Marching Orders from The Opposed

I am often looking for succinct and clear statements of my goals.  Today, I found one from a surprising source.

Ebony Magazine has a monthly column called "Two Sides" in which two experts debate opposing sides of an issue. The September 2008 issue's topic is "Should Black children only be adopted by Black parents?" After a week of avoidance, I finally read it.  Gloria Batiste-Roberts, president of the National Association of Black Social Workers, spoke for the opposing side. Historically, the NABSW has been deeply opposed to transracial adoption. Thus, I was guarded as I began reading her essay, mostly feeling afraid that her argument would shake my own faith in my ability to parent my daughter.

Being ambivalent about the overall merits of transracial adoption, I found myself agreeing with her point of view.  Her concerns were carefully enumerated and clearly put, they echoed everything I've read and heard from adult adoptees.  About 3 paragraphs in, I found myself vigorously nodding in agreement with her.  

Partway through the essay, she quotes former NABSW president, Dr. Morris FX Jeff Jr.

Love is not enough to give a child a sense of belonging, to hold him safe against the experiences of isolation and alienation, of feeling adrift without a sense of anchor in the world.  Love is necessary, but it is not sufficient.  Children must be equipped, empowered with the arsenal of their cultural traditions and heritage to protect and shield them  so that the seeds of love will have a chance to survive and flourish in self-esteem, self-respect, racial identity and self-protection without denial of the gifts of race and color God has so purposefully bestowed upon them.

This a statement that is so powerful and clear for me, I'd like to hold it as my mission statement for my parenting.

Almost equally surprising to me was my response to the supportive argument for transracial adoption.  Written by Gordon Johnson, founder of a Florida based foster care agency, I found his essay unconvincing.  His main idea, that "above all else, a child needs a loving, permanent home" did not address the issues of transracial parenting or problems of bias and white privilege in the adoption/foster care system.  At some point, the essay seemed to veer from the topic at hand becoming a sales pitch for how successful his "One Church One Child" adoptive parent recruitment had become.

His essay that essentially supports the make-up of our family left me feeling concerned that once again, those who are supposed to be looking out for the welfare of our youngest ones, are so focused on creating well-known programs that they completely lose sight of the needs that must be met for true success to occur.  

Raising children is a perilous endeavor, with another being's sense of self and belonging hanging in the brink based on our choices as parents. Race adds an additional weight to the failure side of the scale for parents of color - how can those of us barely aware of the effects of race in our daily lives give our children the tools they need to navigate the day?  I find myself thanking outspoken critics such as Batiste-Roberts for being my greatest allies, helping me become the best I can be, with hope that their honest words and clear thinking point me in the direction of health and happiness for my child.

Geeky word fun

See how many of the most common English words you can guess in 5 minutes.  

And yes, I'm out of my pajamas today. Even did push ups and squats this morning. 

It's 12:13 in the afternoon

And I'm still wearing my glasses.

This is a bad sign, because I don't think or plan clearly without my contacts in. 

The day started our fine. Bill and I woke up at 6 to pay our bills, industrious little beings that we are.  Because our housemate is in the Caymen Islands (!), we used Hard Hat Harry as our babysitter so we could focus on Quicken.  We finished at 8:00 as usual, but somehow, instead of moving into our normal day, I dithered.  At 8:01, I decided to fix my email problem (my "indexing file" puked and I haven't gotten email regularly for the past 2 weeks).  Hard Hat Harry taught my kids more about Airplanes, all 4032 of my emails that were on the server came rolling in, and I hit googlereader hard.  

Since then, I've fixated on the groovy little Flip Video (thanks to MochaMama), downloaded a ton of stories from  Lit2Go, Skyped with a friend about hair and camping equipment, watched videos from SonnyRadio.com, eaten 1 hot dog and 4 wheateen crackers with approximately a stick of butter. I'm not sure what the kids have consumed. They have however been playing some intricate submarine/pony/fighter jet/cat/Titanic/zoo game that includes the dog under a blanket, foam blocks and occasional screaming.

Normally on a Monday morning, by this time I've been up, done the bills, taken the kids for a run, cooked a nourishing breakfast, helped the kids do their chores and morning routines, practiced our guitars, had a snack, read aloud to the kids and maybe made a few house-business phone calls.

I'm not sure whether to count the morning as completely wasted or filling our need to have some unstructured time.  However, as the hot dog and wheateens are soon to wear off and the frequency of child screaming is increasing, I'm off to take a shower and put in my contacts.

Hopefully that will clear up the afternoon.

Self Portraits

by people with really short arms.

Bad Liberal Day

One weekend a year I feel compelled to turn in my Liberal card so I can trail my kids all over town to bask in the power and glory of the military.

This is the weekend. Blue Angels screaming over our house cause the kids, dog and I to do the supersonic dance.

I know each F/A-18 Hornet costs over $41 million dollars, which means the funds paid to build those 7 blue and yellow jets could alone support the education and family support programs my pinko-liberal soul longs for ($278 million dollars, in case you were struggling with the math). Add in the monies needed to pay for the staff, supplies, fuel and marketing and I've got me the funding for a attachment parenting campaign that would reach every prospective parent in the country.

I know they are precision killing machines, designed for both ground and aerial attacks.  They support wars and other military action that under most uses go against everything I stand for in my personal life.

It would be convenient to blame my primal enjoyment of the mind-boggling speed and ear-shattering blast of the engines to the converge of my teenage hormones and the release of the 1986 movie Top Gun. Unfortunately for my liberal credentials, my addiction results from a pre-pubescent exposures  to the Blue Angels at air shows hosted by my uncle in Sheridan, Wyoming.  

The speed and the power appeal to me on a very basic level. They make me want to laugh and cry and scream and dance and jump up and down all at once.  So, for just this one weekend every year, I turn in my doing-the-right-thing card and scream along.

p.s.  One weekend a year I also seem to have minor crisis over the identity conflict the air show causes for me.  I wrote a similar post last year, except that time I remembered my camera. 

Mama's Growing Vocabulary

I am absolutely delighted with the new word I learned today.  It is a term I've been searching for since I was maybe 5.  A single noun for the experience of being dumped by a friend.

According one of the hippest sources in my world, the right way to express this is "frump.ed". Quite helpful vocabulary at the moment as I believe I have recently been frump.ed.  Also, what with a 5 year old girl in the house, I fear we'll be talking about it from the shorter perspective soon. Now it will be easier to name.

Just a warning, I choose to put and extra "." in the word as some of the other apparently hip people in the WWW have a different and less friendly definition for the word, and I'm not ready to attract their attention. So you might be careful in any initial public usage of the term! Here's to hoping you won't need it soon anyway.

At the End of the Day

This post on ThirdMom set me deeply thinking and feeling today.  I love my daughter so much, I ache for her pain so much. We're doing what we think is right here in our household to help ease that, both in regards to race and adoption.  But at the end of the day, it is still her life and her history that she has to absorb and integrate, with all the pain and sadness and rage that is appropriate for her. I hope there are many moments of peace for her along the way.