After some run-around with U.S.C.I.S. (and some procrastination on my part), I have FINALLY acquired the boys’ official adoption paperwork, as submitted when we entered this country nearly five years ago.

And we thought we had photocopies of all the important stuff.

We didn’t.

Pushing past an initial brush-off from our nation’s immigration department, I filed again this past September, loading them up with all the past history of my attempts to acquire our sons’s original adoption paperwork.

And this time, it worked.  And not only do we have pictures of them and of their other mama that we never had before, we now have the names of their maternal grandparents!

The boys were ecstatic!  ”We have 3 grandmoms and 3 granddads!” (They have “known” for years that they have four sets… but the 3rd one just became more real because they have names!]

But the best news?  One of them shares his first name and middle initial with their grandfather.  We know why he has his name!

It’s something birth parents take for granted – the rationale behind a child’s name.  And we were just able to give that to him this week.  He’s seven.

We’re so far behind.  But how grateful are we that we were given the good sense to keep their names?

Their names are their story.  And we just got a little piece more of it this week.

For those of you who have some how MISSED these gems, they include such greats as You Wouldn’t Want to Be a World War II Pilot: Air Battles You Might Not Survive (currently on our shelf), You Wouldn’t Want to Be an 18th Century Convict: A Trip to Australia You’d Rather Not Take (No offense to my Australian readers – ie. Von.), and You Wouldn’t Want to Be Mary Queen of Scots: A Ruler Who Really Lost Her Head.

Check your local library.  They’re awesome.  Especially for boys.

But anyway.  Fred and I – but especially I, ’cause I’m prone to such things as extensive geneological researching, and also spend nearly all my time with said children —  have been very conscious of the fact that giving them a thorough connection to their own roots is very important. 

And that that means doing some extra research.  Because their roots are not our roots (though they’re welcome to partake in all our Euro-straight-to-U.S.-American fun-and-games, of course!)

So we’ve read about Guatemala, TRAVELED back to Guatemala, read about the Maya, CLIMBED their pyramids, studied Spanish… I’m still looking for a socially acceptable way of asking some of the Latino men I know just what it is that they’re wearing that smells so good, so I can buy it to put on the boys (who frequently smell like sweat and “tootle”)… but I digress…

We’ve done a pretty good job of covering the Native American angle of their biological heritage.  And of presenting it as the very cool heritage that it, indeed, is (human sacrificing notwithstanding).

So I’m on to the Spanish part of their background.  Spanish from SPAIN, that is.  And to that end, I’ve been watching the PBS Home Video: Conquistadors series after we put them to bed the last few nights (available on Netflix “Watch Instantly,” for those of you who are interested!).

And, whew!

I just don’t know how I’m supposed to pleasantly tie in “and then SOME of your ancestors came in and absolutely decimated the villages of others of your ancestors, raping and pillaging as they went!”  ["raping" is going to be especially hard to explain, since the idea of "sex" is still appropriately hazy in their minds].

I know I don’t have to explain it all while they’re six years old.  We could just “leap over the Atlantic” and study Spain as a completely separate entity and leave “how the two sides mixed” to a future date?

But while I don’t want to inflict undue distress, I’m also more inclined to be honest with our kids.  They’ve learned about the Conquistadors in a separate (glossed over, some would say “Euro-centric”) manner in our school co-op.

So they’re waiting for me to make the connection.

But whoa.

There’s a lot of courage, I suppose.  Curiousity about new things.  Boldly going where no European has gone before? 

It’s funny, because some of MY OWN ancestors (English) were fairly brutal to my others (Scottish), and I’ve had no problem feeling comfortable taking sides (“You take the High Road, and I’ll take the Low Road…”) while still maintaining a sense of connectednes to all of them (just ask Fred and the boys about my tea-drinking habits).

Perhaps because it’s perfectly acceptable here in the U.S. to side with the underdog while still trying to keep in mind all sides of an issue?

But this is THEIR heritage, THEIR story, not mine.

So how do I present the “other half” in equally positive terms, despite-but-honestly-covering the atrocities that eventually resulted in their being born, just as they are – “Mestizos de Guatemala?”  Even if not today, at some point it’s gonna come up.

