Excess Baggage

I stand on a line, I can see my feet walking on a tight rope. To either side I see a different world. This line I want to break at my feet, it blurs, it bends, but there is nothing I can do to break it. I resent the line, I hate it, but again I love this line, this line becomes me even if it cries at me. The worlds at either side contain different versions of who I am. I can see them. If I trip and I fall I am not the line. I forget the line.

One side I see a filial daughter who bows and speaks fluently. I try to become her, I try very hard. But the image is a ghost. I can try to grasp, but she’s not really there. It’s just a manifestation of something I’ve lost. She speaks fluently and well. She’s kind and is deeply moral. She even has a touch of Buddhist in her. She understands family as the utmost thing to cherish. She’s beautiful and confident. I like her. She’s kind and so compassionate even at the expense of herself. I hate her. Why do I have to be her?

The other side I am the geek. I seek out knowledge as a vampire would seek blood. I watch movies with endless fascination to pick up random thoughts. I am good at computers. I can’t see my skin. I can’t see myself in the mirror. The illusion would break. I am imitating someone who never existed. I wonder if I hate her. If I do I hate myself. If I don’t, then what am I? Mess surrounds me as if I am the eye of a hurricane. I talk back to my elders, I ask questions no one should ask. I tap into something Jewish once in a while. Discourse becomes a game. Feelings are to be considered. I feel real. I feel alive. I feel fake.

I am the line. I am not the line. I don’t belong in either world. Free from it all, free from this room where people point and label and say what I am and what I am not, I find myself.

I adopted you because you were pretty and from a foreign land. I didn’t care which. The country was cheap. You were of the best breed I could find. I rescued you from the filth and decay of this land, festered with communism. I did you a favor. You should be grateful to me. I put a roof over your head when your birth parents could not. I held you in my arms and gave you warmth and clothes. It was because I had eternal love for you, that I know I can heal all your hurts. A parent does not need anything else.

Because the place you were adopted into was better than the place you were. All people should do as I did and rescue more of your kind from these countries of backward politics and despair. You were cheap and on the bargain shelf–you came as quickly as I signed the papers. Frankly, I don’t care about the country or parents that you came from. You know deep in your heart, you owe me a deep debt of gratitude you can never repay me. You can never repay me even after I die. You will tend my grave and cry because you should be that grateful.

And those who gave you up to me–clearly they were less fortunate. The life I will give you is great, and will be no match to the one they would have given you if they had the money. But they abandoned you anyway. Why do you think of your gratitude for them, when it is me that has done all of these things for you? For you will be properly educated–devoid of anything of that country before you once lived in. If you do not look me in the eyes, you must truly have a mental disorder–how can you not? If you speak a language I don’t understand–it’s your fault and the fault of your country, not mine. For they are beneath your new country.

I did this for the sake of the children, the children I was led to see by the great organization you should be thankful to, who placed you, that despondent child into my arms. You filled with a blood not of my own, a culture that your parents who abandoned you infected you with. What language have you learned before? Forget it. What skin color do you possess? I do not see it. It is you, my child, my rescued child that must forget all those past things for I know deep inside they will only bring you pain. For what I think and know are also what you think and know.

It is a favor I give to you, that you live in my place, with my love, with me. And then the world will say, what a wondrous person I am.

The Nile flows from South to North making the Egyptians reverse their sense of direction. Denial is the same. It too runs backwards. To me this is also adoption. No part of the adoption triad will most likely like this.

Information is the river itself, but everyone drinks from other parts of it. The source is the birth parents, the middle is the adoptee and the mouth is the adoptive parents.

In this fashion the river of adoption is different. It’s like the old proverb about the three blind men who tried to describe the elephant–no one is wrong, but no one has the complete picture even if they pretend to.

At the source of the river are the birth parents. They talk about the pain of letting go of their children, how hard it is for them to worry everyday, if their children will hate them and ultimately the cultural differences and language loss. Many think of themselves as terrible for having to give up their children. The prevailing feeling is of shame and guilt.

They don’t see what their children go through, never learn of other adoption stories and usually if they really wish it watch reunion stories. They never come to understand the grand scale of adoption itself or why a person would adopt their child. I don’t think they particularly want to learn it–it only compounds the guilt.
Even with open adoption it is pretty much the same.

The adoptees are in the middle. This is a permanent position for an adoptee no matter what they ultimately choose. And they have no choice but to stay here with no sense of direction, identity or compass.

They were put here without any say in the matter. The emotions involved would most likely be akin of kidnapping a poor man and putting them into a rich family who insists their life is better now. Even if his countrymen gave him up willingly, it doesn’t mean he was willing to go. The prevailing feeling would be of loss and being lost.

