Our Global Village

I’m always amazed at the people who I hear saying things like “We thought about domestic adoption but we didn’t want the birth parents involved so we decided to go the international route.” Maybe it’s because I’ve spent so much time abroad but don’t people realize that the rest of the world has internet too? Phone lines, cable tv, and airplanes have arrived in every country that has signed the Hague treaty which means that as adoptive parents we all need to understand the phrase “global village” in a new and personal way.
Internet Cafe and bookstore in Bangkok Shopping Mall
One of my favorite essays from Adoptive Families was an adoptive mom’s story of how 15 years after bringing their son home from Korea her phone rang and a lovely young woman’s voice explained that she was their son’s biological mom. She had immigrated to America and now lived in California. Would a reunion be possible? Another blog I read tells of a Chinese-Canadian girl’s struggle to reunion with her entire first family in Taiwan via a computer voice translator which takes her words and turns them into Mandarin. Cool, huh? And complicated.
I think both of those stories are amazing in that they are examples of two children from international adoption who are having the opportunity to meet their parents! I truly believe that these stories are going to become more and more frequent for families formed through international adoption and I rejoice in it. Every child has a right to an understanding of their genetic (and cultural) identity.
Brian and I hope that we can make contact with Button’s other parents. We hope that we can develop a relationship with them early on while Button is still young. In our ideal world there would be no earth shattering moment in Button’s twenties when he would have to go out and find his biological parents. We would love to exchange emails, pictures, letters and visit whenever we are in Thailand. However, we know that adoption is about as far from an ideal world as you can get. We understand that they may not want relationship with our family. They may not have left any contact info. They may not be able to face the loss.
Sometimes I try to imagine what it would feel like to loose a child to relinquishment. I imagine what it would feel like to be in contact with his adoptive family. I do think I would want contact: pictures, phone calls, a chance to explain things when he was older. I also think that I would be really jealous of his mom. I might even hate her a little. I think there would be a lot of days when I was simply incapable of talking to any of them. It might get better with time but it might just get worse. Contemplating these ideas is awful but I make myself do it so that whatever the future holds for my relationship with Button’s other mother I can hold my arms out with fullness. Button deserves that and she deserves it too.
– Rosemary

Vocabulary Test 101

I’ve been thinking a lot about adoption phraseology lately. Even though so very much has already been said about this stuff I’m really taking some time to think about it for myself. Why? Because words matter. They are arguably one of the most important parts of our lives. For example:

“I do.”
“I have faith.”
“I love you.”
“To serve and protect.”
Those are just some famous words that mean something to all of us but in reality the little words that float around every day (and they way in which they are said) are much more important than those biggies. I have never really seen the point in sugar coating things. A lot of people might call me blunt. However, I am not tactless. It is important to say truthful things gently but to say them all the same.
I feel like a lot of adoption lingo is designed to sugar coat obvious truths (and lies). What’s wrong with being blunt? Remember, I am not talking about being tactless and hurtful. I’m just talking about plain language. I also think it’s important to keep age appropriate language in mind. I might have a certain honest discussion with my teenager at a very different vocabulary level than when she was two. I’m certainly not proposing we tell a 4-year-old they’re the product of rape. However, I grow increasingly concerned that giving our kids a song and dance full of empty adoption-ese jargon that has no meaning outside of our carefully constructed mini-society isn’t going to help them understand their losses any better.
A survey was done some years ago in which they passed out a vocabulary test to elementary age children from fundamentalist, Christian homes. All the kids had to do was define the terms on the paper. The terms were the everyday jargon used at their church and in their homes. Vocabulary like: “Born again” “Washed in the blood” “The Salvation of the Lamb” “The Mercy Seat of God”. Only the oldest children (6th graders) scored higher than 30% correct. But after the written test there was an oral exam and when the children were asked to put the phrase in a sentence almost all of them could use the vocabulary correctly. That is a classic example of speaking to children through the vocabulary of a sub-culture that the parent has chosen. Much like a child repeating a dirty word, kids can parrot their adults all day long but it doesn’t indicate they understand what it means.
So the next time we’re tempted to explain our children’s questions away by bantering around an adoptshop slogan such as: “real mom,” “Forever families,” “Grown in my heart not under it,” “Tummy mummy,” “gotcha day is my favorite holiday,” “adoption is another word for love,” and my own personal horror “chosen not adopted”. Lets ask ourselves, “Do my kids have any idea how to define these ideas on a short-answer test?” If they can’t then maybe we need to use some plain language. It may not look as good on a bumper sticker but it might just clear some stuff up.
– Rosemary