Advice, anyone?

There they were.  Our boys.  And what adorable and sweet little people they were.

They don’t really remember it – they know all about it from their pictures.  Certainly, for them, it was scary and uncertain.  They had been told we were coming, and we’d sent pictures ahead.  They called us “Mamá” and “Papá” the minute they saw us.  But those were just labels they’d been taught to use.  They didn’t know us, and we looked and sounded different from any of the people they were used to.

A day of mixed emotions, then.  But the start of our life together.

January 22 -  Hoy.  Today.  We pulled out their “Treasure Boxes” in which we’ve saved a bunch of items from that time four years ago, recounted our memories and their story.  They amazingly squeezed into their little blue outfits and posed for pictures, as they have each year since.  And, like every year, we gave them each an album of the prior year’s pictures and let them decide where we would go for a family date night out. This year, it was dinner at Bertucci’s and Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  In 3D, of course.

Our family’s “Together Day” (so named by José when we sat down and talked about replacing the term “Gotcha Day”) is a celebration of the true blessing it is that we have become the family we hoped we would become that day four years ago.  For Fred and for me, it’s getting to enjoy the early form of a friendship we will share with these guys even after they’re grown and wherever life takes them,  Lord willing.  For the boys, it’s knowing that Fred and I have turned out to be the safe and loving parents they hoped we were when they tentatively gave us their trust. 

So much about adoption is paradoxical.  Gain and loss.  Joy and sorrow.  Multiple “family trees,” two countries, two cultures.  Feeling “natural” together after all this time, yet appearing “mismatched” to anyone new who meets us.  The support.  The questions.  Occasional condemnation.

But one thing is very straightforward: we are glad to have each other today.  Es un día para dar gracias.  Whatever the future holds, we will live it together; and together we are ready.

Gracias Senor por la paz, la alegría y el amor que tu has dado a nuestra familia.  Thank you, God, for the peace, joy and love you have given our family.  For 4 years now.

What part of it is the compilation of human wills?

I don’t have it all figured out or separated.  I’m also fairly sure it can’t be neatly compartmentalized.  But the way I answer for myself will impact the way I talk about it with my kids.  Which will affect the way they interpret it – especially in these really young years, when they tend to believe whatever I tell them is true.  And then later, either with me or in spite of me, they will reinterpret it for themselves.  Not that I’m the be-all and end-all in their lives, but I am the mom they’re growing up with (and their school teacher, too).  I “get to” have a huge impact on them.  But then, whew, I’d better not mess this up, right?

The blog that snagged my mental attention is that of a woman who placed her child for adoption, and her post addressed the claim (apparently voiced in her life) that she had been destined to have been raped and then destined to have lost her child to adoption.  Something she says she actually believed might have been so, until she disentangled herself from the religious “cloud” that held her there.

I don’t know her whole story.  But I could relate to having “religious” people tell me about my own life and God’s plan, opinion, and reasoning within it.  Sometimes brutally.  I now call that abuse.  Sadly from people within my own faith.

But.  Separating them from God (and from the people who are caring bearers of his image), there’s a whole different theme.

The Christian God is a God of power over human circumstances.  Do I believe he has a will that is being worked out in this world?  Yes.

But as this other blogger put it, anyone who believes God “put her” through her pain must believe that something or someone horrifying is in charge of this world.  There’s a difference between God’s initiation of a thing and God’s allowing the repercussions of human will and behavior.

And so I’ve been mulling it over in the context of our own adoptions.  The one that already was, and the one that is yet to be.

And because I’m just THAT verbose, I’m only going to tackle one of the questions in this post:

Do I believe my kids’ birth parents were designed to lose them, so that Fred and I could have them?  No.  We love being parents, but that’s not a “need” or an ultimate-good that God had to meet for some reason.  God doesn’t serve us anyway; it’s supposed to be the other way around.  Certainly, our desire to parent doesn’t trump someone else’s bond with their children, even if being with us includes such perks as “better education,” “more opportunities,” “better nutrition,” and “financial security.”

