Love and Birthdays

My big 14^th birthday is coming up this week (at least according to my 4-year-old, who also thinks I am still in High School). I usually dread my birthdays. I was born on “Cabbage Night”. Not quite Halloween, but still, a Witch cake was usually presented to me after my birthday dinner of pizza or mac and cheese. My mother, you see, LOVES Halloween. When I was kid, and people still had answering machines (and home phones for that matter), she would even change the outgoing message, to one with a wicked witchy voice and cackle.  By the time I was in Fourth grade, and had outgrown my mother’s five-foot frame by several inches, my mom gave me her wedding dress to wear. That year, I was a gypsy bride complete with a groovy head scarf a la Valarie Harper as Rhoda, circa 1975. I loved that year. Really, I always have loved Halloween, who doesn’t? It was just my cabbagey/witchy birthday I didn’t love so much. What kid can get excited for a plain old birthday, when there is tree toilet-papering and pumpkin-smashing mischief to be had, followed the next night by gorging on candy (and even candy apples- back before we all poisoned children on Halloween)? My kids, that’s who.

My kids love birthdays, almost as much as my mom loves Halloween. They love their birthdays best, of course, but they get equally excited for anyone, and everyone else’s birthday. They love to make and send birthday cards, they get excited to watch friends and family blow out candles on their cakes, they think of special gifts and treats for the birthday boy or girl (or mom or dad). Birthdays are awesome for my kids. Through their eyes, I see the awesomeness. I see the thoughtfulness of the witch birthday cakes, which haunted me for years. I see the kindness behind my mom dragging me and my brother out to dinner for my birthday, which happened to be our town’s designated trick-or-treating night that year, despite our pleas to be set free to stuff ourselves with candy instead. Through my girls’ eyes, I am psyched to celebrate my big Fourteenth birthday this year!

I wonder sometimes, will birthday always be so joyful for my girls. My girls’ birthdays are a cause for celebration in our family. A wonderful day when their little souls breathed air and shouted out “Watch out, here I come world!” We celebrate with a big family party, complete with delicious food and fantastic cupcakes. My girls’ birthdays are looked upon with great excitement and anticipation, so much so, that we now celebrate their half birthdays too!  However, I worry that one day they may feel heaviness brought on by their birthday. My girls know their birth stories; they know the choices the adults in their lives made. They know all their moms and all their dads love them.  We’ve talked about the feelings of happy-sad. But again, I worry, will it be enough? Will my daughter’s forever know that their birth brought so much joy to the world, so much love to their parents? Will they recognize that their birthday may bring pain and sorrow to the ones who love them most as well? Will they be able to separate the blessing of their birth from the pain of their parent’s decisions?  Again, I pray we are enough to heal any birthday wounds.

I pray that birthdays are always joyous for my girls, and in the meantime we celebrate! We celebrate birthdays with both our girls’ birth families in different ways.  Our youngest daughter’s birth mom, her husband, and their baby girl joined our big family party this year. Our oldest daughter receives cards, gifts and phone calls from her maternal birth grandparents each year. We cherish the love our daughters receive each year on their birthdays from our entire big crazy family. The love, the joy, the smiles and tears, it all gets wrapped up in the beautiful gift my daughters bring me each and every day * including my birthday!

Must Read Books for Your Toddler

My husband and I have been talking about how wonderful adoption is since we brought our son home with us from Korea. Now that he is 3, we intentionally talk to him about adoption more often and give him more depth to our own story about how we became a forever family.  I finally completed his life book, after agonizing over every word and picture, and presented it to him like it was the holy grail.  I must say I am pretty proud of it, but I must also admit that he loves several other adoption stories I’ve gotten for him just as much.