Dream Dust

As I’m sure every waiting parent can bear witness with, when you’re in the middle of an adoption there are days when it just feels impossible to keep going. Other days, it seems as if faith swells up inside you and carries you to a place of peace. A gentle golden light assures you that you will become a family in exactly the right time, which is neither early nor late, but will arrive in simple perfection.

As a PAP, I’m doing my best (but frequently failing) to keep my mouth shut when the days are bad (oh so bad) and singing my thanks when the days are good. After all, I want to put something positive out there. I want to be as encouraging to others as they have been to me because I do truly feel that we are all in this together!
Today is a good day for me so I thought I would share something that has meant a great deal to me on this journey. It’s one of my favorite poems written by a man who had a lot more to overcome than bureaucratic red tape, extending wait times, and incomplete fingerprints. Hailing from a mixed race family, he had to face ultimate racism during a dark time and still he wrote this:
“Gather out of star-dust
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
and splinters of hail,
one handful of dream dust
not for sale.”
– Langston Hughes
This dream of a loving family for our child has been gathered out of many difficult moments, most especially for Button, but it is not for sale.
– Rosemary

Baby Dream

So I had a baby dream a couple of nights ago. It was one of those dreams that I feel only my fellow adoptive parents can fully appreciate. You know what I mean: weird yet kinda funny and probably not at all what pregnant women are dreaming about.


I was sitting in this giant auditorium jam-packed full of women. There wasn’t a man in sight. Then a woman, dressed in a Jacki Kennedy pink suit and pill box hat, walked onto the stage and started talking into the microphone and everyone got so excited that they all started whispering amongst themselves. I became really panicky that I was missing important instructions. I wanted to stand up and scream, “Be Quiet! Don’t you know what the social workers will do to us if we don’t hear the rules?” But I was too anxious to say anything.
Suddenly a bunch of ladies, dressed in scrubs, stepped out from the wings of the stage – they were all carrying babies. The boy babies were dressed in blue and the girl babies were dressed in pink. The speaker started on the front row of the auditorium and began handing an infant to each woman. First a girl and then the next seat would get a boy. Then a girl then a boy. Everyone was crying and cooing and cheering! Today was the day we were getting babies!! But I couldn’t relax I kept looking around for Brian and thinking how awful it was that he was missing this. Where were all the husbands? The baby-giver woman was getting closer when the lady seated next to me said, “Rosemary, look at the rotation. You can tell that when she gets to you you’re going to get a girl!” When I looked up at the woman’s face I realized, in that dreamlike way, that it was fellow blogger Yoli (who I have never seen) so I said, “But that can’t be right. They told us to expect a boy.”

Then the baby-giver handed me this tiny pink wrapped bundle and I just felt this sense of amazement like I’ve never before experienced. Holding my new daughter I turned to the person I just knew to be Yoli and said, “What should I do now?” and Yoli said, “Oh well, you want to get pre-paid college right away.”

Adoption nerves? Table for one!
– Rosemary

Here We Go Again

As much as we hated to take a break from this space and all our blogging buddies we really did need to. We have had a very hard couple of months. You can probably all relate when we say, “You know those seasons in life where it seems that every single thing you lay your hand to breaks into a million pieces, the shards fly in your eyes and then days later as you finally attempt to clean it all up guys in hazmat suits rush in and inform you that the pieces are radio-active and you’ve been contaminated.” Well, we’ve been having one of those seasons. Everything that could possibly go wrong has.

