Jiaozi

So anyway -- PANDAS!

May and I got back from our two-week trip to China a few weeks ago, and I've been busy sorting through photos while jumping back into work and the rest of the routine.

It was a wonderful trip. Not relaxing, like a trip to Hawaii, or fun, like a trip to Disneyland; it was an adventure, and meaningful to both of us.

Originally we had planned for the whole family to go, but for one reason or another it didn't work out, so we agreed I would take May, who hadn't made a return visit to her homeland. That turned out to be a great decision. It was a lovely chance for my middle child to have me all to herself, and for her to be able to call the shots about where we'd go and what we'd eat without having to negotiate with her elder sister and younger sister. And, of course, I loved having her all to myself, without the distractions of school and work. My quiet girl and I had serious talks and giggled over private jokes like a couple of schoolgirls.

We went to Beijing, which May loved (she said she could see herself living there), Xi'an, Chengdu, Nanchang, and Shanghai. The social welfare institute took us out to lunch, put up a welcome banner for May, and let us look at (but not remove) her file. Separately, we met with her foster family and walked around her old neighborhood. It was good for her to confirm some memories and correct others that were not as clear. Some people consider teenagers too old for homeland tours, but I think we went at exactly the right time for her.

Although seein g the Great Wall and Forbidden City was important culturally, and the trip to May's home city was emotionally significant, the highlight of the trip -- and the part May was most excited about -- was still probably the visit to the panda breeding center in Chengdu. It was amazing to see dozens of pandas, of all ages, in one place, roaming around their pleasant green compounds. But best of all was being able to hold a baby panda. This was crazy expensive, but they've added some little extras to make it seem more worthwhile; you get a certificate commemorating your donation, an educational film on DVD, and a hooded sweatshirt with a panda logo on it.

And you get to sit for a minute wearing a surgical gown and plastic gloves holding a chubby, soft six-month-old panda on your lap. They give the panda a stick of bamboo dipped in honey to lick, and he sits placidly for some time, not paying much attention to the people or cameras, until the honey runs out.

I smelled my panda's head. He smelled of animal fur and grass. May was in heaven, hugging her panda and looking at him with adoring eyes; it was a dream come true for her.

I hope she never forgets that feeling.

Spring break!

Not that I post here that often anyway, but at least I have a good excuse for being absent for the next couple of weeks. I'm taking May to China for her first return trip since she came to America. It will be her first visit to Beijing and my first visit to Shanghai, and we'll hit some other locations that are new to both of us. Plus we'll be returning to her social welfare institute. Maybe I'll have touristy pictures to post when we return. Zai jian!

Then this happened

Here is a picture of our little family taken this past Christmas (and no, I haven't sent out our holiday letter yet, but if I had this picture would be on it):

What's wrong with this picture? I'll tell you what's wrong. All the females are just about the same height, despite being of widely varying ages.

Compare this with a picture taken of our family 4 years and 4 months previously:

A different scenario, right?

So much has changed so quickly. Abbey, Bess, and May are all within an inch of my height now. Ella has, what, doubled in size? For the first time in her life, she is at the 50th percentile in height, after spending most of the previous 11 years hovering between the 10th and the 25th percentile. She jumped from wearing size 7/8 to 12/14 in the course of a year.

Did you know kids would do that? I mean, I knew, intellectually, that children grow, and grow fast. But I never thought Ella, my tiny little baby, not even a teenager yet, would already be eye to eye with me. May, Ella, and I wear pretty much the same shoe size. (Abbey and Bess wear bigger shoes than we do). Bess has her driver's license and is looking at colleges. Didn't we just bring these kids home yesterday?

I shake my head in disbelief every day. My babies are so big and strong and competent. It didn't seem to take any time at all. I don't feel different, so how are they so changed?

This is what parenting is about -- raising independent people who are ready to contribute to the world. I won't say that I'm sad. I'm really proud of them. I just thought it would take a little longer, you know?

I'm still standing

Life tends to get in the way of blogging, doesn't it?

We had a nice Christmas break. Then right after New Year's I took a deep breath and ordered myself a new laptop computer, since the old one is going on 6 years old and the keys keep flying off. The very next morning, my hard drive died. Or committed suicide, more likely. So I didn't have a computer for a week. I took the old laptop to the repair guy so I could at least retrieve my files. He put in a new hard drive, so I can access my documents, but I lost my cookies and other personalization. So I have to retype all my passwords on the sites I use a lot -- if I can remember them. I'm hacking my own accounts. (My new laptop has arrived but I haven't set it up yet because that's a whole day-long project.)