Adoptees because of the flood of emotions of being either abandoned or betrayed rarely can view any subject on adoption objectively. It’s really hard not to favor one side or another. This is because of what adoption has taught them. You are either part of your birth family or your adoptive family. You are as in my case, either Korean or a Russian middle class Jew. You are what I tell you are because that’s what I perceive you to be. Without objectivity and always in the middle of a war of black and white, but trying to desperately fight for the grays, the adoptee can’t separate emotion and fact about adoption.

In between the adoptees and the mouth of the river is the dam of Adoption Agencies. I often think there is a mutual hate of this dam, necessary as it is. It’s a love-hate relationship. I think they often add things to the river that don’t have to be there.

Adoptive Parents are at the weakest end of the current. They are told not to look at the adoptee and birth parents’ stories, but taught to take what the adoption agency gives them at face value. It’s not really their fault they think it’s their mission to rescue children from the slums of what are called orphanages. They read and read, mean well, but often don’t want to see what they are really stepping into. They get pieces of a whole, but never can feel the empathy that the adoptee or birth parents want them to feel. The feeling of loss, separation, identity crisis, prejudice never reach them. And in many ways they don’t want to know the anger and the pain–for then they have to question their morality and if what gift they received from the delta was a sin.

It’s usually after the child is adopted and can reasonably speak that they realize that the river of adoption runs deeper than they thought. It’s not just the child who inherited a new heritage, but they did too. And they are responsible for it. This transition is akin to culture shock–it’s hard to break out of the safe bubble made and sometimes falsified by adoption agencies.

Grappling with ones deeply held belief system and have it shaken is not easy. But I wish those who went through the shock would also speak out. Confronting your beliefs time to time is not a bad thing, but holding to them naively without examination is something I can’t uphold.

I can truly try to wash the information I know downstream, but those who hang onto their rock with all their might and don’t let go in the flood will be lost.

This river of information about adoption is varied, damed and often hard to sort. And all shades of denial run along the banks.

I hate adoptive parents that talk about adopting children like they are buying a car. They are the kind that are so confident that they think being able to adopt and pass the bar from adoption agencies is enough. I get mad at them because the way they talk.

“How long does it take?”

“When will we get them?”

“How much does it cost?”

“Can it go faster?”

“Is there a way to have less hassle?”

“I have two from before.”

I can feel my stomach knot and my throat tense. I want to throw up. I want to argue that we aren’t purchases for tax deductions, but humans. We are people that these people will have to care for. We aren’t a twenty year investment that they sometimes will see in a photograph like a car.

They talk about children like they will talk about the make of a car. “I adopted from fill-in-the-blank country.” “You should adopt domestically.” which doesn’t sound too different than, “I bought my car from Japan.” “You should support the American economy and buy from the US.”

A collection on the list of collections. They don’t talk or care about what the culture of the child is. They don’t want to face the racism their child will face, the language loss, the loss of identity, issues of interracial adoption (if they adopt this way), or even what a grown adoptee has to say about her own experiences. All countries are faceless and the same. Because they deeply believe that it won’t happen to their child. They are a better parent than the parent of the person talking. They think in terms of pride. “It doesn’t happen to my child.” “I coached him.” “We’re like best friends.” I want adoption agencies to say these parents are not qualified.

Because children are not a commodity to test drive, fix up in a mechanics shop and ditch when there is a better fad. I want to know if the person is adopting because of Angelina Jolie, because they think they are “rescuing” the “disadvantaged” children, think its “interesting”, because they are following some kind of fad, or if they really do want to build a family. I want to know if they don’t do this their hearts and minds will bleed from the want and need to build a family. Is it a on a whim and they thinking of it in passing? I want to know that some part of them truly cares, they know the culture they are adopting from, the past history of the country, something about the language and prepared to answer awkward questions like, “Why do people tease others?” that’s not just the “Sticks and Stones Break your Bones…” statement. I want to see that they know their stuff beyond what the adoption agency expects of them because they think signing a paper is enough.

I want them to care that deeply about it because I know adoption agencies do not. I am jaded into thinking that adoption agencies make money by selling children like cars. If the adoption agencies don’t care, then I think the adoptive parents should pick up the slack and care in the place of them. I want them to leave their pride behind as parents and be able to listen and learn about what they are really getting themselves into each and every time they adopt. No two children or adoptions are alike.

When an adoptee objects to their wording they should present what they know rather than take it as a personal insult on their parenting skills. Say to that adoptee, “Yes, I know the culture, something about the language and I will try my best to be prepared, but I still want to know about X. I respect you. If you have questions, I am willing to answer.” I support education and awareness. We were once cars. We want to know their children won’t be cars too. I do not condemn adoption. I only condemn parents that deal children like cars and then only give half a damn later.