We just needed to put everything that wasn’t completely necessary on hold and pull focus. We needed to slow down and give everything we had to getting into a better place. But here we are, thanks to the support of our friends and family, and God’s unending love so we’re happy to be back at the old blog: typing away into cyberspace. Please allow us to thank all of you who left encouraging comments and sent us kind emails and messages. We truly do appreciate our internet stranger-friends. So many of you have become dear to us even though we don’t officially know you!
We’re glad to be back. We missed you guys.
– Rosemary and Brian

Blackout


We all hit bumps in the road – no matter where we are going – and I appear to have hit mine. This blog is going dark for a while. Best wishes to all those waiting. We’ll see you when the lights come back on.

– Rosemary

Six Months!


This weekend is our six month-a-versary of being on the list. On September 28th, 2008 Holt received our dossier and we officially went on the list at number 29. Of course we started this process 15 months ago but I’m not even going to let myself think about everything that went wrong with our homestudy. So anyway, we’re going to celebrate a little because six months is a big deal!!

I really can’t believe we made it this far. I remember mailing that package and thinking “It’s happening”! I was so excited to finally really be waiting but at the same time I couldn’t believe how much further we had to go. Now we’ve survived 6 months of it and sometimes it seems as though it flew by and other days I’m amazed the house is still standing and we’re both still alive. For those of you not surviving an adoption, yes, it’s been a bit stressful.
So for everyone who just started the process: As impossible as it seems, time will eventually pass.
And for everyone ahead of us: Let’s get those late-late-late March referrals in and find out how much we’ve all moved up this line!
May the next six months bring each and every one of us closer to our children,
– Rosemary

I am not Paper Pregnant

“Paper Pregnant” is an interesting phrase to me. More interesting I suppose is it’s popularity in the adoption world. I don’t say it or use it as a description of my mood or wear t-shirts with it blazed across the front. But I know girls who do. Lovely, sweet, caring women who don’t feel uncomfortable with it. Let me say right up front: I AM NOT JUDGING!
But give me a chance to explain why I don’t go there. I understand the impulse. Really I do. There is a “secret society of pregnancy” that adoptive moms get left out of. There is an implied and sometimes obvious lack of respect for anyone who isn’t giving birth. I have had condescending remarks made to me and outright attacks on my womanhood. I once had a family member announce that a woman’s I.Q. goes up ten points after she becomes a mother. She then gave a long pause, looked around the room, allowed her gaze to stop on me and said, “Well, only if you’re pregnant first.” BTW – that information is completely untrue!
So after we, the incredibly un-pregnant adoptive moms, experience a couple of moments like that I think we begin to build up an almost feral need to protect our “nesting” experience. We are becoming mothers. Some of us for the first time! We too are expecting a child. We are going through a huge amount of stress not to mention physical, emotional, and financial drain. Instead, at family dinners everyone is busy talking about Susy-Q’s latest sonogram. Isn’t that kind of what it boils down to? Everyone just wants their due? We all just want a little credit and sympathy for our own life experience? All of our pregnant friends and family members are getting theirs and many people cannot understand what the adoption experience means so we cleverly label it “Paper Pregnant” so they can grasp that we’re facing parenthood.
However, the reason we don’t use “Paper Pregnant” in our household is because we do all want a little credit – that’s the human condition. And I’m not pregnant. She is. Button’s other mother is pregnant and I think she deserves the credit for it. I have no idea what her life has been like but I bet nobody threw her a baby shower. I bet she has not had it easy and I bet she has had more than her fair share of unpleasant comments from friends and family and maybe even strangers. So I don’t want to take even a shred of her credit. She gets it all.
Adopting isn’t easy but I don’t want a t-shirt that says “Paper Pregnant” because in my opinion those words don’t go together. Someone very real is very pregnant and she will suffer the loss of a child because of her circumstances. I think whatever hits I’m taking during this time are minor in comparison. I know it isn’t much but I guess it’s a gesture of solidarity with her. It’s one way that we’re showing our respect for both her pregnancy and our adoption. They are two completely different things and we shouldn’t have to masquerade our process as something it’s not just to get a little support. We feel very grateful for all she’s doing and the irreplaceable bond she’s creating with Button during this time and I would never try to assume any of that relationship by valuing my own experience more highly than hers.
– Rosemary

