This week, M will turn nine. NINE. As in, half way to the end of my legal parenting responsibility for her. I know it is hard to believe, but I am not one of those parents who gets all verklempt about my babies growing up.
Except this time, I am. How can my baby be NINE? How can I be half way done having her in my house?
It was nearly 10 years ago that I got pregnant. I was not one of those glowy happy pregnant ladies. Again, I imagine you are all just shocked to hear this…. I was cranky and annoyed. I was also struggling with the unplannedness of my pregnancy and the many ways it destroyed life as I knew it at age 26.
As for the baby and toddler years, you can imagine how I felt about those. I think I was the original creator of the term “baby jail”. Babies and toddlers and preschoolers, Jesus, they are exhausting. The burden ensuring the survival of such small people chafed. They were like two little monkeys hanging on my every word and move. All I wanted was SPACE and FREEDOM and please God, QUIET.
I look at my friends who still have young babies and I thank my lucky stars we started earlier and now those baby days are long past. As happy as I was to have my lovely girls, I tend to think of those early years as the Dark Decade. Much of the time I was just holding on by the skin of my teeth.
But now, my little girls are not little. Next year, come hell or high water, L will be in kindergarten (though possibly only half day…I will spare you my sturm und drang about the possibility that she won’t get into the full day program). Suddenly, I have space and freedom and quiet. Or at least I have those things often enough that I don’t go bonkers.
And my girls are actually turning into little people. Pleasant little people who I actual enjoy having around.
I can also look ahead and see the writing on the wall. It won’t be long before my girls don’t really want to hang out with me any more. I know the time is coming when I will be Undesirable Number One.
I keep thinking about getting a job, but I always get hung up on missing their summer vacation. We had so much fun last year, I don’t want to miss a single minute of it.
Today, someone on Facebook mentioned being in the parenting sweet spot. I agree, that is where I am too.
These are the sweetest days of parenting for me. I can’t imagine it being better than this.
Sorry it is taking me a billion years to get through all the questions you all sent me waaaaaay back when. The good news is the ones I have answered so far have really helped me work through some of the open adoption related angst I was feeling. The bad news is, I am kind of burned out from all the over processing. I will get to them, though. I just might have to answer a few a week interspersed with other stuff until I get done.A few more:Sky asks: As a stay at home mum, I sometimes feel like I am wasting my talents. Do you ever feel that or other mummy guilt?I don’t think I really have any work-related talents, unless you consider the ability to look busy while really surfing the internet to be a talent. That was what I most excelled at in most of my previous jobs.
Oh, and I also have a serious talent for remembering the appearance, layout and sale history of every single house that has sold in my neighborhood in the past four years. I love houses so much I have even considered becoming a realtor one day, but it wouldn’t be until the kids are much older or maybe even off to college.
My primary work-related guilt involves the fact that I hate cleaning the house. I have a nagging belief that since I am here all day, I should do more cleaning and upkeep but I just don’t like to do it. Maybe next year when L goes to kindergarten, I will do a better job cleaning the house. Or maybe I will get a part-time job so someone else will clean it.
S’s Mom asks
do you use the term “hapa”? I think it would feel strange saying it. Likewise my relative is black/Asian and I would feel strange saying Blasian to her. I just say biracial or multiracial.
have been introducing the idea of “hapa” to M. I made her watch a hapa organization video on youtube last month. She was kind of uninterested, but you know, she is eight. She is very comfortable with the idea that she is “Chinese and white” or “Asian and American” (her words, not mine).
While there are more half or part Asians around than there used to be (especially where we live in the Midwest), M is still a pretty small minority. She has a friend at school who is also half-Chinese and I have heard them talking about what exactly “half chinese” means before. Clearly, it means something to her. .
M is going to live a life where she passes as white most of the time. She is well-aware that Chinese people do not see her as Chinese, but our family considers her to be Chinese/Taiwanese (or maybe Asian/ Asian American). She knows that Chinese people don’t see her as much Chinese at all. Her father’s Asian identity is very important to him. That the kids have an Asian identity is important to him. While that racial identity is important in our family, culturally we are not very Chinese/Taiwanese. Culturally, we are mostly American with a little Chinese around the edges.
M’s experience as a mixed-race person is unique in our family. Every other person in our near extended family is either white or Asian (though she does have some cousins who are Taiwanese/Korean American which is its own mix). I don’t know yet what that will be like for her. I am sure at times it will be difficult, but I am confident that in the end M will be able to figure it all out.
.
I like the idea of “hapa” because there has been so much hapa activism lately ( here, here, here, and here for example). I like the idea of M knowing how to find people who have shared her experience of being mixed race Asian if she wants to. I like the idea of one word that can encompass a bit of her experience rather than the unwieldy ”third generation Chinese American and white, raised in the Midwest, doesn’t speak much Chinese, etc.” .
We also talk generally about mixed-race people, too, but introducing M to the idea ”hapa” is more specific. I don’t know how she will identify as she gets older, maybe she will think of herself as hapa, or mixed race or maybe just white. It isn’t up to me. I just put the ideas out there and see what sticks. Also, I don’t generally say she is hapa to other people because I assume they won’t know what it means.
(Let’s just get this over with so I can move beyond this self-pitying navel gazing, ok? Continuing from pt1, pt2, and pt3.)
Let’s be honest: I’m generally a slacker. I am a huge proponent of satisficing. I will do just enough work to get a satisfactory outcome, but not the extra work it takes to get a truly phenomenal outcome.
But this parenting gig, there is no satisficing…at least not for me. This is the only job I really care that much about. I want to be a good mother to my children. But in the course of becoming the mother to these children (especially L), I have made choice after choice that will make being a good parent much, much harder.
