My last two blogs have been a review of Jana Wolff’s memoir Secret Thoughts of an Adoptive Mother and my reflections on my experiences and their similarities and differences with Wolff’s.Those reflections are continued here.
I related to Wolff’s descriptions of her family—how happy they were and eager to include this new grandchild, but still recognizing something different. “Being adopted and being of color changed the way this baby was held and welcomed by his new extended family,” Wolff declares.
“Ari was neither the first grandchild nor the first grandson, but he was touched with the gingerness of first-timers,” Wolff says. I personally believe this was a sensitivity to a baby who had been separated from a birthmother (granted in my case we were talking about an older infant who had also been separated from her foster mother, but even newborns probably notice some difference in the voices they hear and the faces they see and the smells they smell. I think any gingerness on the relatives’ part was sensitivity and patience. In fact, it is good for extended family to let the new child bond with his parents before insisting that he be with other relatives, even grandparents. (For more on this, see my blog Slow Down, Grandma.)
Wolff properly notes that positive stereotypes are still stereotypes. The only time her “racism radar” was set off by a relative was with such a positive stereotype. I agree with Wolff’s conclusion,
“I figured my best hope in combating prejudice—especially the subtle kind my relatives thought they were rid of—was to have them fall in love with Ari.”
One “quirk” is shared by Wolff’s son and my youngest daughter—a bit of an obsession with food. Our exchange students have said that “Can I have something to eat?” is the one of the first things they remember about their interaction with Regina.
Children raised in orphanages or homes where they were not fed regularly frequently show obsessions with food. But Wolff’s son was adopted at birth and my daughter at eight months—and she had been in very good care until then. Wolff wonders if her son was malnourished in utero. So do I. She wonders if somehow being separated from his first mother gives him “an insatiable hunger for security”. So do I.
“Whether real or symbolic,” Wolff says poignantly, “how do you teach abundance to someone who’s been hungry? How do you teach permanence to someone who’s been left?”
Trying to determine whether certain behaviors or tendencies are adoption-related or because of something else is one of the things that, like Wolff, I try to ferret out…knowing I may never succeed. Like Wolff, I go days without thinking about adoption, but any little thing can make me wonder.
I remember my son describing the skin colors in our family as Wolff’s young son does, using adjectives such as pink for Caucasians and yellow for olive-skinned Mediterranean peoples and brown for African-Americans, but having no concept of categories, or that pinkish and white are one race and his sisters, with their different shades of brown, are another.
It’s interesting to hear the thoughts of another adoptive mother, whose initial reactions seem very different from mine, but whose ultimate reflections find much of the same meaning in her experiences that I do in mine.
Do any of our readers wish to share—with appropriate regard for your children’s privacy—any “secret” thoughts?
Please see this related blog:
Attaching with Extended Family