The Name Game

Brian and I have finally made the decision not to use our child’s name on this blog. Please don’t assume that we think people who do that are in the wrong because WE DON’T!! It’s nothing remotely like that. We just want to give our baby and his biological family as much privacy as possible. Lately we have been getting a lot of hits from around the world, which is really fun and we’re thrilled to share our lives but we know that our child may not have a personality that feels comfortable with our level of openness and we want to respect that.

So exactly how are we going to refer to our child in blogland for all of time? Good question! Obviously we can’t say “him/her” because that would be maddening and we have no intention of saying “our child” forever because that sounds like we’re suffering from an ownership complex. So we’ve been searching for some kind of moniker that would reflect a specific baby or toddler who we don’t yet know, have never met or seen and are as yet unaware of their sex. Hmmmm…
Have you ever noticed how you can take a plain old shirt, nothing special at all, and dress it up in a hundred different ways just by adding buttons? You can take the same shirt from simple to fancy to silly just by changing the button. Well, Brian and I are all ready. We are just waiting to find out how this family is going to look once our own unique Button is sewn on.
We’re still trying to decide if we’re going to post pictures of Button once he or she arrives. For now the jury is hung on that one.
– Rosemary

Learning Thai

Even though this is officially “our” adoption blog most of you will have noticed that Rosemary does almost all the writing. My contribution here is mostly as a copy-editor. I’m not really a creative writing kind of guy but our adoption is very important to me and I think about it a lot.

One thing I feel more confident about, and that I’m trying to do more frequently, is blogging about Thai language and culture in as much as we know (but we’re learning more every day). It’s tremendously important to us that we become conversant in the language and culture of our children’s birth country. This not only gives them as strong a sense of their Thai heritage as two farang can offer, but lets them know that it’s not just them – it’s us. We are a Thai-American family. Not in the traditional sense, certainly, but I think in a very real way nonetheless.

We’ve both been to Thailand before – Rosemary many more times than me – and picked up some tourist Thai. Rosemary has a big leg up on me there too, but we’ve really set into a schedule of studying Thai now. One of my more ambitious goals is to become literate in Thai, too. For those of you who don’t know, Thai script looks like this:

So, that seems pretty impossible at first. But I’m actually making some progress and can sound out the yellow and red sign above (I don’t know what it means, but I can pronounce it – I think). Since many of our friends in the Thai adoption community are also trying to learn some amount of our children’s birth language, I thought I’d share some resources I’ve found recently:

– A great cheap source for the popular Rosetta Stone software here – $85 for Level 1 (it’s only available in level 1 for Thai, but that’s still about 60% off!)

-Strangely, Northern Illinois University has an excellent Thai program. They have many of their curricula on their website. This site includes a link to Maani, which is a traditional Thai grade school reader that has been made into an online interactive tool to learn to read Thai. I highly recommend it!

-Thai-language.com is another great resource with lots of materials for beginners through advanced learners and has a great interactive speaking Thai-English dictionary.

-Spokenthai.com has lots of good recorded dialogues and stories to attune your ear to the tones and practice your pronunciation.

-For those of you who, like me, need a textbook sometimes to explain some grammar or pronunciation rules, there is an excellent one online here.

-And finally, practice makes perfect! Flashcards for learning the alphabet and vocabulary can be found here and here. I’ve also found a great tracing sheet for practicing your Thai letters – if anyone is that into learning Thai (I tend to get obsessive), please email me and I can send them to you.

I hope these websites will be helpful for some of you who are as interested as I am in this project of learning Thai. It’s a great way to pass the time while you’re waiting for a referral or TA! I’d like it if we could share educational resources among ourselves as Thai adoptive families. If anyone has more great websites, please email them to me, and I’ll share them here. Who knows – I’ve even been thinking of making a little “Thai I learned this week” post. Good luck!

– Brian

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