Downtime is not a good thing for me.
I was thinking about my original home study, and I wanted to look something up. You know, the kind of thing that bugs you until you finally just decide to settle the debate in your head before you lose your mind? Well, I answered my question and got more than I asked for.
As I was looking for the home study, I found Ty's finding ad. I cried when I read it and looked at the newspaper ad. It gave me the creeps a bit before and didn't seem real. Now I look at it, and that is MY son who I know and love. How can I look at that and reconcile that he has a past that is beyond what I or anyone can understand? I don't think I can.
So on to more digging. Oh I found his pathetic visa photo which I remember vividly holding him for as he screamed. He finally gave a good pouty face, and the picture was snapped. And then I found his Chinese birth certificate. That has also always given me an eerie feeling because of the "unknown" about his parents. But the last sentence reads something like this.
(name) is an abandoned child definitely.
Yes, I know it has to state that, Hague treaty, yeah yeah yeah, I got it. So knowing that, does it take the sting of that sentence away? DEFINITELY NOT!
And I cried again. All of this, while my beautiful boy takes a nap.
Today, he does not need a finding ad and he is not abandoned. He is ours. But at one time, this was his life. Some will argue, "But he won't remember it." Maybe not, but as I've said before, he will be affected by it his entire life.
Can love conquer all? Can our love for him take away his pain as he grows and questions the motives of his China parents? I will always speak highly of them. Knowing what I know, I believe he was loved. Loved then, and loved now.
I guess I'm a lot like him too now that I think about it. I go about my life everyday like the average person. But inside I have issues around Ty's adoption that very few understand. And if I have issues, I can only imagine what Tyson's are/will be. On the outside, we are a complete and loving family. But on the inside, there are often more questions than answers.
Don't tell me he won't remember. He may not remember it, but he will understand it. How many children have finding ads and birth certificates that say "parents unknown" and "abandoned definitely"? All I can do is pray that the Lord will comfort us both during the hard times that lie ahead.
And that is what no one can tell you as an adoptive parent. You live with a place in your heart for your child's biological parents, and a place in your heart that you know one day your child will need when he or she is grieving their loss, whether he or she remembers them or not.
All of this because I just had to find an answer to a question...so I wonder, what other questions lie ahead on this journey, just waiting for answers to be found? And will we find those answers?
Things I think about on a quiet Saturday...
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Sorry this is a light comment for a heavy post, but I'm just soooo glad to know that Ewen was not the only one who screamed his head off for the visa photo!
ReplyDeletejust "hugs"
ReplyDeleteThe hardest part for me is the ad that says the BD is an "estimate". all I wanted for my son was to KNOW the day. My comfort is that God knows and still has his days planned and his hairs counted!
The questions for SuSu and Mommy seem to get more and more difficult as time passes, as her understanding grows. Not long ago, she asked me, out of the blue, why she has two Mommys and Peanut only has one. It caught me off guard and made me realize that she's been thinking about her China Mommy more than I probably know. I told her that God loves her so much that He decided to give her TWO Mommys. Thankfully that was all the reasurrance she needed at that moment, although I can see those wheels turning in her mind more and more. The day she found out that Peanut came from Mommy's belly was probably the hardest day for her by far. She was madder than a hornet. Later that day she told me she wished she had come from Mommy's belly, too, and I sat and cried and cried. I think that the more we love them, the harder the questions will be. I'm praying, like you are, that our love is enough to fill in those blanks!
ReplyDeleteWell. I thought I was the only one to have a heartbreak when I read that phrase on the birth cert.
ReplyDeleteLooking back that was the first crack in my shell of denial. Ev was our first and even though I thought I was prepared I was really...not. I was truly in the "bring them home and love them and THAT will fix it all". I have since learned that love is just the beginning. There is work involved. Real tangible work.
Ev was 10.5 mos old when I grabbed her to me for the first time. I know now that she has no distinct intellectual memories of her time before us- but there are things that her heart remembers. Shadows that dwell there waiting for bits of light and love and understanding to find them.
I have no doubt that questions will continue to crop up. Questions from her heart, from mine. I will try to answer honestly and openly. I will tell her what I know for sure -which is practically nothing and the rest we will deal with as we need to. I see you doing this for your son and it makes me glad that he has found such a place in the world.
If we don't take on their pain as our own, how can we ever see it for what it really is? If you don;t cry for him in the afternoon, who will?We are the Mommies, the Mama's the ones that are there everyday. We have the esteemed privilege to walk through this world with them, I guess that means that we have to shoulder some of their burden too. I am okay with that. I think you might be too. Because anything less would mean that we deny how they came to us, that we mask how they became who they are, that we turn our faces from those first mothers.
It's not easy. But everyday I see Ev smile at me and I thank God that I have her and ALL of the things that go along with her.