Two quick stories that are funny to me:
Today in the car, M randomly asked, “Mama, do you want to not have any more babies?”
“Yes. I don’t want to have any more babies,” I replied.
“Oh, well you better wear clothes when you are hugging Daddy. That way, you can’t do the special hug where his penis goes in your vulva.”
I took a minute to explain that Mr. A has had a vasectomy, so his sperm won’t be able to get out any more.
M seemed relieved, “Oh, well that is good. Now you can hug naked as much as you want!”
Yes. Yes we can.
(Or rather we could, if Mr. A would ever call to get the results of his second ex-spermination test. Which he has NOT done, even though the test was at least two months ago. Ahem.)
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I know I don’t write down the funny things L says often enough, so here is a funny story about L that I want to remember. It is too bad, because she is a funny kid who just happens to be the second child.
About 9 months ago, every time she would poop, L would say “Poop, we eat it!”
Mr. A and I would always emphatically say “NO! We DON’T eat POOP!”
Not a particularly verbal kid at that point, L would just give us this look that clearly showed she did not believe us.
This happened over and over and over. For the life of me, I could not figure out where L got the idea that we would eat poop. It was seriously grossing us out, but I could not convince her that we did not, in fact, eat poop.
Then one day, I bought some red bean mochi. The girls and Mr. A love mochi, particularly the red bean variety. I love the glutinous rice outer wrapping, but I don’t really feel much desire to eat a giant wad of red bean paste.
As usual, I grabbed my mochi, tore off the outer wrapping and handed the blob of red bean paste to L so she could eat it.
When I handed it to her, she gave me this totally incredulous look, held up the red bean paste and said in a way that made it clear she thought I was an utter moron: “POOP! We EAT it!.”
When I looked at the red bean ball, what do you know? It looked exactly like poop. A big, yummy turd that I was giving L to eat.
Eventually, we managed to explain to L that the red bean was mochi not poop. Finally, I didn’t have to worry about her announcing that we eat poop every time we went into a public bathroom. Mystery solved. Unfortunately, I can’t help but think of poop every time I eat mochi now.
After we withdrew L from the regular Chinese school, I decided to stick her in the FCC chinese school for a language class. I have been feeling moderately guilty that we haven’t made any effort to introduce L to any local kids her age who are also adopted, so FCC school would kill two birds with one stone.
Oh, so many years ago, we had a not-so-great experience with FCC. Now that we have an honest to goodness adopted from China kid, I was hoping things would go a little smoother. Remember the other experience, Mr. A flat out refused to have anything to do with FCC, so I knew I would be on my own. The language class was OK. Nothing too exciting, but L didn’t seem to mind it. The conversation afterward, left me more than a little deflated.
After the class, the teacher gave each kid a little treat. I think it was a single serving Pretz. If you have never eaten Pretz, they taste like vegetable flavored crackers. Apparently, the little cracker sticks seemed very exotic to some of the other parents though. As the kids were eating them, the very exotic and strange cracker sticks led the conversation to take a not-very-surprising turn: How weird shit is in China.
Don’t get me wrong, I think some Chinese stuff is plenty weird: Keeping the body of an old dead guy around for over 20 years, eating chicken feet, letting the government make decisions about how many children people can have. Hell yeah, that stuff is weird to me.
But I don’t bring my daughter to a class where I am hoping she will be exposed to a tiny bit of Chinese culture (thus demonstrating the fact that I value and respect it) and then talk about how weird Chinese stuff is RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER.
*sigh*
Things that were included in the list of weirdness included but were not limited to the following: Chinese snacks, Chinese foods, Chinese McDonalds’ workers inability to understand English, some contaminated Chinese food that made someone sick in China, Chinese cookbooks that list weird ingredients that are not available here, and the variety of weird things that can be found at the local Asian grocery store (particularly in the freezer section).
I tried to do what I could to diffuse the conversation. I had avoided mentioning the fact that Mr. A is Chinese up until this point, but then I cracked.
