A Simple Everyday Moment

One day not long ago, Clara and I were playing a favourite game of 3½ year old girls. Clara was sporting a tea towel on her head and a sash around her waist. “Mommy, you be the doctor” (or wolf or grandmother or whatever strikes her fancy). She then asks me questions about our fictional selves.

On this morning, I was the teacher and Clara the new student. She proceeded to ask me the usual questions about myself in my fictional role – “What’s your name? How old are you? Where do you live?”. I dutifully answered and repeated the same questions back to her, which she answered with pleasure. This time, she threw in a new question – "Where were you born?" It was on the tip of my tongue to say "in a hospital" but I changed my mind and said "in Canada – where were you born?" She answered “in China”, looked at me with those beautiful eyes and smiled, and marched off to change into a new character.

A simple everyday moment, to be sure, but I found myself wondering why I had changed my response to her question. It struck me that I hadn’t told her that I was born in a hospital because she would want to answer me in the same specific way. Of course she wouldn’t be able to because we will never know the details of her birth. All day long I thought about my response. This was to become one of those moments that you read about in adoptive parenting articles where you suddenly feel a deeper connection with your child.

I thought how my knowledge of the details of my birth contributes to my sense of completion as a person, giving me a sense of where  I  started  and  how I got to where I am today. And I felt a very deep sadness in knowing that Clara will probably never feel that sense of completion.

I had felt sadness before for Clara when I had pondered her loss of biological family, loss of ties to her birth country, and her minority status in our culture as an adopted Asian child. But I realized on this day that my previous sadness had occurred on a thinking level only, and that now I had reached a new level of understanding and angst for this child who means so much to me. It was interesting to think that we were approaching Clara’s adoption day, when we would celebrate that day 3 years ago when we first met her. How time flies! – and how much we have shared during these years. I think that this shared history lets me ponder Clara’s circumstances as an adopted child in a way that I could not on her first or even second adoption anniversary. She has grown from babyhood into a preschooler with her own distinct personality and her own childlike dreams and aspirations. Now I am just begin-ning to feel the real impact of her losses. I can only hope that as she grows, these losses will pale in comparison to the love and acceptance that we strive to show her every day.