Long Ramble about Adoption

Sometimes the stars align or something and a thing in my life that I had planned to write about sort of winds up the topic on a blog I read and I start to hear music from the Twilight Zone! LOL  Tonight I was thinking a lot about adoption.  Partly because December is the month Chet came home to me.  December is the month Elisabeth was born and came home to me.  December is the month I met Rob for the first time. It is Fiona's birth month and the month I met her for the first time.  KC is the lone spring guy in my tribe.  But recently, most of my adoption thoughts have centered on Rob.

I know how hard adoption is during the teen years.  Being a teen is hard enough.  Being an adopted, transracial teen of lesbian white women???  And yet, (and understand that I am knocking wood here) Rob seems to be growing into a comfortable place as a teen that he didn't have as a young child. 

I am not crediting this to some fantastic thing I have done as a parent.  I suspect it has a lot to do with Rob and how he approaches things slowly and deliberately and when he reaches a decision it has really.been.made.

But I do know that I have done all I could to try and make the space for making those decisions as comfortable as they can be, and for him to always know that he is deeply loved, always, no matter what. There have been a lot of times when I have felt that I cared far more about first family connections than he did.  He would be unresponsive during phone calls or visits. He would not write to first family members.  Once I managed to convince a variety of aunts, cousins and siblings that I was not holding him apart from them intentionally, we wound up working things out.  They let a relationship develop between me and them, so that at least they knew what was going on in Rob's life.  And I passed on what was going on in theirs in a casual, off hand manner that he seemed most able to accept.

Eventually, as a younger teen, I was able to tap into his love of the electronic age and through social media was able to re-connect him with some family in that manner.It was pretty stilted at first, and i am not a saint.  I worried that something would be said that would hurt him.  But just like I can't wrap him in bubble wrap when he skateboards, I can't wrap his heart in bubble wrap either.  I just need to be there for him when it happens.

And the point of the ramble, is that the evolution continues.  Tonight, Rob shared with me a picture of a hair style that one of his cousin's did on her daughter.  When I said i wished Lissa would sit for something like was was shown, he quickly typed it to his cousin and then showed me her response.  There was a naturalness to it all that spoke of the way we have smoothed out  jagged edges and worked to heal.  I mentioned to Rob that one of his cousins might be at our next visit with Fiona and he said he knew.  I said I have never met this cousin before and I was looking forward to it.  I asked if he remembered her.  He said not really, but he thought she loved to wear a lot of red, like I do.  We are all more connected than we give ourselves credit for.  Adoption really requires that we honor those connections--those blood connections of our children, connections of culture, the whole gamut. I'd like to believe that when we do, we can truly facilitate a healing  from the trauma that adoption also is for all our children.  I don't want a scab over an infected sore.  I am shooting for a healthy healing, and yes, I know there will be a scar.  We all have them and I can't get rid of those either.

And the Twilight Zone connection?  Tonight I read one of my favorite blogs written by an adult adoptee and she had posted a letter written by another adult adoptee.  Read it, if you are an adoptive parent.  Actually, I think you should just read it. Because none of us know where our lives will take us and whose hearts we will touch in the course of living.  You'll find it here