My Father-In-Law has a variety of free and nearly free food options he patronizes. We encourage him to take part in these programs because he is on a very low fixed income and they also provide much needed socialization for him.
In addition to those two links, the subsidized senior housing complex where he lives also gets stale bread and big cookies from Kroger (and we all know how I feel about *them*.) He insists on bringing us these baked goods, even though we don’t want them, because he also doesn’t like them but is biologically or culturally compelled to gather any and all free things. It is kind of nice of him though. He shows up at our house every two weeks or so bearing a gift of stale bagels and it gives us something to talk about.
This week, he added to his assortment of free food giving places by discovering the local food pantry. I think they gave a talk at his old people apartment village. ”Because, we are the poor people.” he said when I asked him about it. He brought a can of baked beans and also a can of tomato soup to our house and asked how to cook them. He took notes…right on top of the instructions printed on the cans.
He also brought a package of Reduced Fat Oreos that he got at the food pantry. He then requested that I split the package so he could give half to Mr. A’s sister’s kids too.
Can I just say WTF?
Who is giving Reduced Fat Oreos to the food pantry? They are neither a staple nor do they have any nutritional value at all. Are the poor huddle masses deprived of the Reduced Fat Oreos?
It made me want to call up the food pantry and offer to bring them some fruit, but then I got distracted because I was so busy snarfing up the free oreos and I forgot.
My own children, clearly having never seen a Reduced Fat Oreo in their lives, complained about he difficulty in separating the two cookies due to inadequate creme filling quantities. Clearly they are the spoiled bourgeoisie who have only had Full Fat Oreos. Though there was that one time, on a day when I was flush with extra grocery money and too lazy to read the package, they accidentally scored Double Stuff Oreos. They still talk about that special day.
Oh, the pampered lives my ungrateful children lead. I feel blessed that my Father In Law has brought this tiny sliver of deprivation into their lives so they might know how the other half lives.
email number one:
Hi Mom,
I ran across this article today.
It says much more articulately than I can one of the primary reasons I have not allowed my girls to go to church. It is also one of the reasons I decided to no longer call myself a Christian. I know this has been an occasional source of tension between us and I want you to understand it is a very personal issue for me.
We have very good friends who have been hurt by the anti-gay preachings of churches and by political movements in the name of Christianity to outlaw their families. M’s best friend has two moms who do not have equal rights as her parents because [our state] has outlawed same sex marriage and adoption by same sex partners. These laws supposedly based on Christian values, but with a total disregard for the humanity of all people and the compassion that I believe Jesus would have show to my friends and their families if he lived in this day and age. I know your faith has become increasingly important to you, just as respecting my friends’ and their families is important to me.
I don’t want to create any drama or make a big deal out of this, but when I read this article it spoke to me and I wanted to share it with you.
Love,
me
email number two:
Dear M’s teacher, M’s gifted math teacher, and M’s principal,
M came home from school today very upset about her reading MAP [Measures of Annual Progress] scores. She says that her last test (winter) score was 232 and her score this spring was 226. She believes this indicates she did not complete a full year’s growth in third grade. She was crying because she believed this meant she would be held back in third grade reading next year.
She was also upset because she did not meet her Reading MAP “target goal” of 245 which [M selected] based on her previous score. I have never been informed that M’s scores were anything other than exceptionally high on standardized tests. Am I wrong in guessing that a 6 point difference would indicate she missed one or two more questions this time than the last time she was tested? What improvement would she have had to make to achieve a 245 on her reading MAP test?
M is also worried because she overheard a a conversation between a teacher and another student where he was told that bad MAP scores would result in him being ”kicked out of gifted math”. She is now very worried about her MAP Math test too, because she enjoys gifted math very much. M is worried if she did not do a good job on the [state standardized test for third graders], she will be reflecting poorly on her teachers and “will disappoint her school and make it look bad.”
