Names and Faces (pt.1)

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers’ names.

-Alice Walker

We have this tendency, people who have adopted from China, of idealizing The Chinese Birthmother.  She is a tragic figure, worthy of our sympathy.  A mother without her child.  Forced by her authoritarian government, her patriarchal culture and her family to abandon her baby.  They are saintly, these Chinese Birthmothers of our imaginations.

It is a privilege we have, as adoptive parents  in closed adoptions (particularly those of us who adopted from China) , to fall back on this iconized representation of the Birthmother.  It is clean and clearcut.  The stories we tell aren’t cluttered up with the messy details of real life, of women who are participants in their cultures and families (patriarchy and all).

It is a story we tell as mothers ourselves.  We want our children to believe mothers are good people and loving parents:  Mommies care for their children.  Mommy will take good care of you. Mothers love their children, just the way I love you. The obvious underlying message is that  a mother would never be separated from her child if she had control of her own destiny.  When we tell our children this story, it is as much about their birthmothers as it is about ourselves as mothers.

The converse of The Chinese Birthmother is The Chinese Birthfather.  He is a hazy character. We assume to be the person who makes the decisions. He wants a son so badly he is willing to throw our daughters under the bus.  He is possibly the person who left our children on the street somewhere; he abandoned them to the elements and an unknown future.  We try to say we don’t think he is a bad guy, but we are afraid that he is.

And I don’t know about other adoptive parents, but I also had an idea about Chinese birth siblings.  Actually, it was mostly about The Brother.  In our discussions about searching and possible outcomes, the one hardened place in my heart was toward The Brother.  I  could imagine that we would help with money if it was for The Sister.  We would send her to school, college even.  But The Brother?  The one whose much anticipated (likely pampered and spoiled) existence was likely the one who forced our daughter from her family?  No, I thought, if HE is so important, let THEM pay for HIS school.  But The Sister, she was clearly a victim in this situation, just like MY daughter. I almost felt like The Sister would be an extension of L, a girl we could support who would show her family just how valuable a girl could be.  We would help The Sister, I thought.

Knowing L’s family members’ names changed everything for me.  When you name someone, they become a real person.  On the phone that day, hearing their names, I could almost feel “something fall off the shelf” inside of my heart.*

That quote is from Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eyes Were Watching God:

“…something fell off the shelf inside her. Then she went inside there to see what it was. It was her image of him tumbled down and shattered. But looking at it she saw that it never was the flesh and blood figure of her dreams. Just something she had grabbed up to drape her dreams over.”

I never knew how spot on that imagery was until that moment.

When I heard their names, I could feel The Icon crumbling away from the flesh and blood people inside.  I didn’t know they were yet, but it wasn’t The Birthmother or The Birthfather.  We were about to confront real people –complex people with complex motivations and complicated lives.

To Be Continued…..

Names and Faces (Pt. 2)