“My husband is Chinese, so we shop at the Asian grocery all the time. Most of the stuff we have tried is pretty good.” I finally said. I offered to give someone the name of the very authentic chinese cookbooks I really like. Then I excused myself and went home.
When I went home and told Mr. A about it, he said: “I *told* you that is what it would be like. I don’t want my kids hearing a bunch of strangers talking about how weird China is.”
Then he went on, shaking his head, “Man, L lucked out. If she was stuck in a family that thought Chinese food was weird, what would she eat? She LOVES chinese food.”
Yeah, what if?
Holy cow, who can believe it? Another post from me this week. I know, has hell frozen over or what?
Here is my contribution to the Blog Carnival going on over at Grown In My Heart. (We are just going to overlook the fact that I find the title of the blog more than a little offensive…). This is quick and dirty because L is fighting her nap and I suspect she will be downstairs any minute.
What No One Told Me About Adoption (or if they told me, I didn’t pay any attention):
- Before we adopted L, no one told me about trauma and the long term affects it can have even for an 11 month old baby. On that day in that room when L was handed to a complete and total stranger, something broke inside her. It took a long, long time for her to feel safe again. No one told me that with every baby step forward, the slightest misstep could send her 10 steps backward. No one told me that L’s trauma issues would make me wonder at times if she would have been better off staying in her orphanage. No one told me that I would blame myself for hurting her by taking her away from her ayis and the only home she knew.
- No one told me the impact that trauma can have on attachment. I went to China ready to begin working on attachment from day one, but it wasn’t until L worked through her trauma issues and felt safe with us that she really attached they way she should. I think it took well over two years before she would allow herself to be cuddled. At this point, I think she is about 95% of the way there, though we still have some issues with her sometimes not wanting to be comforted when she is hurt. We are still teaching L to be loved and she is still teaching us how to love her every day. It took longer than I thought, but all that work makes me appreciate where we are now even more.
- No one told me all that internal work I did to prepare to become a transracially adopting parent would really pay off. When I get that creepy vibe from someone who wants to have an inappropriate conversation, I am perfectly comfortably fending them off. I have thought through exactly how much information I am willing to share with strangers. I am comfortable prioritizing my kids’ needs over other people’s curiosity. Our family situation isn’t the norm for families adopting from China, it has been a pleasant surprise how little the fact that L is Asian and I am not has affected us (and her) so far. I also feel really good about the amount of culture, language and role models that L is exposed to. Obviously, this could change as L gets older, but right now I feel competent and ready to handle whatever comes our way. Yay for preparation!
- No one told me that loving L would make it impossible for me to walk away from her family in China. Sure, sure, I thought we would talk about them and think about them, but no one told me that I would feel so very strongly that we should find them for L. We are still taking baby steps but even those steps make us trailblazers. This quote by Lin Yutang means a lot to me now: “Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.” We have hope and we are taking the first steps. We know that many Chinese adoptees and their families will follow behind us.
Last night at dinner, I was telling Mr. A a funny story about some teenagers in the park. I happened to mention they were using “bad words”. At the very mention of “bad words”, M’s eyes got big.
“Which word was it?” she whispered, “Was it the S.A. word?”
“What is the S.A. word?” I asked.
“Mama, YOU know,” she said “It means the MIDDLE FINGER.”
I pondered the S.A. word for a bit. I will admit I was a bit conflicted. Should I let M continue to think the middle finger is a word that begins with S.A., or should I let her in on the truth?
I decided to stick with my usual parenting philosophy of telling my kids the truth.*
“M, the middle finger word doesn’t start with S.A. It is spelled F.U.C.K.” I said.
“F.U.C.K.” She said slowly, “Really? I thought it was S.A.”
“No, there is no bad word that starts with S.A.” I told her.
M looked confused.
“Do you want to ask me a question? You can ask, it is ok.” I said.
“I can’t ask you because L will hear a bad word!” M said.
“Just whisper it, ” I said.
M looked very serious.
“What about …FUNKY?” she said sounding alarmed, “We say Daddy’s feet are FUNKY all the time!”
“Ohhh,” I said, “Not FUNK. F.U.C.K. rhymes with DUCK not DUNK.”