But when I look at our sons’ adoption, do I believe God saw and knew what was happening and could have stepped in and changed everything?  Yes, I do.  Why didn’t he?  I have no idea.  Just like I have no idea why God allowed some of the harder things in my own life that I will always carry with me.

Should people be taking enough care of one  another in this world that loss and suffering wouldn’t occur?  Yes.  But we don’t.  We’re broken.  And sometimes the innocent suffer because of the sins of others in their proximity.

But I believe that it was more than a coincidence that our lives and our sons lives intersected when and how they did and that the love the four of us share is redemption brought out of loss.  It doesn’t mean the loss isn’t still there.  It just means that some good exists beside the bad.

God’s redemption of what should not have been if everyone was doing what he or she should have been doing.  Grace playing out in our specifics.

I was reading the story of Esther with the twins the other morning.  At the point in the story after which Esther has been chosen to be queen, and the king has allowed his chief advisor Haman to issue a decree in his name that all the Jews in his kingdom be killed on the 13th day of the 12th month, Esther’s cousin Mordecai comes to her with a plea to intervene with her new husband.  And when she (logically, naturally, and most understandably) responds with her worry at that request, part of his response is this: “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

It was the first time I noticed the humility of that line.  He’s not telling her that she came to her position for just this very reason.  He’s not boiling down her entire life as if it could be so easily explained as all leading up only to this one moment.  But he is pointing out that she has been given an ability to influence a king, and he puts it to her to choose what she’ll do with that.

A captive in a foreign land.  Orphaned and raised by her cousin.  Then taken into the palace whether she wanted to go or not, simply based on her physical appearance.  She could have said “You know, I’ve been through enough and I’m finally in a stable place.  I’m not going to do something risky that could cost me my life.”  But every year at Purim, people of the Jewish faith (and many Christians) celebrate that she did not.

And I hope that what our kids hear when we try to address the question of their relinquishment comes across to them as being of the Mordecai end of the spectrum.

We don’t know why God allowed them to be in the place where they were available for adoption.  Why didn’t their first family get to be intact?  Why don’t they have other adoptive parents?  Why us?  

I do know the parts we experienced.  We felt a strong pull adopt, we did all the paperwork, we set parameters based on our kids fitting into our immediate families, we had the socio-economic ability to be able to do it, we live in a very blessed and politically stable country.  Some of that was of our own will and striving.  Some of that was outside our control.

Not confusing what I know with that about which I can only ever speculate?  Well, I’m trying.  Four little ears are listening.  I hope, some day, to have four more little ears around.

But not because it’s what I want.  If it’s about me, then how dare I invoke the name of God?  But if it’s about a greater story, my kids still have purposes, even after having been through foundational separations.  Even if it seems like their stories went off-track.  Even if they always feel a hole in their lives.  

I don’t know what those purposes are or who they’ll become.  I’m on this journey, just like they are.  I can encourage them by pointing out their gifts.  We can do what’s in our power to help our kids’ restore relationships with their first parents, assuming they and those first parents want that.  In the meantime, we can love them, educate and train them, and give them space to develop their unique characters.  And we can be real with them.  One of the things I most admire about Fred as a dad is that he is very good at finding appropriate moments to share his own struggles with our boys, “man to man” - practice for how our relationship with them will be when they are fully-grown.

But can we answer “Why?”?  No, we really can’t.

It will be up to each of them to wrestle with God about why he lost his first family and what it means for him to grow up with us here in the U.S. instead of in Guatemala (or El Salvador, in the case of the younger ones).  With the bare facts of systems of poverty and oppression that, while they did have a hand in their adoption, were not of God, but rather stemmed from the corruption of other people.

We can’t speak to the reasoning of God.  We can only point to his care for all of us, so far.  And that a God who did not spare his own Son did not absent-mindedly forget about ours and P’s, nor about whoever else may join our family in the future.  There’s more than just what we see right now.

We live in faith that the whole story is ultimately a good one.