While we believe our children should do their best work all the time, I will admit I have been very troubled by the extreme focus on standardized testing this year. M has developed significant test anxiety following the classroom build up to the [state standardized test for third graders], which has never been a problem for her before. The intense focus on testing has led her to believe these tests are punitive. We have always found that M does extraordinarily well on standardized tests and I do not believe that creating this much anxiety will help her do any better than she was already doing.
M is not a child who has ever demonstrated a significant amount of anxiety about any aspect of school (or life in general, for that matter). I am sure that it was not the intention of anyone at [Elementary School] to create an environment that would create this kind of stress for a third grader, so I am writing to you to share my concerns. I have done my best to reassure M that she is a good student and she will not be punished or held back regardless of her standardized test scores, but my words do not carry the same weight with her that those of her teachers have on these matters.
I have asked M to speak with Mrs. Teacher tomorrow to clarify what her Reading MAP scores will mean for her next year. If she has not achieved adequate progress in reading, I would like to request a meeting to discuss why that might be the case and how we can remedy that situation given M’s strong aptitude for reading and language arts. If there are other concerns about M’s test scores, I would like to request that you speak to my husband and I directly.
We believe that the teachers at [Elementary School] are providing an excellent education for M. Honestly, we could not be happier with a school for her and I often rave about how much we love [Elementary School], her teachers and principal.
Standardized tests are only a small indicator of how well you are teaching our children. While there is an unfair weight placed on standardized testing by our society as a whole, I hope we can work together to ensure the burden of that weight does not fall on the shoulders of eight and nine year old children. I would be happy to discuss this matter further, if you wish. I can be reached at (800)WHAT THE EFF.
Sincerely,
AmFam
edited to add: OFFS. If I am reading this correctly, M’s score puts her at the same reading level as an average 9th grader.
Sky asked several questions but tonight I am only answering two:
If you adopted again, would you go for domestic or international adoption?
We adopted from China because we felt like our home would be the better fit for a Chinese kid if they were coming to the US anyway. Because Mr. A is Chinese/Taiwanese American, or family already incorporates a lot of Chinese cultural stuff. Mr. A studied Chinese and lived in China for a year, we eat and cook Chinese food, we have Asian relatives, we plan to travel regularly to Asia, Mr. A wants our kids to learn Chinese, he has a strong Asian identity etc. It just made sense for us.
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We didn’t adopt because we couldn’t have another kid. We assume we had no physical impediments to getting me knocked up at will (especially since M was unplanned and in spite of some half-assed attempts at using birth control). We adopted because I thought we would be the kind of parents who would be able to rise to the challenge of the extra needs of an adopted kid (which remains to be seen!). While we were prepared for the challenges of being adoptive parents, we weren’t interested in adding another culture to the mix. I mean, look at the struggles I already have managing Chinese tutoring!
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If we were going to have another kid just for the sake of adding a third, I would probably go the pregnant route because I feel so strung out over the situation with L’s family and I can’t imagine adding another birth family to the mix. Mr. A had a vasectomy, so this is not really an option, nor do we want a third kid anyway (I am tired…though I would like a puppy.)
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If we were going to adopt again (we are NOT), we would adopt from China or Taiwan. We would probably adopt through the special needs program, with a strong preference for a kid with a limb difference. (This is because I have a good friend whose son is missing a hand and I have seen what a non-issue it can be. My sister was also born with polysyndactyly of the toes so that doesn’t scare me either.)
Has Mr. A’s family pushed for a boy to carry on the family name? We have three girls and are getting some family pressure to go again for a boy (like that can be guaranteed!!).
Short answer: Yes.
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Slightly longer answer: Mr. A is the only son, so they would like a boy. Mr. A’s dad seems to favor his sister’s son too, but it isn’t that big a deal. Once we adopted L, Mr. A’s dad said “Now that she is adopted, you can have a real baby too. A boy.” But you know what? Mr. A’s parents are crazy (really crazy) and they don’t have that much influence over us. It isn’t that big a deal and on the rare occasions when it comes up, we ignore them. Knowing it is a cultural thing makes it a little easier. MIL’s brother (Mr. A’s uncle) brought little rice-flour penises as offerings when we visited his ancestor’s graves, so Mr. A’s parents are really not as over the top as they could be.
