If there's anything that will hurt, or infuriate, or shock (or any combination thereof) both an adoptee and an adoptive family, it's the title statement of this post. It carries all kinds of baggage -- issues of loss, belonging, identity, background, personal history, and pretty much everything else that defines "me" when any of us think of ourselves.
For some, it's a simple statement of biological truth: if you didn't actually give birth to that child, you're not that child's parent. While I have to agree with this idea from a purely genetic standpoint, there's nothing good, accurate, or correct about it in any other way. It's a narrow-minded, severely over-compartmentalized, unemotional, uncaring, and unfeeling way to reduce the relationship of a parent and a child to the level of simple mechanisms, to negate love and caring and belonging in favor of simplifying the tracing of sub-cellular protein molecules common to all humans.
And, as I learned earlier this evening, it's a particularly nasty turd that at least one of my niece's classmates has apparently been dropping on her in weaponized form.
I have to hand it to the Pipsqueak; she's always been adverse to hurting others, getting other people in trouble, ratting on friends, etc. so we still don't know exactly who it is that's making a point of throwing the "real mother" statement in her face because she's reluctant to name names. (It's not out of fear of repercussions; this kid's got a sense of justice several times larger than herself and sshe will not back down from calling out someone or something she sees was wrong no matter what the repercussions. She just really really doesn't want to hurt other people.)
What I do know is that conversations about different aspects of adoption have been popping up a lot more frequently of late (something that's perfectly normal in & of itself), as have been conversations about what a "family" is... and then while waiting for her Progressive Ballet Technique class to begin earlier this evening she plopped down next to me on a bench and out of the blue quietly began to complain about "someone in school" saying that to her along with a few other nasty things related to Miri being adopted.
What's got us all a little turned around is that what we've been able to glean from the hints & bits Miri is dropping on us is that the perp is most likely someone in her elementary school and not in any of her dance classes (whew!) or in Sunday school. Sunday school itself was a disappointment; it's in the next county so all the kids there knew each other from school while the Pipsqueak saw them only on weekends -- and a clique consisting of all but one other girl in her year (all from families much better off financially than us) spent the last three semesters working hard to make sure she and that other girl knew they were the "outsiders" and weren't welcome to join them for lunch, for projects, at breaks, etc. The staff tried to intervene, but to be honest their efforts were half-hearted at best so (after learning that the other girl had already signed up for a different synagogue & school once summer vacation was over) an increasingly upset & disappointed Miri discussed it with Mommy and they reached the conclusion that she was not going back.
That was bad enough, but the Pipsqueak had been so miserable for the last couple of semesters that she was actually happy about stopping Sunday school -- but this is whole 'nother can of worms that's not so easily pushed aside. She's happy with both her dance classes and her position on the studio's dance team, and every time we walk in there I quickly lose count of how many of the kids make a point of stopping what they're doing to come over to say hi and/or exchange high-fives. The most likely source of the kid (or kids) creating the problem is elementary school.
Knowing my niece, that means a slow, steady increase in apprehension & worry as the school year approaches. She's already begun talking about how quickly the summer seems to be flying past and how quickly the start of school is approaching, and now I think I understand why that's become a common subject of discussion.
We were sitting on that bench for just a few minutes before one of the girls called out that the class was starting and Miri ran down the hall, yet in those few minutes she quietly expressed more pain, upset, and anger than I've heard from her in quite a while. Wiping her tears on my shirt, she complained about how "that girl" was "so rude" to say what she was saying, and visibly grew increasingly angry & upset as she talked about being told, "She's not your real mother," "You don't know who your real mother is," "Oh, you're adopted..." (with "adopted" drawn out sing-song as an insult) and "Do you really know where you come from?
I just sat there, my vision slowly going red as I hugged Miri tighter and struggled to give her a few things she could say in return (struggled because I know what I wanted to say was beyond merely inappropriate for her age group), trying to explain why the world includes people who enjoy causing pain to others, and reminding her of how much she is loved by us all. Just after she hugged me goodbye and got up to run to class, I pulled her back toward me and whispered in her ear, "You're not my adopted niece, you are my niece, period." and got an extra-tight hug in response... but I know she's hurting and that feeling's not going away anytime soon.