Part II:  God, Destiny and Adoption: Corruption in the System

They know about race, have been able to rattle off from the age of three that they’re Latino; that their ancestors and Fred’s and mine came from different places on the globe (even before they really understood what “ancestors” were); and that that’s why our skin and hair and eyes are different colors.  As we’ve studied different countries of the world, they’ve learned that people in different regions look different, eat different foods, have different customs, but also have many global similarities.

But how to “explain themselves?”  No, we haven’t covered that yet.  Haven’t had to in prior years.  People always approached Fred or me and asked about the boys.  I’ve mentioned before that I’ve gotten less and less free (particularly with strangers) as the twins have gotten older.  I’ve become more sensitive to their privacy and identities.  And the adoption itself has passed more into the “old history” category for us.  (Sometimes we forget that it’s “new” to everyone we encounter for the first time.)

But it’s time to arm our young chicos to speak for themselves.  Two recent incidents (fortunately both right in front of us, so we know about them!) have brought this to the fore.

Incident #1: The Chick-fil-A Mis-Match

My sister-in-law invited us to join their family for our niece’s school fund-raiser Chick-fil-A night last week, and while we were all sitting at the table, one of Mary’s little girl friends came over to say hi.  Mary introduced the boys as her cousins about whom she’d told her, and this little gal glanced at them, then back at Mary and observed, “They don’t look a thing like you.” 

Then, no doubt looking to make sense of it, she scanned around the table, “They don’t look a thing like any of you.”

She’s about 8 or so years old, and she didn’t mean anything by it except to state what she was seeing right in front of herself.  When she’s older, she’ll probably know better than to be so blunt.  But there it was. 

Incident #2: The Chinese/Mexican Neighborly Intro

Our kids were playing a few blocks away from our house one afternoon a couple weeks before Chick-fil-A, and a little boy and girl they hadn’t met before came out of their house and sat under their front tree.  This time it was my kids making first observations:

Twin:  Hi!  You look like your ancestors are from Asia.  Are you Chinese, or Japanese? 

Boy Neighbor:  We’re Korean.  What are you?  Mexican?

Twin:  No, we’re from Guatemala.  It’s next to Mexico, but south.

[A-ha-ha-ha...  Well at least everyone got that straightened out up-front!  Not sure that's quite how the other set of parents and I would've done it, but...]

But clearly, aside from what “labeling and filing” the kids already know it’s time for more discussion of race.  Like how and when it is polite to inquire.

But even more importantly – to our family - how and when the boys should explain their own heritage and why they don’t “match” us.  To be clear, we don’t believe they “should” have to every time someone seems like they’re fishing for information.  But we want to give the boys some options so they never feel completely caught off-guard or cornered.

It’s going to happen to them and to us for the rest of our lives.  No time like the present to get started!  (And as I think about it, no time like the present for Fred and for me to hear from them what they do and don’t want us to share with other adults!)

I’d love to hear from others of you who have had these conversations with your kids, or those of you from mixed-race families, or any of you who are just so socially proactive that you’re all on top of this issue!   Comments and suggestions welcome! 

I’ll post again after the boys and we have our first few talks.

We’ll be there for a week, and it’s proven to be no small thing for me to narrow down what we try to see.  (Fred made me promise that at least some of our days there would be relaxing.)  It’s a beautiful country with some remarkable historical sites and a living historical culture that still exists after over 2000 years. 

But the boys are 6 – not exactly up for a ton of heady stuff.  So we’ve tried to balance history and architectural ruins with memorable experiencial tours as well.

And here’s what we’ve picked.  Our “Best of Guatemala: First-Trip-Back-To-The-Birth-Country, Wiggly 6-Year-Old Boys Edition:”

Ciudad La Antigua

This is actually a blend of basic-Guatemalan-tourism and personal-history for the boys.  Antigua used to be the Spanish capital of Central America, so it’s rich with recorded history.  But then there’s the much older stuff, like the volcanoes, coffee/cocoa/jade sources, and Maya villages that surround it.  It also happens to be their birth city.  So we’re not going to miss this one.

Chichicastenango

A market village in the Highlands of Guatemala.  Fred and I hit Chichi last time we were here, and this is Fred’s number 1 pick for “we have to take the boys to ____.”  Steeped in Maya culture, an authentic (yet safe for U.S. tourists) look at how one makes a living in the more rural areas of Guatemala.

