A Word from Brian

I haven’t written lately, so I thought I’d make one of my rare contributions to the blog. The last time I wrote I was talking about our efforts at learning some Thai. Let’s just say I know about as much now as I did then. Like Rosemary said, we had a hard month or so, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to hit the books. But now I’m recommitted to the effort, and I’m going to be getting around to my “Thai word of the week” posts soon.

But I recently had a baby dream of my own – my first really memorable one. The dream didn’t have much of a plot, but did have some very vivid images. I could see us with our son, and on our way to meet a daughter. And then a very clearly remembered vision of my holding her. I guess that’s technically two dreams now in favor of our having a girl but we honestly just want our child, whoever he or she is. So, I had no dialogue or other people, or strange “baby rooms” like Rosemary’s dream, but I woke up feeling very peaceful, and optimistic that everything’s going to work out just fine.
I’m really starting to feel anxious about getting our referral. The wait has been interminable, as those of you who’ve adopted or are waiting can attest. I guess we’ve still just got time left to go, though. More time to work on our Thai, right? I’m sure that as we get swept up in the summer, and moving, my starting a new job, time will really start to fly by and we’ll be there before we know it.
But for now, I’m missing you, Button, wherever you are.
Love,
Dad

Asian Baby Dolls

Like most of the educated world I am a big fan of kids having positive representations of their own race. I think they have a right to toys and picture books and role models on Sesame Street who look like them. The professionals tell us it is healthy and we can all see how that is obviously true. As mixed-race families we have to work that much harder because the biggest role models our children will ever have, their parents, are not the same race as them. When I think about that for too long it blows my mind. Actually, it terrifies me.

I know that sometimes we all wish the craftsmanship of these dolls was better or different but hey most white dolls aren’t authentic looking either. Anybody really looked at the face of a Cabbage Patch recently? I’m not saying that my kids won’t own white dolls. In fact, I hope that we’ll own white, black, latino and asian dolls because who made this rule that we could only play with dolls of our own race? The idea of that makes me uncomfortable especially when my family isn’t even composed of just one race.
In its most recent issue Adoptive Families did an article on some of their favorite dolls representing diversity. So here is a partial list of some of my favorite Asian dolls that are presently on the “TO-BUY” list. What are your favorites and where can we buy them? BTW – you can find all of these at Live and Learn.

This crib doll is simply beautiful and may make it into our first care package!

I think this “learn to dress” doll is really fun.

This is probably my favorite one design wise. I love her sweet face.

This is a prissy little lady for the girly preschooler!
The hip skater girl for your 4th grade demographic. Mom’s last ditch effort when they’re almost too old for dolls!

What Day Is It?

Tiny Confession to make – I refuse to go to church on Mother’s Day. It’s one of my hallmark rules for living a happy life:

1.) Always bake with real butter.
2.) Never date a drummer.
3.) Childless couples should not attend church on Mother’s Day.
After they pass out the flowers, candy, buttons or other gifty shpeil to all the moms walking in then they will ask all the moms to stand for a special blessing. Sometimes they even do a little contest for the oldest mother present and the youngest mother present. Then the minister will speak about the power of praying mothers. After the service, people will say, “When are you going to have your baby? You look ready to be a mom to me!” Brian will gently but firmly lead me towards the exit sign.
Do I think churches shouldn’t recognize mothers? No! Parenting is the hardest job in the world and they deserve the love. Do I think churches should handle it differently? No! It makes 99% of the people happy and it’s important to make so many people feel so good. Do I think that we aught to be expected to attend? NOPE. So I liberated us. Instead I go get a manicure and then Brian and I eat at this super divey (yet delicious) place named “Dukes” where I can assure you no one takes their grandma for brunch. After that we go see a matinee.

Here’s the odd thing though. A couple of years ago I found out that I was enjoying Mother’s Day. I like the way we un-celebrate by getting away from everyone else and doing stuff we don’t normally do. I like having the time with Brian instead of being jammed up against strangers at the only full Sunday morning service all year. So ironically, this is just one more unexpected gift that the long adoption wait has brought us: our very own Mother’s Day tradition.
I can’t wait to celebrate our family, this amazing thing that Brian and I created, by skipping church with Button, taking him out for greasy-spoon yummies and then off to see the latest cartoon movie. Who knows? Maybe even next year, kiddo.
– Rosemary
P.S. A great big shout out to my old friend and roommate Dee who called to wish ME a happy Mother’s Day and said, “your baby may not be in your arms yet but you are working so hard to prepare for parenthood. You are definitely an expectant Mother!” Her thoughtfulness and validation of the adoption process really blessed and encouraged me!!!

Failblog in Thailand

I thought you guys would find this humorous. Over at Fail Blog, a hilarious site that showcases funny examples of everyday failure, they gave us this strange beach sign from Thailand:

I think it’s interesting that the water is orange and the boats are blue. I also think it’s weird that their version of why alcohol and water shouldn’t mix involves making out with fish instead of drowning. Hey, to each their own, at least they give a warning.
– Brian

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

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

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

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

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

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
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