Yeah, I know that pretty much everyone faces different types of assholes at different points in their life, and that some kids become astonishingly good at doling out hurt at an early age. I've got a few memories that I try to keep firmly locked up in the back of my mind that still cause pain four or five decades after the events happened... and I'm sure most of you do, too. The difference is that this goes beyond simply being nasty or insulting; this is a strike directly at someone's sense of family, their feeling of belonging (or not), and their personal identity. It's like comparing one kid telling another that their house is just an ugly and run-down trailer against a kid who lays a minefield around another kid's house and then tells them it's their fault. Try to remember all your teenage angst on those nights when you wished your parents weren't your parents, then flip it on its head and try to imagine what it would've felt like if your peers made a point of slapping you in the face with the fact that they weren't your parents. (And welcome to the world of Dealing With Adoption Issues That Most People Never Even Dream Of.)
Miri's not at an age where I can point out that any two drunken, drug-addled idiots can play "beast with two backs" and pop out as many kids as they choose as often as they choose while my sister had to consent to having her entire life and finances professionally gone through with a fine-toothed comb by two national governments (and paid handsomely for the privilege), spent nearly half a decade trying to keep all her cats herded and ducks lined up according to the rules imposed on her by outside parties, and then traveled to the opposite side of the freaking planet to fill out another ream of paperwork in order to be allowed to bring the Pipsqueak home as part of her family . What I'm now worried about is that I will say all that (and a whole lot more) in no uncertain terms to someone else who is too young for that type of language & imagery but who is obviously more than old enough to purposefully make "adoption" a dirty word with malice of forethought.
Yes, I know there are some kids (and adults, alleged or otherwise) who truly don't know and simply need a to be politely and diplomatically educated. Miri's also dealing with that as the child of a single mom, and is unfortunately becoming well-practiced at explaining that no, her mom isn't divorced and no, her father didn't die and no, there aren't any problems at home. The difference is that (at least so far) those questions have been asked honestly (if occasionally a bit more pointedly than absolutely necessary), often by kids who are themselves living in such a situation.
Unfortunately, what I am angrily rambling about at the moment instead is a kid who is making a point of using Miri's adoption as a way of putting her down, insulting her, turning her into an outsider, and actively working to make her as Uncool as she possibly could be. Our prime suspect is a bitch-in-training who has been Bad News literally since kindergarten thanks partly to a mommy who's useless on her best of days and an active part of the problem on most others. It could also be one of that kid's retinue of hangers-on or some other Wannabe Cool Kid, but so far my niece has not named names.
There have been a couple of recent minor but upsetting issues (that I'm not blogging about) that feed into this current situation, things where we've had to openly admit that not knowing Miri's biological family history is a very real complication, but we've actually been talking about that kind of thing with the Pipsqueak since she was four or five. She doesn't exactly "appreciate" the problem, but understands it and seems (or seemed) to be developing her own set of tools to deal with it sans major issues... But to have "She's not your real mother!" thrown in her face in a nasty tone of voice by a kid well-practiced at being that kind of female right on the heels of the first set of complications is just damned unfair and makes it all that much more difficult to deal with (for all of us).
AJ, Mom and I are trying to coordinate what we say to Miri (and share what she says to us), and since the school counselor's daughter is one of the Pipsqueaks' BFFs we'll probably get her involved once we have a little more information. Until then we'll just try to keep things as normal as we can, which involves making sure the youngest member of our family -- genetics be damned -- knows how loved and wanted she really is.
So there you have it, all my non-adoption-involved readers: a quick glimpse into some of the questions & statements that the majority of people never even have to think about, much less deal with. And if you're one of my readers who is involved with adoption in some fashion, I'd be very glad to hear your ideas on a proper response.
As for me... well, right now I think I'll go work out for a while so I can burn off some of the anger-fueled feeling of needing to kill or maim something and calm down enough to do some real work this evening...
PS - For every word you read on this page, I guarantee I wrote, deleted, rewrote, and re-deleted at least three. I suffer fools neither gladly nor well, and attacking the Pipsqueak makes "foolish" look like absolute shining genius. I apologize if this post is even less coherent than usual but I am ANGRY and upset and thoroughly fed up.