Later on the same day the laptop died, we found that two of our cars wouldn't start. Well, their batteries were going on 6 years as well. Thank goodness we now have a third car (because Bess is driving!) (!), so Big A drove down to Sears and picked up a couple of new batteries. But one car still wouldn't start, so we had to have AAA tow it. It needed a new starter and other minor repairs.

Got that fixed, and Seattle Snowmageddon 2012 hit. The kids were out of school for a week.

So, you know, stuff as usual, and it was a nuisance, but I'm thankful that we could pay for the repairs, our power didn't go out, and we're all safe and healthy. Knock on wood.

I do feel sometimes as if the universe doesn't want me to have nice things. I am pretty frugal and try not to replace things if they can be repaired. My car (not one of the ones that broke down) is 9 years old and I am only reluctantly looking at a replacement. It seems as though every major purchase is followed immediately by the breakdown of something else, and before I know it we're hemorrhaging money. I wish someone would invent a money tourniquet.

Because I'm so cheap frugal, sometimes I do without longer than I really need to. It's a startling moment when I realize, for example, that when I need to wrap something up, I don't actually have to scrounge for rubber bands I've pulled off the Sunday paper. I could go to the office supply store and shell out $1.99 for a bag of new rubber bands and have all I need. It just doesn't occur to me to do that. Scrounging is such a habit.

I realized a couple of weeks ago that the kids were still eating snacks out of the three toddler bowls left in the cupboard. They prefer them to our soup and cereal bowls because the toddler bowls are plastic and durable and hold just the right amount for a snack. Should teenagers be eating Cheez-Its out of Disney Baby bowls? On the one hand, it's not as if we're using them for company. On the other hand, I could go to IKEA and buy a stack of SOLBRÄND bowls for five bucks and we'd be set, plus we'd have enough for everyone. So I might do that, one of these days, though I'm afraid if I splurge the dishwasher will break down. It's not a necessity, but it would be nice to have pretty snack bowls, you know?

I don't know why it takes me so long to think about those things. I'm not talking about a new car or appliance, nothing that will break the bank, just little niceties. I am truly the child of Depression babies.

Do you ever do that? Suddenly look at your ratty, cheap old frying pan with new eyes and smack your forehead and think, "Wow, I could actually replace this with one that doesn't have Teflon peeling off it and make my life a little easier!"? Or get the notion that maybe, at this point in your life, you don't have to sleep on threadbare sheets?

Note: Yes, my old laptop will be passed on to one of the kids. And I'm still scrounging for rubber bands.

Christmas in review

Tackling the year in review is too big a task, so I'm going to settle for looking back over the past three weeks.

Here is this year's Christmas tree. It's new, and it's artificial. Our old artificial tree finally bit the dust last year. I love artificial trees. I don't care what anyone says. You take it out of the box, put three or four pieces of trunk together, plug it in, and you're ready to decorate. No struggle to get it straight, no winding endless strings of lights, no sweeping up dead needles.

This tree happens to rotate when you hit a switch. That's not a feature I was looking for, but it came with the tree I liked. It turned out to be rather charming. Also, I could wrap the garlands around the tree by just standing there while the tree rotated and did all the work.

I do bring in evergreen boughs so we still get the aroma of fresh-cut greens. I arrange them around the nativity set with a string of white lights. This year after I unpacked all the boxes of decorations, the nativity set was unaccounted for. Big A was sure he'd brought in all the boxes, but I knew that couldn't be true. This gave me an excuse to run around all day saying things like "Have you found Jesus yet?" This probably amused no one but me, but I enjoyed the joke immensely. Jesus did turn up, by the way.

You know what else I love? Those battery-powered candles. They're made of wax now and even flicker. How can you not be charmed by that? No smoke, just warm glow.

We went to church on Christmas Eve -- my first Christmas Eve service in more than 20 years, and the kids' first ever. (I finally found a nice Lutheran church with a social conscience and a policy of welcoming all sorts of people.) And one of the hymns was "In the Bleak Midwinter," which has been my favorite song this holiday season, so that was a nice surprise.

Tomorrow the tree and decorations will be packed up again, and we will slowly get back into the routine of school and work. 2011 has not been a bad year for us, but it has been terrible for many people I care about, so I am hoping 2012 brings better fortunes for all. Happy New Year!

Making it (or not)

Yeah, I'm still trying to make things for Christmas. So far I've gotten...two presents done. It's not looking good.

There's never enough time to do the things I really want to do for Christmas.

On the "win" side, I have gotten to a couple of Christmas shows and went on a Christmas-y outing into the city, I bought a new artificial tree (shut up, I like them) and got it all decorated, and I have most of the big gifts purchased.

On the "fail" side, I haven't made all the stuff I'd envisioned, haven't planned an outing for the kids, and haven't baked anything. I'm glad the older two girls are in high school, because I've got bupkus for teacher gifts. (Can I use Yiddish in a discussion about Christmas gifts? I think Jesus would be okay with it.)

