11 July 2006
less than perfect is perfect
Three has been less than perfect lately.
Finally.
You see, this is enormous progress. Her tantrums, her picking on her sibs, her whining, her setting her jaw in that aggravating way--I've been waiting for all of this. It's not exactly the other shoe dropping. It's more like the entire shoe store being burnt to the ground.
She's been so incredibly well-behaved for so long. Her second Gotcha anniversary was last month. She's been home 2 years. Less than 20% of her life. She left her country, her friends, her family, her language, her sense of self all behind when she got on an airplane with her hair braided and decorated with many-colored beads (a hairdo she loved but could not stand to sleep on) and flew to Miami and the "Blanc" who was thenceforth to be known as Mom.
The thing is, she had a Mom already, and sibs, and a life. Her mom wasn't able to feed her, so she was placed in an orphanage and released for international adoption. But she still saw her mom and maybe even her sibs once in a while. She lived in a big house over-crowded with lots of kids, many her own age, all waiting to be adopted. She had food. She had friends. Sometimes visiting Blancs would take a couple of them to the hotel for pizza and swimming.
She remembers smells, sounds, tastes (the other night, it was "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" in a tub--she claimed she "used to eat it in Haiti," and while that seems unlikely, it's possible). Little visceral cues trigger full-blown memories for all of us. For me, often, a certain slant of light will put me right back on the playground, playing 4-Square, or Red Light/Green light in the dusk. A bite of a certain store-bought cookie, and I'm 8 years old, eating cookies for breakfast (cookies! store-bought!! for breakfast!!!--all once-in-a-lifetime concessions on my mother's part) in the early-morning darkness as my parents load up the car for 2 weeks at the lake.
Three has things to remember that no child should have to remember. Hunger. Unbearable heat. Searing pain from repeated ear infections. Violence all around her. Mere babies having babies. Children going away to live their almost certainly short lives as restavecs. A little sister she loved and helped take care of. A big brother she adores who looks to be about 17 in the tiny snapshot she treasures. A mother who had a secret pet name for her. And who placed her in the orphanage not once but twice.
Yes, twice. Three was sent back home from the orphanage once for hitting someone (I think it was a nanny, but she's a bit vague on the details). She says her mother wasn't angry, but she also says her mother told her not to let it happen again. And then she went back to the orphanage--an orphanage full of kids who also received regular visits from members of their birth families. An orphanage full of kids waiting to be "picked" by the rich blancs who would buy them everything they ever wanted, who would let them eat candy all day long, and who would send money or plane tickets or cell phones or whatever was needed back to Haiti for the sake of the children.
I don't know, of course, that that is what Three was told, that last part. But I'm reasonably sure that others of her age were told that. Others of her age were told that it would be their job to make sure their birth families were helped by the blancs. Some of them were even told that their birth families would be able to go to "Amaireeca" on the strength of the child's becoming a US citizen. (This is not an accurate read of immigration laws, by the way.)
This is not as crude and grasping as it sounds. Things are desperate where Three came from. The poverty and hopelessness is incomprehensible to us. The parents who place their children for international adoption can't feed them. They can't provide medical care. Their children die of infections for lack of an ordinary course of antibiotics. They can't pay for school. Placing their children for international adoption is a caring solution, and a chance available only for a very few.
In the dire circumstances in which the poor of Cite Soleil are condemned to spend their lives, hoping for some aid from an adoptive American family is certainly understandable, even reasonable. Even though most adoptive families are mining the couches for loose change and maxing out their credit cards to bring their kids home, they are still rich beyond measure compared to these abjectly poor birth families. In the same situation, I think I'd hope for a continuing connection both to the child I placed for adoption and to the family who might be able to help those left behind. I'd hope despite all the explanation to the contrary supplied by orphanage directors, agency employees, lawyers, courts and CIS officers.
During the long and tumultuous process of adopting Three, I thought she was hoping to be "picked." I knew that, as an "older" child, she had a smaller chance of that than the younger girls (though a much greater chance than a boy of any age). She was said to be sweet, smart, funny. Her picture and her bio and the stories people who met her told about her tugged at my heart. I felt that she was my daughter, though I knew she had a birth family, a life, a history.
There's no real way to explain how that happens. The closest analogy I've been able to arrive at for myself is that it's not unlike falling in romantic love--an emotional process with its own logics and narrative shapes that, finally, make no sense except to those doing the falling at any given moment. The analogy works for my end of it; her experience is another story.
Three could not have had the least little clue what adoption really meant. She was convinced that being able to rattle off conjugation charts for English verbs meant that she could speak English. What kind of notion could she possibly have had for what was going to be happening to her?
She was supposed to be good, to not be sent back again--to not be sent back home again. So that's what she did. And it worked. She didn't get sent home. Her reward for being such a perfectly good girl was to be sent away--far, far away.
Being perfect is hard work. Being perfect for almost 2 years is unimaginably hard work. But she did it, because she thought she had to.
I was an experienced adoptive parent, well-prepared, well-educated in the ins and outs, the ups and downs of international older child adoption. Of course I knew being taken away from her world would be traumatic and confusing. But somehow I assumed that she wanted to be adopted--after all, her life was hard and could only get harder. I thought she watched her friends getting adopted around her and felt overlooked, unwanted--like the kid waiting on the sidelines to be picked by one of the softball team captains. I wonder, now, if she was in fact hoping to be picked. I wonder, now, if she was hoping against hope that something miraculous would happen to allow her to stay in Haiti, to return to her birth mother and her birth family.
I wonder, now, every day, if I'll be able to help her learn to cope with her anger, her fear, her disappointment, her grief, her need to be perfect.
But I do not wonder, now, any more than I did then, if she's my daughter. That one I'm sure about.