“Oh.” she said, “I’ve heard that word before. I didn’t know it was a bad word.”
“Well, now you know. Fuck is not a word for kids to say. It is a grown up word. Grown ups can say it, but kids can’t.” I told her.
“Why can grown ups say it, but kids can’t?” she asked disturbed by the injustice.
“That is just how it is. Fuck is like beer. It is only for grown ups. When you are grown up, you can say it if you want to, but until then, you can only think it in your head.”
“Oh. Ok.” said M. Then she ate the rest of her dinner in silence. She was probably thinking Fuck Fuck Fuck the whole time.
*(Most of the time anyway. Or maybe to be more honest, I tell them the truth when it is convenient for me.)
Earlier this week, I read the book this article was excerpted from and it gave me a lot of food for thought. You can click to read the article yourself, but it talks about the affect of parenting on kids’ racial preferences. There is a lot of food for thought in that article, but I was particularly interested in the stuff about how more diverse environments do not necessarily mean that kids will make friends with kids of other ethnicities. In fact, the more diverse the environment, the MORE likely kids are to self-segregate and the LESS likely they are to have friends of a different race.
I have read this article over a few times and it gives me mixed feelings. The liberal white girl inside me says “Oh noes! What do we do? How can we force the children of all races to hold hands and sing kumbaya together?”
On the other hand, I am not raising white kids. As a white mom raising Asian and hapa kids, my first and foremost concern has always been that my kids are comfortable relating to other Asian (or hapa) kids. (I know! I should have my liberal white lady card revoked for admitting that out loud!)
Sure, I think it would be swell if my kids have friends of all different ethnicities and backgrounds, but isn’t it more likely my girls will be friends with kids who share commonalities? Last year in school, one of the girls M became close friends with has a Chinese American mom and a white dad. I can’t say I was particularly surprised.
Exactly how many close friends do Mr. A and I have who are nothing like us? Most of our friends fit into more than three of the following categories:
- Former classmates (high school, college, law school) or coworkers
- Parents whose kids go to our kids’ schools (preschool, elementary, Chinese school)
- Lawyers and/or lawyer’s spouses
- Neighbors from our town
- Parents of children the same ages as our kids
- Moms who don’t work
- People who share our values and political views
- Families who are similar to us socioeconomically
It makes sense that we are hanging out with people who are similar to us. We meet these people because they are where we are, doing the things we’re doing. We can relate to their lifestyles and values, because they are our values and lifestyles.
I used to feel a lot of pressure to find Asian kids for our kids to be friends with. Without any real effort (via seeing them at both preschool and Chinese school), we made friends with a couple other families. Unfortunately, their kids don’t go to the same schools as our kids, so we see them less often than we would like. (Not to mention both families are hard working overachievers, so they have busy schedules, not unlike our family.) When we ran into both these families last Sunday, all the little girls were thrilled to see each other in the hallway. Now that Chinese school is back in session, we are planning to hang out more often.
It is funny though, how I used to think about needing friends so the girls would know other Asian kids, but now these friends are friends because our families have a lot in common: all three families have an Asian lawyer, we all have 6 year old girls, one has a daughter adopted from China, one couple is white/Asian, one dad is 2nd generation Asian American, they all like dim sum etc. It is nice to have friends who don’t think we are crazy for trying to make the girls learn Chinese and for wanting to travel with them while they are young. These other families are doing it too.
I don’t worry so much any more about finding Asian kids for our friends to be friends with. I think the odds are good both L and M will end up being able to relate to other Asian kids because they have a lot more in common than just their appearance. Our family’s values are pretty typical of other Asian American families and our girls will have a lot of shared experiences with Asian kids, I think.
Thinking this through, though, I wonder if L will be able to relate as well to other transracially adopted kids. Since we decided to pull her out of regular Chinese school, I contacted our local FCC to see if she can still sign up for their introductory language class. She will be starting a class there this weekend. I will confess, I am more nervous about showing up at the FCC class than I was about Chinese school. I am hoping we can find people there who we have more in common with than just a kid adopted from China.
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