehow, he left that behind along with many other things that he found to be shallow and meaningless in his teen years.  My mother in her fifties is more fit than I. I don't fear my body aging because I see my potential in my mother's strong limbs.

Watching the runners sprinting down the track, cameras zooming in close to reveal pursed lips, cheeks flapping, fingers straining, legs stretching out so long in front and behind, I feel so much emotion. Seeing how alive they are in that moment, committed completely to the movement, fear is absent, pain is forgotten, they are strong, strong, strong. I look at my body and I see the raw material for success. I look in my heart and feel so much fear: fear of failure, fear of being ridiculous, fear of injury. I wonder what it is that makes them run so hard, jump so high, swim so fast? I hope that as I introduce my own children to the world of competitive sports, that I find the joy I missed in my own childhood. I still can.

Assimilation and Acculturation: Tough Stuff

First of all, may I just say that you all are superb and I think I am spoiled with some of the best online friends!

I've spent a lot of time thinking about assimilation,  acculturation, and cultural appropriation. Go ahead, click and read if you're not familiar with these terms. They're good ones to know.

Most of my processing on these issues has been around my role as a white mother to a son with African American heritage. As I seek to connect as much as I can, and learn all I can, I try to remain cognizant that I am not black, I cannot innately know about the black experience, and I don't have the right to consider myself part of black communities. A lot of adoptive families believe otherwise. It's not uncommon to hear people say something like "now that we have a daughter from China, it's like we're Chinese too!" My son is not a pass. I can do everything I can to provide him a comfortable proximity to his culture, but it's not my culture. Having African art in my home, and books by African American authors on my bookshelf, and brown faces on our dolls does not make me black. Anyway, I digress... That is the context in which I usually think about assimilation, acculturation, and cultural appropriation, but today I want to try to talk about something else.

Because of the horrific history many countries have connected to these terms (think Native American and Aboriginal children separated from their families in forced assimilation programs, stripping them of their cultural values and practices in order to bring them into mainstream -European, "Christian", western- culture), I always think of them in a mostly negative way.

Since being here in Australia, I've heard a sentiment that was not at all uncommon back home, and one I heard often in Holland as well: "If you don't want to speak our language and join our culture, go home." Basically, assimilate or leave. The dominant culture can take what they like, via cultural appropriation, and reject anything that doesn't "fit". The difference, is that previously, I'd always heard members of the dominant culture expressing that sentiment, and here I'm hearing it from immigrants. Here are some examples:

When we were buying our car we spent several hours with the car salesman. Towards the end of the transaction, he started a more personal conversation with me about our move here. He asked if we had had any troubles, as foreigners and was pleasantly surprised when I said our experience had been positive. He shared that he moved here 30 years ago, from South America, and was tormented by his peers at school. He said that so much has changed, and now when people find out he has South American roots, they think it is interesting and appreciate his heritage. He said that there are two kinds of people migrating to Australia, people who want to leave the politics and problems of them homeland behind, to come and become Aussie, and people who try to drag their home country with them, refusing to assimilate and making all sorts of problems. "If you don't want to be Aussie, go home", he said.

A friend originally from Indonesia, and living in Sydney after living in the U.S. told me about the trouble her daughter is having in school. Her daughter is in a class with predominently Korean classmates, who don't speak English in the classroom. The Korean mothers do not talk to her, or make connections outside of their community. My friend feels that this is hindering her daughter's education and she is considering changing classes or even schools. The sentiment is, if you want to be here, speak English, make and effort, assimilate.

Most of our friends here are not Anglo Australians. Most of them began life in another country, speaking another language. Yet, cultural heritage doesn't seem to be a very big deal to them. They want their children to be Aussie. I don't know of any of our friends who are teaching their children their first languages (which is understandably difficult given many of them are inter-ethnic marriages with two first languages represented). And when I've asked how they help maintain their family's cultural identity for their children, within Australian culture, I've gotten the hairy eye.