Finally.
You see, this is enormous progress. Her tantrums, her picking on her sibs, her whining, her setting her jaw in that aggravating way--I've been waiting for all of this. It's not exactly the other shoe dropping. It's more like the entire shoe store being burnt to the ground.
She's been so incredibly well-behaved for so long. Her second Gotcha anniversary was last month. She's been home 2 years. Less than 20% of her life. She left her country, her friends, her family, her language, her sense of self all behind when she got on an airplane with her hair braided and decorated with many-colored beads (a hairdo she loved but could not stand to sleep on) and flew to Miami and the "Blanc" who was thenceforth to be known as Mom.
The thing is, she had a Mom already, and sibs, and a life. Her mom wasn't able to feed her, so she was placed in an orphanage and released for international adoption. But she still saw her mom and maybe even her sibs once in a while. She lived in a big house over-crowded with lots of kids, many her own age, all waiting to be adopted. She had food. She had friends. Sometimes visiting Blancs would take a couple of them to the hotel for pizza and swimming.
She remembers smells, sounds, tastes (the other night, it was "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" in a tub--she claimed she "used to eat it in Haiti," and while that seems unlikely, it's possible). Little visceral cues trigger full-blown memories for all of us. For me, often, a certain slant of light will put me right back on the playground, playing 4-Square, or Red Light/Green light in the dusk. A bite of a certain store-bought cookie, and I'm 8 years old, eating cookies for breakfast (cookies! store-bought!! for breakfast!!!--all once-in-a-lifetime concessions on my mother's part) in the early-morning darkness as my parents load up the car for 2 weeks at the lake.
Three has things to remember that no child should have to remember. Hunger. Unbearable heat. Searing pain from repeated ear infections. Violence all around her. Mere babies having babies. Children going away to live their almost certainly short lives as restavecs. A little sister she loved and helped take care of. A big brother she adores who looks to be about 17 in the tiny snapshot she treasures. A mother who had a secret pet name for her. And who placed her in the orphanage not once but twice.
Yes, twice. Three was sent back home from the orphanage once for hitting someone (I think it was a nanny, but she's a bit vague on the details). She says her mother wasn't angry, but she also says her mother told her not to let it happen again. And then she went back to the orphanage--an orphanage full of kids who also received regular visits from members of their birth families. An orphanage full of kids waiting to be "picked" by the rich blancs who would buy them everything they ever wanted, who would let them eat candy all day long, and who would send money or plane tickets or cell phones or whatever was needed back to Haiti for the sake of the children.
I don't know, of course, that that is what Three was told, that last part. But I'm reasonably sure that others of her age were told that. Others of her age were told that it would be their job to make sure their birth families were helped by the blancs. Some of them were even told that their birth families would be able to go to "Amaireeca" on the strength of the child's becoming a US citizen. (This is not an accurate read of immigration laws, by the way.)
This is not as crude and grasping as it sounds. Things are desperate where Three came from. The poverty and hopelessness is incomprehensible to us. The parents who place their children for international adoption can't feed them. They can't provide medical care. Their children die of infections for lack of an ordinary course of antibiotics. They can't pay for school. Placing their children for international adoption is a caring solution, and a chance available only for a very few.
In the dire circumstances in which the poor of Cite Soleil are condemned to spend their lives, hoping for some aid from an adoptive American family is certainly understandable, even reasonable. Even though most adoptive families are mining the couches for loose change and maxing out their credit cards to bring their kids home, they are still rich beyond measure compared to these abjectly poor birth families. In the same situation, I think I'd hope for a continuing connection both to the child I placed for adoption and to the family who might be able to help those left behind. I'd hope despite all the explanation to the contrary supplied by orphanage directors, agency employees, lawyers, courts and CIS officers.
During the long and tumultuous process of adopting Three, I thought she was hoping to be "picked." I knew that, as an "older" child, she had a smaller chance of that than the younger girls (though a much greater chance than a boy of any age). She was said to be sweet, smart, funny. Her picture and her bio and the stories people who met her told about her tugged at my heart. I felt that she was my daughter, though I knew she had a birth family, a life, a history.
There's no real way to explain how that happens. The closest analogy I've been able to arrive at for myself is that it's not unlike falling in romantic love--an emotional process with its own logics and narrative shapes that, finally, make no sense except to those doing the falling at any given moment. The analogy works for my end of it; her experience is another story.
Three could not have had the least little clue what adoption really meant. She was convinced that being able to rattle off conjugation charts for English verbs meant that she could speak English. What kind of notion could she possibly have had for what was going to be happening to her?
She was supposed to be good, to not be sent back again--to not be sent back home again. So that's what she did. And it worked. She didn't get sent home. Her reward for being such a perfectly good girl was to be sent away--far, far away.
Being perfect is hard work. Being perfect for almost 2 years is unimaginably hard work. But she did it, because she thought she had to.
I was an experienced adoptive parent, well-prepared, well-educated in the ins and outs, the ups and downs of international older child adoption. Of course I knew being taken away from her world would be traumatic and confusing. But somehow I assumed that she wanted to be adopted--after all, her life was hard and could only get harder. I thought she watched her friends getting adopted around her and felt overlooked, unwanted--like the kid waiting on the sidelines to be picked by one of the softball team captains. I wonder, now, if she was in fact hoping to be picked. I wonder, now, if she was hoping against hope that something miraculous would happen to allow her to stay in Haiti, to return to her birth mother and her birth family.
I wonder, now, every day, if I'll be able to help her learn to cope with her anger, her fear, her disappointment, her grief, her need to be perfect.
But I do not wonder, now, any more than I did then, if she's my daughter. That one I'm sure about.