Horace by Holly Keller is a wonderful story that we’ve been reading since he was 2 about a leopard adopted by tigers.   Another one that we started reading then is A Mother for Choco, by Keiko Kasza, and it is my all-time favorite. Choco is a little bird who needs a mommy and goes to Mrs. Walrus, Mrs. Penguin, and Mrs. Giraffe to see if one of them could be his mommy. He thinks that because he doesn’t look like them, they can’t be his mommy. He then meets Mrs. Bear, who just happens to do everything he needs a mommy for (hugs, kisses, dancing, etc).  You can guess where it goes.  The illustrations are the cutest I have ever seen, and I think it’s about the best you can get for a toddler who might be from a different ethnic or cultural background.

Books that we have moved on to recently are The Family Book by Todd Parr, I Wished for You by Marianne Richmond, and Over the Moon by Karen Katz.  Before I got these I did a ton of research on Amazon to make sure these books had the right messages and language.  What I learned is that there is no book that has the perfect language and story, except for the life book you create for your own child.  I would read lots of glowing reviews, then all of a sudden I would see reviews from readers quite offended by something in the story. I used some of these reviews to edit my selection, but soon I realized that I shouldn’t set perfection as the bar.  These books are all great in that they celebrate the love and joy of families created by adoption, and that was really what I was after for my son at this stage.

The Family Book, A Mother for Choco, and Horace are also good options for helping toddlers from non-adoptive families understand adoption.  I plan to get these for the young children of our relatives and close friends so that Maximus’ inner circle has the same context and understanding of adoption that he does.

I have also started to look for books that will celebrate my son’s Korean heritage. I stumbled across the perfect one, called Bee-Bim Bop, by Linda Sue Park. It’s about a family preparing for a festive meal of bee-bim bop, a traditional Korean dish.  It’s got catchy rhyming, cute illustrations of the food, and makes the meal preparation fun and participatory for the toddler from start to finish.

I had some paralysis every time I sat down to work on my son’s life book because I was so afraid I wouldn’t get every single word right. Reading some of these children’s books on adoption really helped because they gave me alternate ways to explain the major concepts – birthmother & father, why they made an adoption plan, who his foster family was, etc. And seeing him just enjoy the books, instead of agonizing over every word like I was, made me realize that at this age, my attitude is more important than the specific language.

Happy Reading!

Adoption Journey: A Trip of Turbulence, Delays and Surprises

It is hard to believe that 6 years ago our journey with adoption began. Although there was no map, the direction was clear but the coordinates were unknown. We knew how our journey would end (well, at least we thought so) but we weren’t sure how to get there nor what type of turbulence we would encounter en route. We knew that our family would be larger after the trip but we had no details of what type of detours, stops or surprises we would face along the way. Travel to a new place is always a bit scary yet exciting at the same time. This was destined to be a once in a lifetime trip that would emblazon memories and evoke emotions far greater than one could imagine.
Our travel agents for the journey worked together to make our trip as seamless as possible. The team of professionals and non-professionals (primarily made up of family and friends) joined forces making our voyage so memorable. I distinctly remember our first meeting with the team from Adoption Choices (even have a picture on the steps of the 1960’s brick office building that houses the agency) whose soothing words and manner helped us piece together the itinerary for our journey. I can dredge up memories of the initial $300 phone call with our lawyer spelling out everything that could go wrong and the expenses that we may incur. Which then quickly brings to mind the phone call with our social worker down in Florida, who talked about all that would go right as long as we stayed emotionally strong and kept the will to press forward. I recall the first conversation we had with our very supportive parents broaching the idea of adoption. And, who could forget the conversation with our, then, 5 year old son…trying to explain the concept of adoption and why it was our plan. It didn’t go as smoothly as it could have. Instead of just saying “Great mom and dad”……our son, JJ, just kept on asking questions, “Why can’t you make another baby?” “What do you mean that my new sister will be in another mommy’s tummy?” Guess we shouldn’t have been so surprised the he couldn’t process our convoluted answers. None the less, everyone in our little world from the 5 year old who had tons of questions to the 90 year old who questioned nothing and was completely supportive, our travel guides were nothing but driving forces who kept us moving forward, picked us up when we were down, laughed with our joy and held us when we were frightened.
Our itinerary didn’t go as planned: extensive turbulence led to delays and surprises were around each corner. Yes, the turbulence was unsettling and kept us on our toes. But the surprises were what left the greatest lasting effect, one surprise in particular. One morning as I sat at my desk gazing out the window at Boston Harbor, my phone rang. It was our social worker, ML, from Florida who asked me to conference my husband in on our phone call. My heart began to race and my mind began to imagine the worst…did the birth mom change her mind this late into the process? Once my husband was on the phone, ML suggested that he lay down. I really began to get nervous but then ML let us know that our adoption of a beautiful baby was not in jeopardy but there was something that she did need to tell us. She then blurted it out, “It is twins!” This was the most amazing surprise that we could have ever imagined on our adoption journey.