Excuse the effedupedness of this formatting. I have no idea what happened to it or how to fix it. I think it is readable now.
mccxxiii asks:
How do you connect your adopted child to your family lineage and make him feel like those are *his* people too? Your grandmother, your great grandmother, the house that your late Aunt Stella lived in 30 years ago, the town far away where your dad grew up but you all moved away … those are all things that your adopted child will never know personally, he’ll just hear about them in stories, in the abstract. But even those things in my family history that *I* don’t know personally still have meaning to me, because I can trace myself back through the lines of those women and men in the stories, and I know how they all connect to each other and to me. How do you give that history to your adopted child when it’s all theoretical and it isn’t really *his people* after all?
The thing about adoption is that it shifts your view of “family”. When you have children, whether it is through birth or adoption, YOU get to decide how you define family and what you teach your children about family/ancestors/relatives, etc. YOU get to decide what stories are passed on and what message you want them to send to your children.
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The thing about the stories you are talking about is they are all experiences. They don’t have anything to do with blood or genetics. They are experiences of people that are passed along because they are funny or insightful or whatever. They aren’t passed along because of blood.
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I have a very extensive family genealogy. Who knew, if you are almost completely descended from colonists, it is pretty easy to trace through the last 400 years…I even have some family records that go back to about 1,100 AD in England. But by far, the people and stories I am most interested it are the three and four generations directly before me. To me, the stories that mean the most to me are those about people I knew and had a real connection with. My grandfather is dying right now and all the stories I am hearing about him are meaningful to me because I care about him and he was important in my life. His experiences shaped my father’s life which in turn shaped mine. THAT is meaningful to me.
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When we were in Taiwan, I heard stories about Mr. A’s family that were also very interesting to me (even though I am not related to them by blood) because they told me something about Mr. A’s parents’ experiences and through them Mr. A’s experiences. It helps that I have always been interested in history and family stories are a little piece of living history, so I find that fascinating. Mr. A and I aren’t related by blood, but his history has an impact on my life. Our lives are intertwined so we are family.
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And now, with the opportunity to know L’s family, I am hungry for any scrap of story I can learn from them. We don’t know much yet, but I am filing away little tidbits to share with L just like I will share the stories I know about my family and Mr. A’s family. When we light incense for the ancestors, we designate three families: Mine, Mr. A’s and L’s.
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I know from your previous question, mccxxiii, I know you are struggling right now with what your family will look like and how it doesn’t fit the idea you previously had. If one of your fears is that an adopted child won’t feel connected to you or your family, I think you don’t realize the power you have to shape that connection. We teach our children what is important to us every day. Family will be as big or as small as you make it.
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I also want to add one more thought, if you are someone who puts a lot of weight in blood and genetics, you should understand that your child may put a lot of weight in those things too. If it turns out to be important to your child, will you be willing to support them in including their biological relatives in their family? Are you willing to put in the work for an adopted child to feel connected to your biological family too?
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I say this a an admittedly somewhat standoffish person. I have to work at making connections for our kids with our extended family because it doesn’t come naturally to me to have such a big circle of close people. But closeness with their cousins and aunts and grandparents and birth family is something I want my children to experience, so I work at it. Family is what we make it.
I was going to write a typical “what I am thankful for” post, but I didn’t…and it would have been lame anyway. I didn’t post yesterday, so I failed Nablopomo. Whatevah, yo.
Today, we put up our Christmas tree. I turned on a radio station that was playing non-stop Christmas music. I was humming along and enjoying myself when I realized something: This is the first time in recent years where I didn’t feel totally uncomfortable enjoying Christian songs.
I thought about it and I think it is because my mom has stopped trying to shove church down my throat. I am not sure if she gave up or if she is regrouping for another attack in the future, but for now things are quiet.
Either way, I am enjoying my Christmas carols. I have decided I am reclaiming Christmas from here on out. Secular Christmas with Christian songs from my childhood.
I refuse to feel like I can’t sing Silent Night if I am a raging heathen.
Hallelujah!
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