Really old Catholic church, mixed with even older Maya religious/cultural tradition.  Last time we were there (the day before we met the twins!), we bought some souveniers from one booth solely because the little boy who worked it reminded me of my brother Steven.  Tenacity, friendliness, big brown eyes, and so young to have to be working for his family’s living.  We want the twins to get to see it for themselves.

Lago de Atitlan (Atitlan Lake)

This crater lake, formed by violent pre-historic volcanic eruptions, is surrounded by native Maya towns, or pueblos, and it’s name, “Atitlan,” means “the place where the rainbow gets its colors” in the Mayan language.  We’re going to stop in one of the surrounding towns, Panajachel, on our way back to Guatemala City from Chichicastenango.

Tikal & the Rainforests

I’ve mentioned before that the twins went through a major Go, Diego, Go! phase a couple of years ago (and still enjoy the show, though less frequently now).  There’s a whole episode on the Temple of the Jaguar, which just happens to be at Tikal, in which Baby Jaguar loses, then finds, his growl.  It’s one of the earliest Maya things the boys remember.  So YES we’re going to hit this one.  (Exhorbitant tourist pricing be darned!)

Tikal is one of THE major sites to visit if you’re interested in seeing the glory of the ancient Maya civilization.  Pyramids, city center, major feats of human innovation.  What a blessing to be able to show our kids how impressive their ancestors were in so many ways!  (And yes, we’ve covered the whole human-sacrificing thing, too.  Just not under the “isn’t that great?!” heading.) 

 

And then we’re off to the surrounding jungle to visit the part of the region that has been basically un-corrupted by human development.  Howler monkeys, lizards, quetzals-if-we’re-lucky-enough-to-see-them, maybe even a jaguar.  The boys made me list that last one.

Volcan (Volcano) Pacaya

Pacaya was one of the causes of the weather crisis in Guatemala I wrote about back in June.  It is an active volcano, usually spilling over but occasionally exploding more violently.  Assuming it’s doing the former and not the latter, we’ll be hiking up the side and checking out the lava flows.  The boys are very excited about this one.  Especially the part about if you walk too close to the heat, your sneakers will melt.  It’ll be the first volcano-climb for all 4 of us… just not something you usually encounter here on the East Coast!

So there’s the plan – along with some slow-paced days around Guatemala City.  And a mother’s hope that we might locate their foster mom yet.  Can’t wait!

“And what if you need to go to the bathroom?”

“Well then I’ll go and come right back.”

“And what if one of us gets hurt while you’re not there?  Maybe we could call 911?”  (no, my kids don’t have cell phones of their own) 

… And so on, all the way there.  Even though it’s the same school, the same building as last year, many of the same families, and we’ve done this routine before.  The first year, if I ever dared slip out the the restroom without interrupting the class to let the boys know where I was going and how long I expected to be, I would return to two sobbing and hyperventilating little men.  So much for my attempt at not disrupting the teacher’s flow!

Last year went a little better.  I committed to the boys that I would quietly tap their shoulders if I was leaving the room and then tap them again when I got back.  Somehow that contented them.  All but once, when I got stopped by another mom in the hall and took longer than the customary allotted time for a potty break.  That time, it was back to the aforementioned breakdown.

But this year is the 3rd year, and I wanted to see if they could handle being “like the other kids” whose moms come and go as need be.   So I told them we would try that for that day.  We rehearsed that they know I’m going to be there most of the class time, and if I go out for a moment, I’ll be coming back soon.  And I never leave them anywhere alone.

I have one child who’s ready and one not, it turns out.  One jumped right into participating in class, making friends with the other kids, and only occasionally glancing back to smile at me.

The other kept checking over his shoulder.  And when he wasn’t looking at me, I strongly suspect he was worrying about me leaving most of the time.  Because he wasn’t retaining much of anything.  He was giving incorrect answers for questions I know he can handle.  And then he’d look again.  About every 30 seconds.