What’s up with that Glee?

While watching Glee with K, I had a Fox and the Hound moment.  An F and H moment is an unexpectedly upsetting occurrence in a movie or show.  Our first such moment took place when K was 2 or 3 during the movie The Fox and the Hound (hence the name), a supposedly heartwarming adventure about the friendship between a fox and a dog.

It’s a Disney movie so it had the obligatory violent death of the main character’s mother.  Please see among others: Bambi, Finding Nemo and for an updated version where both parents suffer an untimely death, Lilo and Stitch.  The fox was taken in by a kindly woman and became friends with a dog owned by the hunter next door.  After an incident where the hunter (another group which typically doesn’t fare well under the Disney treatment) tried to kill the fox, the woman decided the fox would be better off back in the forest and returned him there.

When the woman drove away, K became inconsolable.  “She left him! She left him!  His mommy left him!”  Since his mom had been dead for a while, I was briefly confused.  “She left him!  She left him!”  Of course.  The woman was the mommy.  The fact that they were two different species didn’t make her any less of a mother.  I held K close and comforted her as best I could.  “She took him there to be safe.  He will see her again [oh I hope so!].  It will be okay.”  The fox found a mate.  After a scary scene involving the hunter and a bear, he resumed his friendship with the dog.  He occasionally looked at his old farm from a distance and seemed content.  K watched the movie a few more times until she made her peace with it.  She announced she would never watch it again.  I threw it away and detest The Fox and the Hound to this day.

Flash forward with me ten plus years to last week’s episode of Glee.  K and I love Glee for the music and the dancing.  I also appreciate the respect for differences that is conveyed through the cast of beloved characters.  The adoption story line has swayed back and forth from believable to tough to take but it has offered plenty of opportunity for discussion.  We’ve seen Rachel find her birth mother and wrestle with what that relationship is and could/should be.  We’ve seen Quinn place her baby for adoption.  Please note Glee writers: I said place for adoption not “give her up.”

After appearing to be unfazed by the placement, Quinn is now struggling with her feelings around it.  The adoptive mom is working through how to make a more open adoption possible.  Puck, the birth father, is eager for an opportunity to be involved in the baby’s life — all great themes to discuss and explore.  I think it’s important for kids who were adopted to understand that it wasn’t an easy decision for their birth parents.  I think it’s important for all kids to understand the painful decisions and consequences that result from a teen pregnancy.

My F and H moment was during the show’s conclusion.  Quinn turned to Puck and said “we’ve got to get her back.”  There it is – the birth mother “taking the baby back” angle.  I am hopeful the story will be about Quinn understanding that it’s not an option.  I am hopeful it doesn’t turn into a story that feeds the misconceptions about adoption that has led all of us to hear at some point “but aren’t you afraid they’ll take the baby back?”  If it does, I’m not as powerless as I was with that fox.  We’ll talk about the difference between what writers do for television ratings and what’s true.  We’ll talk about how we’ll respond to people who don’t know as much about adoption as we do and how we’ll set them straight.  Maybe we’ll send an email to Glee and let them know how we feel.  Finally, we’ll decide if we can still watch and disagree with the portrayal or whether we won’t watch at all.  After all, the writers may control the story but we control the remote.