We’ve been practicing spitting. Maybe it’s more like drooling actually. Whatever you may want to call it, we’ve been practicing getting saliva from where it belongs to somewhere else.
She doesn’t know why. And, that’s fine for now. We’ll send it away and wait a bit. We’ll find out some random interesting stuff, hopefully some things that will help her later as she wrestles with her story. Maybe she can pull that info out when someone tells her she doesn’t “look Chinese” or when she has to do a school project on ancestry. Maybe it will even prove helpful when the doctor asks her again for some sort of medical history. It won’t give her all the answers, but maybe it will help.
But, I’m hoping for more than that. I’m hoping that another parent like me somewhere is thinking the same things for their daughter, maybe for their son. I’m hoping that they’re practicing spitting too and that our stories get woven together as our children discover they are family—cousins or maybe even siblings.
It’s controversial in the adoption community, you know, searching for your child’s history. Some say parents searching violates their children’s rights to choose and do it themselves. But, others say that if your child has a chance of learning anything ever, you have to do whatever it is you can do sooner rather than later. And, that’s where my view falls. I know it could get messy. But, in all actuality, it’s already messy.
I read the words of one adopted person:
How can you prepare someone for this tangle of roots? This road of reunification is not reunification. If it were unified to begin with we wouldn’t be where we are. But it is a road of meeting—meeting each other where we are in life.
It is a tangle of roots. This beautiful child before me with a sister who adores her and two brothers committed to her no matter what, with a mommy and daddy who laugh at her antics and marvel at her beauty, with an extended family who see her as another treasure in our family tree…this child also has a finder, ayis who cared for her for a year and heard her infant cries and bathed her tiny body and worried about her wearing enough layers of clothing, and a father who may or may not have known she even existed, an extended family, someone who had to know she was coming into the world, and a mother who felt her grow in her womb and birthed her only to say goodbye to her. It’s a tangle of roots for sure.
But, if there’s something that I can do now that may help comb out a tangle or two when she is older and those knots become increasingly painful, I’m in. As soon as we know she can get enough spit out to fill this little 23andMething, we’re sending it in. And, then we’ll wait, a couple months at first and then maybe years really. But, one day, one day, we may find a part of her family she doesn’t yet know, a part of our family we don’t yet know. Until then, we’ll be the family we are, growing stronger daily despite our tangle of roots.
I am an adoptee searching for my birth family and you are right it is a tangle of roots. Some where deep inside of me though, part of my trunk is missing, I am weaker because of it. I have a tattoo on my back of a broken heart with a band-aid on it. A friend drew it for me because I explained to her once that I am broken, scarred by not having the ability to fill in this piece of my past, how ever inconsequential some may think that piece is. Yes I have a loving family and I would not trade them for anything in the world. Part of me feels like a traitor for wanting to search, the other part feels betrayed by not being able to talk about it publically…amongst my family with out things being weird. My sister Adrianne directed me here. She and her husband Will have adopted a little boy and we are learning together how to talk about things. I am overcoming a lifetime of secrecy and thoughts and feeling pushed down so deep inside of me that when they do come rushing to the surface I do not know what to do with them. I think as much as she wants to help, she does not know what else to do but hold my hand and love me. This is what she can do and listen which she does. My other sister Lori does as well. I am blessed to have them both in my life but it is still so hard. I never want them to think that I do not love them or that they are my world just because I long to know what every non adopted person knows…who they are, where they come from and how they got here. I hope one day to be able to have my tattoo fixed, the band-aid “removed” because the crack in my heart will be healed with knowledge.
You are a good mom , Kelly.