He knows I love him, that I have never left him, that I never will.  In his mind he knows that.

But then there’s that other place in his mind, the place that remembers – even though he does not – that he has been left.  That the person he most counted on disappeared.  Twice, that we know of.  And that part of him just knows that if he doesn’t keep a sharp eye on me, I might vanish.  Or maybe forget that I have kids and leave without them?  Or maybe not care?  Or something.  He can’t tell me exactly what it is that he’s afraid will happen.  Simply that I’ll leave.  And be gone.

And so it’ll be back to taps on the shoulder and possibly a seat-relocation to where he can see me without turning all the way around.  For now anyway.

Will I encourage him to stretch himself to trust me in spite of his anxiety?  Yes.  That’s a life-skill I want him to have – acting in courage in the face of fear.  But I don’t need to fabricate occasions for that.  Life does that all by itself. 

In the meantime, it’s consistency, reassurance and more time.  Back to more than just everyone’s typical routines for us this Fall!

“I think it’s so great that you adopted them.”  ["THEM," meanwhile, are standing right next to me.]

And as I’m thinking “Oh, no!  Shh!” she continues about how great it is that Fred and I have brought the boys here and are “giving them such a great chance in life that they didn’t have before.  And that you really love them like your own.”

And while my brain was firing red flags every which way, my mouth just wouldn’t work.

However, I plan to be ready with a reply next time because…

A)  They aren’t LIKE our own… they ARE our own.

B)  Anyone who knows our kids knows they’re usually like this freakish conglomerate of well-behavedness… They are some of the easiest kids to parent I’ve ever heard of.  Plus they’re smart, funny, sweet with little kids and babies, affectionate, and full of joy and excitement  … so no, there’s nothing amazing about what Fred and I are doing at all!  Or have done.  We wanted to adopt kids.  And we did.  So we’re just living from that point forward.  And quite blessed in that life, I might add!

C)  We  don’t really know what their life would have been like, had they been able to remain with their first mom.  Yes, it might’ve been really hard.  On the other hand, God sure seems to love them and watch out for their protection (and I don’t mean “by having us adopt them,” I mean in every-day life things).  So maybe they’d be doing just fine there.  We don’t know.  So let’s not speculate.  And certainly not while they’re right there because…

D)  We don’t want them to feel like we’re heroes who swooped in and rescued them.  Or to think that we want them to think that.  We followed what we believed was God’s call on our hearts to adopt.  Now that we’ve taken on the responsibility of parenting them, shouldn’t we be doing our best, just like every other parent should be?  Adoptive parent and bio-parent alike?

I fear that behind the “compliments” lies an undercurrent of belief that somehow what Fred and I and other adoptive parents have is second-best.  A “Plan B” that falls after trying to have biological children.  A rebound after disappointment.  [I hope - perhaps naively? - that it's not because they're Latino.]  I’m sure people assume that we adopted the twins because of infertility.  We didn’t.  We meant to adopt.  Adoption is in both our families.

We’re just also ridiculously fortunate that our kids came to trust us and love us back so quickly, considering how many reasons they had to be guarded.

… What I would’ve said.  

Next time.  Just wait.

And so in our household, we celebrate P’s birthday.

The idea came to me last year on her birthday, so we had popsicles on the deck, talked about her a little bit, and prayed that God is taking care of her there in Guatemala, even though we don’t know exactly where she is or what she’s doing.

I was a little more proactive this year.  So this morning the twins and I headed out to Panera for a date.  I had emailed myself the pictures of her with them, so we looked at those on my iPhone, noted facial features they have that look like hers (something they’d never noticed before), and again prayed for her.  This time, the boys prayed, too.  And they included “and help us go find her at Guatemala” in their prayers.

I’m so glad we’re doing this now, when they’re five, super-attached to us, and happy with the life they have. 

Because I did have to correct Bear in the car when he was explaining to José that we were going on a date to celebrate their “real mother’s” birthday.  He didn’t mean anything by it, but today was  the day for our conversation about how I’m also very much real, that she’s real, too, and that they just happen to have two real mothers when many people have one.  And then we talked about all the friends and family we have – not the least of whom is their Tío Steven - who were also adopted and therefore also have two real mothers.