I wish I had a week to just sit at the sewing machine or ply my crochet hook. After a while, a person just has to make something of substance, you know? I spend most of my time processing words and ideas, which is such an abstract occupation. If I'm not writing and editing for work, I'm helping kids with their report on Thomas Aquinas or Macbeth. I want to be able to point at something and say that I made it, that something now exists that did not exist before, and it's because of me. (Cooking doesn't count for me, because (1) I don't really enjoy it and (2) food doesn't stick around for long.)

Um, anyway. That's enough white whine for now.

Thinking ahead to the holidays

This is apropos of nothing, but I really want to make Christmas presents this year. I don't like to think about the holidays untill at least December 1, but if I'm going to make stuff I'll need a head start. I wonder if it's even possible to find the time. Anybody else making holiday gifts?

Racist much?

Parenting is complicated, but transracial and international adoptive parenting is doubly so. I've been an adoptive parent for 15 years, and the concerns tend to come and go. Sometimes issues of identity come to the fore, sometimes the lingering effects of institutionalization, sometimes race and culture, and sometimes you're just trying to get everyone out the door in the morning.

This past month has been a big one for racism. Maybe it's because of Halloween, which tends to make people think they have a license to be offensive. Maybe it's the coming elections; I came across two separate posts on Facebook recently in which people made fun of the president using a stereotypical "Stepin Fetchit" black dialect. And maybe it's just a thing that happens from time to time; we've recently had another round of schoolchildren doing the "slant eyes"* gesture at one my kids, a recurring problem.

What puzzles me, perhaps even more than the offensive remarks, is the defensiveness people immediately throw up when you call them on racism. The responses are so predictable you could play Racism Bingo. Even the most gentle, light, or heartfelt of admonitions -- "You know, that's considered to be an offensive gesture," "Not cool!" or "I am offended by that" -- bring out all the old chestnuts and flippant remarks: "Why does everything have to be so PC these days?" "Chill out!" "I didn't mean any offense, so it's okay."

I've been around and around with people about calling kids like mine "China dolls." Many people are honestly unaware of the history and connotations of this term. I understand this. There are still innocents in the world. What I don't understand is why they want to argue with me when I tell them why it's offensive. That's not ignorance. That's arrogance.

It's so simple. Don't say or do things other people find offensive. Don't tell them it's not offensive; that's not your call. Apologize if you say something offensive by accident. It doesn't matter how you "meant it." Refer to groups by the names they prefer. Don't argue with them about their choice. You don't even have to understand it. You just have to know.

Especially if you are white. You do not get to be the arbiter of what is and isn't racist any more than men get to be the arbiters of what is and isn't sexist. The group in power does not get to tell the group that is in the minority/oppressed/marginalized what's offensive. Oppressed groups get to retain that right, at least.

I knew this before I adopted transracially, but I didn't feel it in my bones. Now I do. And it has been humbling. I feel weird talking about race. I feel weird pointing out racism to my kids. I feel weird talking about my whiteness. But I think it's the right thing to do, and I'm going to keep doing it.

And I feel good when I see that they really do understand about racism and will be able to take up the battle on their own, in their own way.

A couple of weeks ago we were watching an episode of "Dance Moms" in which the African American mom was trying to make the dance teacher understand why it was not okay to put her daughter, the only child of color in the group, in leopard-print leotards and Afro wigs (there was more, but it was too awful to repeat here). The dance teacher held her ground and insisted that she was creating more opportunities for the little girl.** May snorted, "Racist much?"

All three girls are getting pretty good at seeing racism aimed at themselves and others. They are well aware of the stereotypes that other people are going to try to push onto them. They know it's not okay for anyone to make "slant eyes" at them, and they speak up when it happens.

This is what we promised to do for our children, isn't it? Our adoption agency required us to read books, attend classes, and respond to questionnaires about race and culture. We had to have a plan for how we would responsibly raise a child of color in a white society.

I feel like some people didn't get the memo.

 

*I'm sorry, I can't think of a better word for this. Angry Asian Man calls it "chink eyes," but I'm not sure I can say that.

**Why on earth doesn't that mom pull her kid out of the school? She shouldn't stand for it.

Miscellaneous adoption-y stuff

Adoption assumptions

When Steve Jobs died, the press and public went into overdrive spinning mythical origin stories for him, and some of those stories concerned his status as an adoptive child. One graphic making the rounds had a picture of Jobs with the legend "Born out of wedlock. Put up for adoption at birth. Dropped out of college. Then changed the world. What's your excuse?" I saw other people referring to him as having been "rejected" or having a "rough start in life."