Coming from a framework where I've only been aware of two modes: majority culture forcing assimilation on everyone, and minority culture/ethnic/religious/linguistic families struggling to maintain those things for their children, the attitude I see here seems quite foreign to me. People say "we came here to be Aussie." Basically, to live the Australian dream (which is pretty much the same as the American dream): a better life for our children, a stable political environment, opportunities, advancement. Nurturing cultural identity doesn't seem to be such a big part of that. When I look around at our friends, I can imagine that their children won't be able to speak to their grandparents except in English, they won't know how to prepare the dishes their parents make, they may find their grandparent's religion to be odd, and their frame of reference for the world will be completely Western.

I'm really trying to understand this sentiment, and withhold judgment. I wonder if this is the way migrants to American processed things for a long while? Leaving the home-country identity behind to become a proud American? Is the current focus in American that you can be "both", more of a recent development?

For the first time this has implications for my own life as well. If we stay, will I become Aussie? When my children develop Australian accents and this place shapes their world view (as is evidenced already in the insistence of "biscuit", not cookie, and "wee", not pee), will I be fine to let our Dutch and American heritage slip away? I can't imagine that I will...but then my situation is quite different from many people immigrating from hardship, persecution, or lack of opportunity. It's something I keep thinking about...trying to understand this fierce Aussie pride that is predominant over historical ties.

Mucking About

This may not come as a surprise to you, or more likely, you'll never even know I posted this, because the truth of the matter is, readers are dropping like flies from my blog. There are still a few faithful, and I love each of you!

I've been thinking about what's going on and I think there are a couple factors. First, well, I haven't been writing much. If you want people to read and comment, it kind of helps to give them something to read, eh? I do recognize that basic fact. However, this blog being the cathartic medium I've always treasured it to be, means that I don't write stuff just to have a post up. I write something when I have something to process, or something to say.

It's not that I haven't been processing lately...I actually have a lot on my mind. For some strange reason, that goes beyond all of the history of my personality, I am processing inside. My inner processes aren't often surfacing in conscious words and lines of thought, they are more like the currents, under the surface of the water. I always process out loud. Lately, I'm not emailing my girlfriends, I'm not even really trying to talk to The Captain. I've been journaling a bit, but what is happening in me seems so private. How odd that as I write this, I don't even know what I am talking about! Okay, that's not entirely true. There are two issues which are very personal, or very painful, that aren't public material, but in general there's just a lot of undeveloped processing happening inside of me.

So, that's the bit about my thoughts being stuck inside and not coming out. The other bit is that my blog is lacking definition right now. It is not adoption-focused enough to draw the adoption crowd, and the same is true for parenting, and ex-pat-living, not to mention our ex-pat experience isn't really exciting enough to draw those readers. Since I write a little bit about a variety of things, I'm not pulling any one crowd, and I'm not gaining new readers.

Then there's also the very real possibility that I've turned people off somewhere.

So, what do I do? I don't want to shut my blog down, but this internal processing is really cramping my style. I don't want to go on a post-a-thon, trying to draw readers. And I don't want to go out fishing for readers. Kind of sounds like I'm really not that passionate about keeping this thing going, doesn't it?

The thing is, life is seasonal, and for me, blogging is too. I think I am in a quiet season where I am going deep, in order to get ready for what comes next.  It's like a long inhale, before I start sprinting. I feel like I need some time to close my eyes, and listen to the stillness. So, maybe a blog sabbatical? I'm just afraid that if I go away entirely for a period of time, no one will be here when I come back...and that would be too bad because I really like sharing this here, with you.

Just a couple thoughts...the ones that made it to the surface, at least.

The 8th Year

May it be sweet.

Hair: The Identifying Factor

Small Sun's awareness of his skin color and hair texture, as well as those of others, is just exploding right now. All of a sudden he is seeing differences, and commenting on them.

Today, walking in our neighborhood, we passed a(n Asian) couple. Small Sun exclaimed, "hey, they were like B and J!" (Aussie friends of Vietnamese and Chinese heritage) I asked "what was it about them that was like B and J?" Small Sun replied, "their hair!"

For my little guy, hair is the defining factor. Not twenty minutes later, at the playground, we sighted a biracial boy we'd met before. He was at a distance so Small Sun didn't get to talk to him, but he picked him out of a crowd and said "that boy has curly hair like me!"