It was the first time I’d had to correct one of them.  We’ve had plenty of other people ask about their “real…ummm, errr…mother” [we fill in "birth" or "biological " to help them out].  But this time it was my son.  Who says my name, “Mama,” so many times during the day it’s mind-numbing.  And he remembers he has another mother who’s “real.”  It’s good for me to digest that while they’re “still little” in my mind.  They understand a whole lot more than I realize.

I left out her name in the title of this post, and for now I will leave off including her picture on this blog.  As much as I feel like she’s my family because she’s my son’s birth mom, she’s more theirs.  And I want them to be able to keep her to themselves if they want to, share her with others only when they want to, and to have control over that part of their story.  For nearly two years of their life, it was she with them doing life together.  The hard newborn time, the first steps, first words, baby teeth, personalities emerging.

And yet today, I got to be the one sharing cinnamon rolls and an “everything” bagel with my little men.  Who don’t look much like me, but sure do act like me.

Adoption has everyone’s attention this week, it seems, with the stories circulating that Russia has suspended adoptions by U.S. citizens.  Or that, no, they haven’t.  All because one mom reached her limit and made the choice to send her son away alone on a plane, with a note, to return him to his birth country (unclear if it’s actually his country of citizenship any longer, since his adoption was completed and he may be a U.S. citizen now).

All the usual reactions are out there: outrage, blame, accusations of mental unhealth (child and mother & grandmother), hints at abuse, suspicion…

For those of us “in the adoption community” it’s another blow in an already-tenuous process.  I don’t even know how I’d be feeling if we were in-process to adopt from Russia right now.  But more than 11,000 would-be-parents signed a plea to President Obama and Russian leader Dmitri Medvedev to allow adoptions to continue between our two countries, not to let one family’s outrageous act wipe out thousands of other healthy adoption stories.  Maybe I would be one of them.

It’s just such a sad and jarring story – a commentary on the lack of general knowledge about the post-adoption resources available to families who find their children are struggling with more than they expected.  I fear it’s also a commentary on what many people think they’re getting when they choose to adopt.

Adoption is not “the same” as having a biological child.  It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s different.  I’m totally willing to give this mom the benefit of the doubt that she tried really hard to bond with this little boy and to get him adjusted to life here.  The adoption process is long and tedious, and once you finally bring your child home, it’s just so good to be “finished.”  No one – or almost no one, anyway – goes in to an adoption process thinking they’d ever consider backing out of it later.  Surely not!  You want to parent that cute little face from the pictures – or that sweet person from the orphanage visit when he/she was just so charming you could hardly stand how much you wanted to snuggle them up.

It’s really easy to sit here on the outside and judge this mom (and grandmother).  How could they just send a little child away, across the ocean, to a foreign country, by himself?  With a note, like that explains everything?  What were they thinking?

Having encountered a couple cases of Reactive Attachment Disorder in the course of my clinicals – and now knowing a small number of families who have dealt with it – I am fairly sure that the time for thinking had long since passed.  “RAD kids” are some of the hardest to parent.  It’s entirely possible that this little 7 year old was threatening to kill family members, was violent, disrespectful, dishonest, seemingly limitless in his wild and hateful behavior. 

Not because he was a “bad kid” but because his prior experiences left him so threatened by a mother’s attempt at bonding that he was doing everying in his power to stop her from trying.  And he “won” – except of course he ultimately lost.  And now he sits on the other side of one more failed relationship, this situation no-doubt confirming in his young psyche that, “See?  It wasn’t true.  It wasn’t forever.  She didn’t really love me.  That’s why I’ve gotta take care of myself.”

Yes, he’s small and vulnerable looking in the media pictures taken since his return.  And he IS indeed small and vulnerable.  But clearly his family lost sight of that fact a while ago.  Not because they’re necessarily “bad people” either.  But they were clearly unprepared for him.  And then in their desperation for relief from their circumstances, they shelved logic and compassion and made a statement.

Boy did they make a statement.  What the world hears is “Americans think adopted children are a commodity, and if they don’t meet with our standards, we will return them.”

