So now, there's this other little girl.
She's just a baby, actually. She's had a lot of bad breaks, and she's in foster care in Vienna now. Her name is V.
We've talked to a social worker about her, and I think we both want to meet V. and see if she'd like to come live with us.
Anette has wanted to have another kid since we met our first, maybe even before that. But that's not true for me: I think it's positively strange to walk around humming 'I want to have two kids.' I don't suppose I've ever had such defined dreams.
I'm not the sort of guy who throws open the door and gives a hearty welcome to Change. Then again, once Change is sitting in our kitchen nook, I'm a master adaptor. 'Would you like coffee, tea, or a pacifier?'
I started to warm to the idea of another kid when I began to try to imagine who that kid might already be. I started to think about our friends with second children, about Emily, and Claire, and Maya, and Sammy, and Mona, and about some of the science the scientists have done about birth order and family dynamics. Seems like the second kid is always somehow indestructible. And I decided that wherever he or she is now, any kid who comes to live with Anette, Adinah and I will be rightly known as the Admiral.
But it wasn't until I was writing these words that I realized that, for a short time at least, I was a second kid myself.
I may have to have a talk with my mom about all of this......
3 comments:
Get me one too.
Hi, this is my first visit to you. First of all, what lovely, thoughtful, and deeply familiar posts. Fourteen years ago my husband and I travelled to Vietnam, which as yet had no formal relations with the US, to adopt our twin daughters. I'm caucasion, but grew up in Asia. Infertility and miscarriages led me to the dream (the fantasy castle you talk about) of adopting the child of my spirit and experiences, if not of my biology.
It's interesting. When the girls were little, other people's reactions (e.g. the white social worker who clearly thought we should not have adopted children "of color") defined the conversation more than I would have liked. But as the kids get older, they themselve.define the conversation more and more, and we, or others, define it less and less. Which is good. I'm a caucasion American woman, raised in Asia with lots of conflicting feelings about the US. But to my daughters, that's just my shit. The low grey skies of Pittsburgh are all they remember. This crazy patchwork life we gave them is just, well, normal to them. which is amazing and wonderful.
Didn't mean to go on so long, but your lovely posts made me want to pull up a chair, pour a cup of tea, and chat. Thanks. I'll be back.
Thank you for those very kind words. Please do come back. I'll pour the tea.
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