Jiaozi

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.

9/11

I don't even want to think about it. It's still too raw. I can't bear to see those airplanes on my television again. I can hardly stand to think of how we felt that day, calling around and checking on loved ones out of state, spending most of the workday watching the news reports, not knowing for hours whether there were any planes still unaccounted for. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that anyone who lived through those days was traumatized by it.

 

About six years ago, when Bess was in elementary school, I went along on a field trip her class took to a museum that was hosting one of those traveling 9/11 exhibits. The glass cases held firefighters' scorched hats, chunks of melted metal, shoes without mates, yellowed newspapers. Monitors in a darkened room showed videos of live news reports from the event. I tood one look around and burst into tears. I could not stop crying -- and if you know me, you know this is unusual for me. That's how hard it hit me. The schoolchildren didn't remember 9/11 and couldn't understand my reaction. But for the adults it was all still very visceral and immediate, even four years on. Adding to the poignancy, Peter Jennings was the news anchor on many of the videos, and he had just died from cancer. I kept thinking about him doing those reports not knowing he'd be dead himself four years later. Did the strain affect his health? Possibly. And he wasn't the only victim of collateral damage. The losses continue.

I'll put out a flag to honor the dead and this flawed, beautiful country, but I refuse to call it Patriot Day. The word "patriot" has accumulated too much baggage. It's 9/11. We will always remember it that way.

Summer experiments

Summer is a good time for trying new things, right? I don't get much of a break during the summer -- I'm still working, even though the kids are at home and sooo boooored. But I've managed to have a few adventures.

• Since May, I have been trying to eat a more plant-based diet. Because it's good for people and the Earth. It has been relatively easy to give up meat. I've realized that most meat doesn't have much taste, and I don't miss it in pasta dishes and the like. I've used meat substitutes a few times when everyone else is having hamburgers, and they're fine. What I have a harder time with is eating more vegetables. The easiest substitutes for meat are grains and dairy products, which most of us don't need more of in our diets. I'm not a huge vegetable fan, but I'm trying to expand my repertoire. I don't think I can go vegan -- I dont want to give up my eggs! -- but I switched to almond milk with no regrets. I don't feel any different and haven't lost weight, but I'll be interested to see if my cholesterol levels (which were already pretty good) have changed when I have my annual checkup.
• I noticed that my childhood friends and acquaintances on Facebook really seemed to want to talk about "the old days," so a few days ago I started a group for people who grew up in our neighborhood/housing development. The membership is now over 100, with dozens of posts each day. It's fascinating to watch. I know excitement will die down after everyone has had their say, but it's a really interesting experiment in social media. I'm still trying to figure out what it signifies.
• I also had a mini-reunion with some high school friends, and between that and Facebook I am feeling like I need a break from nostalgia. You know what I like best about getting together with old friends? It's not the reminiscing; it's when we talk about things that are happening in our lives now, and I see that they are, if anything, even more interesting individuals than they were 30 years ago. It's lovely when you can just pick up as if the time had never passed and enjoy hearing what they have to say. I've been fortunate to know some really remarkable people in my life.
• I bought myself a cocktail shaker. My first. I've been making cosmopolitans and mojitos for Big A and me. Yum.
• We went to a new place on vacation this year, a lake in the eastern part of the state. It was a lot of fun, and we will definitely go back. I let the girls talk me going innertubing (in my clothes!) and going down the longest, darkest, wildest slide at the water park. Memo to self: Don't fall for the "Mom, you have to confront your fears!" line again.

Preteen weight gain: a public service announcement

Because your children are likely younger than mine, I want to tell you about something that nobody prepared me for, and apparently nobody prepared my mother for. It has to be the best kept secret in parenting.

Here it is: Kids will, between the ages of 9 and 11, tend to put on a little weight. The tummy they had when they were toddlers will make a return appearance. They may even get little love handles.

This is perfectly normal. They are gearing up for a big growth spurt that will propel them into puberty, adolescence, and adulthood.

Do not freak out and put that child on a diet. Don't ask your child to eat any differently from any other member of the family. In fact, don't even talk about it with him or her. This is not a problem.

Do make sure you are making an assortment of healthy foods available to the entire family. Do provide occasional treats (otherwise they will find a way to get them on their own), but in general follow the new USDA nutrition guidelines. Kids this age can be voracious. As long as they are eating fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and some sources of protein and calcium, they should be able to eat as much as they want. And do make sure your child is engaging in some sort of physical activity the he or she enjoys and looks forward to.

I'm not a health professional or nutritionist. But I have raised four 10-year-olds, I am a former 10-year-old myself, I watched six siblings go through their preteen years, and I know this to be true. When I was 10, my mother took me aside, looked me over, and told me I was getting a little chubby in the tush and needed to cut out bread. I can tell you right now that I was not skinny, but I was in no way overweight. That launched a 10-year period during which I was always either dieting or overeating and constantly see-sawed between weights. The same thing happened to two of my sisters who were curvy (the skinny sisters and the boys got off scot-free). Guess which three siblings still struggle with their weight?

My mother was not cruel or abusive. She thought this was a kindness. She thought she could save us from struggling with our weight as she had struggled with hers.

But I am here to tell you that diets probably cause weight gain by messing with your metabolism, and I can't even imagine how much it must mess up the metabolism of a child preparing for a growth spurt. Severe calorie restriction causes your body to go into starvation mode and slow down to conserve calories. This is bad. Going on the Atkins diet when I was a 115-pound 15-year-old did me no favors. I should have left well enough alone.

So leave well enough alone. I've watched plenty of preteens with little tummies who, left to grow naturally, grew into slender, strong teenagers who were blissfully free of the self-consciousness some of us had imposed on us by well-meaning others. (Do they have their own self-doubts and are they subject to peer competitiveness? Of course. But the adults in their lives did not, at least, make the situation worse.)

Here's a good article on this subject from Today's Parent. Please note the last paragraph of the article (on page 2) and watch how you talk about yourself as well. More about that another time.

How about you? Do your history with weight and eating affect your parenting and your own self-image?