Back in the olden days, I used to imagine it would be very complicated to be the mother M needed. I worried about how we would balance being a Chinese and also a very American Family. (I want to go back in time and smack myself for being such an overthinking freak…we were just fine.)
When we decided to adopt, it was at least partially because I felt we were willing and able to do the extra parenting work that adoption would require from us. I look back now and I think I was stupid. I had NO IDEA how much more work this would be.
If we had not adopted, I could have gotten away with half-assed Chinese classes and a few Chinese holidays each year for M. I could have patted myself on the back and felt smug in our multiculturalness.
If we had just adopted L and been happy like 99% of the families who have adopted from China, we could have gone to FCC meetings, half-assed Chinese classes, and felt totally competent in the amount of Chinese culture she gets by living with Mr. A.
But no. Did we (I) do that? No. I had to go out there and READ. I read too much stuff about culture and language and birth parents. And I can’t just READ things, I mindfuck them and the baseline for acceptableness goes higher.
So we searched…And here we are.
Where the fuck are we?
Instead of getting us closer to giving her these things, finding her birthfamily has only highlighted exactly how much she has lost and how very powerless I am to help her.
We are in a place where I can not be the parent she needs no matter how hard I try. There is no way I can give L what she deserves and what I really want her to have.
I can not take away the losses and pain that adoption caused for her.
I can not make it better.
I can not give her back her family.
In trying to give her back her family, I may have complicated her life in ways I can’t even imagine.
I can not help her understand Chinese culture.
I can not even fucking manage to get her Chinese tutoring sorted out in a way that will give her hope of really learning Chinese so she can talk to her family.
My baby –this amazing kid who has already been through so much–will carry the heavy burden of my failures.
I am doing as much as I can, but it isn’t enough.
It will never be enough.
That breaks my heart
(and sometimes it even makes me cry).
On most days, I know they will be ok. I will pick myself up and get back to the business of doing the best I can. I will do my best to be the mother my girls need while simultaneously disappointing and failing them every day of our lives together.
I only hope that they know I tried. We are all muddling our way through, but I am trying every fucking day to do the best for them. Even when I can’t be enough, I am trying.
On with the questions.
Parodie asks:
Alrighty, here’s my non-adoption-related nosy question. I know you used to do sex-ed; I would love an update on how you’re finding it from the “parent” side of the table. Perhaps how you’re dealing with it, (and as I write this it occurs to me that adoption might figure obviously into this) but also the internal stuff : does it feel the way you expected it to? Any surprises? Etc.
I didn’t actually do sex ed myself. I was in fundraising, so I don’t have any specific training or anything. I don’t claim to be any kind of an expert.
I deal with sex the exact same way I deal with pretty much everything. I tell my kids the absolute truth when the ask questions. I use correct terminology. I provide them with resources other than myself that are age appropriate (though what I think is age appropriate and what you think is age appropriate might be completely different).
My absolute favorite resources are the Robie Harris books. My girls have three of these books and they have free access to them whenever they want. (When I was looking up the link for this post, I see she has a new one for 2.5-5 year olds too.) M has been reading all of them since she was about 5. When she has questions about something, she knows where she can go for answers if she doesn’t want to ask me. L is mostly interested in pregnancy and the hilarious existence of penises and vulvas, rather than the mechanics of where babies come from. She really likes to look at the picture of the baby crowning, for some reason.
I wondered if I might feel a little more reluctant to talk about sex with the girls as they got older, but honestly, it doesn’t make me cringe at all. I have been known to make them wait to have the conversation in private at home rather than in the grocery store aisle when a question comes up, but they always get answers in a timely manner. I have discussed sexually transmitted diseases, sexual attraction, homosexuality and bisexuality, birth control, sex, petting, masturbation (see below), the mechanics of gay sex and straight sex, artificial reproduction and the gory details of childbirth as a direct result of questions they asked me.
I worried about them spreading the word about sex on the playground, but it hasn’t come up as far as I know. I also always make sure I frame any conversation we have in the terms of healthy choices and feeling good, because I don’t think sex is a moral issue.
Wendy asks:
Do you talk to your girls about masterbation? Weird question, I know, but it’s something I’ve had to talk to my daughter about and it’s one of those things the school moms don’t stand around and talk about. I just wonder if I’ve handled it well.
Yup, we talk about it. We have covered the following ground:
- Yes, touching yourself on your vulva and other private parts feels good. That is because there are a lot of nerves there.
- As you get older, your body makes hormones which makes your private parts more sensitive so touching them is more interesting than before. That is normal.
- If you want to touch yourself, you need to go somewhere private like the bedroom or the bathroom.
- There is nothing wrong with mastubating, everyone does it, but it is private.
- I see what you are doing over there. Go do that in your bedroom.
- Privacy means your bedroom door is closed.
- If you are going to touch yourself, you need to wash your hands when you are done.
That is about it. Did I leave anything out?
We are slogging through all our end of the school year obligations. This week, M has two concerts. A 2nd grade concert and an elementary school chorus concert.
M called my mom to invite her to the concerts. My mom wisely decided to attend only one of the two. She asked M “Which one should I go to?”
M replied, “I can’t really say, Nana. They will both be tremendous.”
It won’t be long before my sweet girl might lose that boundless enthusiasm and replace it with teenage surliness. She already shrugs off my hugs when other kids are around. I can see my baby melting away as she gets taller and lankier.
I am not someone who spends a lot of time feeling mushy about the passing of time, but tonight, watching my no-longer-so-little girl playing the glockenspiel, I could feel the years rushing past us. This parenting, gig, it is something else.
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