I take exception to this. While being adopted can certainly have far-reaching effects on an individual's life and identity, the fact that Jobs was adopted (or born out of wedlock, for that matter) does not itself mean that he had a rough start, and a look at his biography shows that there wasn't much exceptional about his early life. I won't repeat the details; you can Google it yourself. But suffice it to say that his birthparents made a well-thought-out adoption plan; they agreed to the Jobs family adopting him, albeit with reservations, when the first adoptive family backed out; he was raised in what sounds like a pretty normal home; and later he made contact with his birth relatives and established a relationship with his birth sister, also a talented and creative individual. Pretty typical stuff. We're not talking about Oliver Twist or Little Orphan Annie here. (As for dropping out of college, that was his choice, and it was probably because of that choice, not in spite of it, that he became such a success.)

The "What's your excuse?" line is an example of pathologizing adoption -- that is, assuming that it is "abnormal," that it's necessarily an obstacle to overcome, and that adopted people are always damaged. The flip side of it is that if you, too, were born out of wedlock and "put up for adoption at birth," you'd have an excuse for not changing the world. That's a pretty crummy message. There's a difference between holding someone up as an inspiration and using him as a case study.

In my experience, institutionalization, a poor home environment, and frequent moves to different homes are the aspects of adoption to be concerned about, and even then the effects depend on the individual. Two of my children were affected by those aspects of adoption, and one really wasn't. Not coincidentally, she is also the one who spent the least time in an orphanage. She would give you the evil eye if you said to her, "Wow, you really had a rough start in life! You would have a good excuse if you turned out to be a mess!" I have seen her evil eye, and you do not want to be on the receiving end of it.

Happily ever after

We are sci-fi/fantasy geeks, so of course we watched the premiere of "Once Upon a Time" the other night. It was fast-moving and entertaining, and I think the whole family is hooked. But they sure hit the adoption theme hard, didn't they? I mean, it's bad enough when the Wicked Queen is depicted as an evil stepmother (I say that as a stepmother), but when she is also an evil adoptive mother, that's a bit much to handle. Or it was for me. I kept asking the kids, "Are you okay with this? Don't you think it's sort of negative about adoption?" They shrugged. There was one line in the show that had to do with "that basic question [adopted children] all inevitably face: 'Why would anyone give me away?'" I asked the kids if that's a question every adopted kid faces. More shrugs. When I was still sputtering a bit at the end of the show, May said, "Mom. You take this stuff too seriously." So, yeah. They're not exactly bubbling over with feelings about adoption at this point in their lives. Sometimes I'm the one with the problem.

Welcome to the blackboard jungle

Last month a friend who is an adoptive parent posted on her Facebook wall that she was worried about her child on his first day of first grade. Another parent commented, "I feel the same way...I want to give all his classmates and teachers the back story so they will accept him." And I understood exactly what she meant.

I always want to give the back story. I want to say, "This child is not like other children in your elementary school class. This child did not have Mozart played for her in the womb. She didn't come home to a nursery decorated out of the Pottery Barn Kids catalog. Nobody sang her to sleep and laid her gently in a cozy bassinet. She wasn't fed or held on demand or given love or intellectual stimulation until much later. So maybe she doesn't stay on task very well, but be gentle with her. She has come so far."

Or I want to say, "I know you see this child as just one of the mass of Asian kids in junior high who get straight As, but you don't know the effort it costs her. She has only been speaking English for five years, and she is still catching up. She works very hard for those As. Acknowledge that effort."

I want to give the back story. But I can't. They're too old for that now, and those details are nobody's business, least of all their classmates'. I can only advocate for them behind the scenes.

When they were younger, I could write notes on the school admission forms, talk about institutionalization and developmental delays, and the officials would nod as if they understood. But I don't think they really did. All kids have challenges, they probably thought. And maybe they do, but this is my child, and I want them to know there's more to her than what they see through the filter of performance goals and required curriculum.

And beyond the challenges, I want them to know that this child, my child, is amazing. This child may never do well on standardized testing -- may, in fact, never even pass the standardized testing. (Will they hold her diploma over that? Not while I'm around.) Certainly I want my child to be able to, at minimum, read a newspaper and write a letter and balance a checkbook (or whatever electronic forms those basic skills will take in the future). But standardized tests don't measure creativity, or humor, or kindness. They do a very poor job of gauging the worth of a square peg.

So when a teacher asks my child, as one did today, "What's the setting for Because of Winn-Dixie? When does it take place?" and my child answers straight-faced, "In alien space-time" and pauses a beat before saying, "Just kidding," my heart swells with pride. Boom! It's the wrong answer -- or is it? Because for a kid who watches Doctor Who, it's a perfectly reasonable answer. And that's just the way she rolls.

Everyone has a back story. But some are more complicated than others.