As parents in waiting, that THAT is the message the world hears right now is heartbreaking.  Because that’s not what most of us think.  In fact, that’s probably not even what the Hansens actually think.  They’re reacting to feeling betrayed by their agency and by the Russian contacts who referred them a child who was beyond their abilities to rear (though who knows if they even knew the extent of his issues), and possibly by this little boy himself who seemed so different at first and then changed so horribly.  They’re probably devastated that their dreams for adopting this little guy turned into a nightmare.  And they clearly didn’t know where to turn appropriately once they reached the point of desperation.  Or else they didn’t have the emotional capacity to try any longer.

I’m very sad for the Hansens.  They could use some compassion, I’m sure.  I’m equally sure there are other families out there in the same situations, considering the hard decision to disrupt their adoptions – or desperately trying not to - and they’re watching how we as a country treat this family.  And they never meant NOT to parent their children to adulthood.  They took the required training classes, heard about the risks but thought they had avoided them by checking off “no special needs” in their homestudy report, waited for years, finally received a child into their care and then – Crash! – reality hits.  Usually with a RAD diagnosis.  And a whole lot of violent, ugly, outragious behavior.

What would I say to them, “Try harder,” “Well you got yourself into this…,” “You should’ve _____, and you wouldn’t be experiencing ____,” ???  No.  No.  And No.  Not everyone is cut out for therapeutic parenting of a child with RAD.  And when a mis-match happens, it’s awful for everyone.

On the other hand, I am, of course, even sadder for Artem-Justin.  To be only 7 years old and already so hurt by the world that you can’t even think of trusting someone who says they want to love you and take care of you.  Then to have that fear confirmed.  Again.  To be sent away like an unwanted possession.  And blamed for it, like you’re the problem, when you’re just the kid, and there were adults all around. 

Undeserving, bad, unloveable.  On your own.  Trust no one.  Adults just let you down, so don’t let them close.  And all these messages below the surface level of your cognitive abilities, so it’s just this gut-reaction you have and can’t help.

I see a lot of posturing as I read all the different news accounts and blogs out there.  Well-meaning but possibly naive offers to adopt him.  Russia and our State Department going back and forth about what this means for the future of adoption.  Prospective adoptive parents saying they’ll do anything, sign any agreement, just to get their children.  News stories inflating the most minute details to run another story, ’cause wow is this one HOT.

And yes, it should make news.  But what’s going to stop this from happening again?  I haven’t seen that angle yet.

As Fred and I look ahead to our own next placement, knowing that our Salvadoran kids will most likely be coming from an orphanage as well, with all the associated developmental effects, it’s humbling to watch another parent crumble.  It’s scary to consider that we could find ourselves at home with children we don’t know how to handle, passed off to us as healthier than they are.  It’s not very likely; RAD is pretty rare.  But it’s possible.  And while I completely disagree with the wrong, thoughtless, and cruel way they handled their hopelessness, I think I may understand the Hansens at least a little.

You think adoption is going to be one thing.  It’s going to “complete” your family or some such idea.  And it is.  But not always the way you think it will.  Maybe my idea of “complete” is not God’s.  So far, it’s been a wonderful life with the twins; but what if it gets hard? 

Following the story of little Artem/Justin Hansen is, for me, another stake in the ground for our own adoption.  A time I can look back on in the future and say, “even there, I saw God’s hand preparing us.”  Because I just spent a few hours researching resources for post-adoption help and refreshed myself on all the scariness that comes with RAD.  And yet, I’m sure we’re meant to move forward.  Lord willing, we won’t need most of the stuff I just found.

Lord willing.

But the same God that brought us to the twins knows who needs us next.  And there’s no question He’s been faithful till now.  So we’re still waiting on the process to move forward in El Salvador.  And much like we vowed to each other on our wedding day, Fred and I are committed to parent all our kids for better or for worse, till death does us part.  Whoever they are and whatever they bring with them when they come.

I pray little Artem gets a (trained, informed and ready!) family who can make that commitment to him.  Scary as that might look for all of them for the first long while.