I can't tell you how relieved I am that we made this move before his awareness started to really come into focus. The color palette of the people in our lives changed overnight. At a recent birthday party for The Captain, there were a couple other people of European descent, but the majority migrated here with their families, from Asian and South East Asian countries. We also have a number of friends in inter-ethnic marriages, parenting mixed-ethnicity children. I am so relieved that when he starts to wonder about our family not "matching", that I have lots of friends to illustrate that families need not match. We still haven't connected with any of the members of our church with African heritage, but for now I am content that in children's church, at playgroup, and at the park, rather than being one of the only beautiful brown faces, now his is just a lovely addition to a multi-colored group.

Twisty Straws, Uteri, and Babies

Adoption professionals encourage parents to start telling their children their birth and adoption stories right from the beginning so that by the time your child is old enough to ask questions and interact with the storytelling, you have worked out all the kinks in how you want to explain their history, as well as having become comfortable with the story itself and the unfamiliar terminology you may use (like birth mother, etc).  Like a good little adoptive mommy, I set right to work explaining as best I could, trying to find an easy and comfortable way to explain adoption to a young child. Actually, it's never been easy for me, even before Small Sun responded to what I was saying.

Maybe I have trouble because I'm the kind of person who wants to know ALL the details about something, and I have a hard time paring Small Sun's adoption story down to developmentally appropriate sound-bites. The way we can explain adoption to a child can seem overly simplistic - leaving out such dynamic, weighty, and crucial information. Yet, an infant or preschooler doesn't need to know EVERYTHING. Nevertheless, I always feel tongue-tied as I try to sort out what to say now.

I am always eager to hear from parents with children slightly older than mine, when their child(ren) began to listen to the story, taking it in and asking questions. After three years of telling a very important story to a sweet boy who just looks back at me with no comprehension and smiling eyes, Small Sun is starting to ask questions. I am simultaneously relieved and panicked. It is easier for me to respond to his interest than just blanketing him with information. Yet, what if he asks something I don't know how to answer? Ah! What if something I tell him leads him to feel negatively about his self worth? It's scary stuff.

Right now, Small Sun's current obsession is with sorting out who was in whose belly? At breakfast the other day, he was asking how a baby eats in a mummy's tummy (no matter how many times I say womb or uterus, he firmly sticks to tummy!). I tried to explain the umbilical cord to him but found it quite complex! Then he wanted to talk about how he was in his first mommy's tummy, and we also talked about the Sprout being in my tummy and how both of them ate through their umbilical cords. He was really interested and wanted to keep talking about it. As I was clearing away the dishes I told him that I had a book to show him and that he should ask me to see it, in case I forgot.

Not five minutes later he ran up and said "I want to see the book about how the baby drinks through the cord!" So off we went. I pulled out It's Not the Stork, so thankful that I'd bought it last year, even though it seemed like ages before my kids would be ready for it. (Some find it to be a controversial book in that it has full pictures of anatomy, and discusses different family structures, including same-sex parents, but I really appreciate it's inclusion of adoption as a family-building method as well as its inclusion of mixed race families, and multi-generational illustrations.) Skipping over everything else, I showed him the picture of a baby in a mother's womb and explained how the umbilical cord is like a twisty straw, bringing food and oxygen to the baby. Then I opened up his birth book and we looked at pictures of his first mother, with her very pregnant belly. Next we looked at pictures of me with my very pregnant belly. We talked about how he was in his First Mom's womb, and the Sprout was in my womb, but that they both got food and oxygen through their umbilical cords.

Today he wanted to talk about what his First Mom ate when she was pregnant. He wanted to know when she ate, and if he ate that through the umbilical cord. Then he wanted to know what I ate when I was pregnant. Sometimes he insists he was in my "tummy", (even when we're looking at photographs of me with him, while I was pregnant), and then he starts talking about how he was in Sprout's tummy, or they were in the Captain's tummy...but I think he is playing at that for fun. He finally seems to be sorting out that he didn't grow in me, even though we've been talking about that from day 1.

I think it's important to keep talking adoption, regardless of whether or not your children ask about it, just so that they know it's an open topic and they can always ask anything they like. Even so, I find myself tongue-tied. I hope that it gets easier with time, but I suspect not.