Mother on Earth

Two nights ago, my husband and I went out to dinner with two couples. Before the dinner, one of the couples came over to our house to meet our daughters for the first time. Our daughters are twins. They are also adopted, born in Ethiopia.

At dinner, my mind was on the scene back at home. Sarah, the babysitter, had stayed with the kids once before. But it wasn't like the girls were with their regular babysitter, Anisa, a former student of ours who had miraculously re-emerged in our lives weeks before we came back from Ethiopia with the girls. Anisa, who had appeared in a Starbucks after four years of absence, had become like a sister to me over the past seven months. I had no family in spitting distance, so it was to Anisa that I turned to share daily details of the girls' lives. Anisa knew what they liked at bedtime. Would Sarah remember what we told her? Would they be scared to close their eyes with a near stranger hovering over them? My girls are resilient, I told myself. Look at what they've been through already in their short lives? They are eighteen months old.

"What I really want is for you and John to tell your adoption story again, from start to finish," said M. somewhat abruptly, soon after our meals were placed in front of us. Maybe he was bored. Or maybe he was nervous because he and I were barely on speaking terms. In fact, this was our first social outing in over a year. We had graduated to civil exchanges when exchanges were necessary. These were painful compared to the intimate friendship we had enjoyed for over four years. Our bond was strong--or fragile, depending on how you looked at it. Anyway, that's another story for another time, as another former friend used to say.

"Do you want to change seats?" My friend offered. He was serious. There would be no getting out of this without some serious social awkwardness. "Okay," I said. And I got up and moved. In spite of the fact that this--offering up this story--was one of the few things I had sworn to my friend Miranda I would not do tonight. But here I was, prepraing to spill my guts, even rearranging myself so that everyone could get a better view.

John and I told the whole story, dutifully, eagerly, passionately, timidly. I love to tell this story. I hate to tell this story. I will tell it, reader, to you, too. If you're interested.

The story, the whole story, involves a couple's anguish over not being able to conceive, and then their feeling liberation about deciding to adopt over other choices. It involves heroes--us, our American liaison, our Ethiopian liaison, the girls' biological family--and villains--us, our American liaison, our Ethiopian liaison, the girls' biological family. It includes tales of naivete and bravery, selfishness and insanity, love and despair. It features months of the runaround in America and weeks of red tape in Africa. Our story has an ending (our girls sleep comfortably in their cribs as I write) and it is incomplete (they have siblings, a grandmother, and an extended family in Ethiopia that they are too young to know about). It is a typical adoption story. Maybe. Maybe not.

Our story is also a story about a family. "The girls are babies," my husband said today. "They have anuses. We are concerned about what comes out of them. Doesn't she realize that?" He was talking about a older woman who called today, an Ethiopia "expert." She wanted to know how the babies were adjusting. She wanted to know what we were planning to do in order to re-connect them with their culture. She calls sometimes. She means well. I resent the hell out of her. Sometimes. Particularly on a day like today, when we are more concerned about the girls' bowel movements than their culture.

My daughters are Ethiopian. I am American. No amount of culture classes, cooking classes, language classes, or trips abroad, will change this. It is a gap between us, one of many. I love the gaps, believe in them. The gaps between us make us human.

To my friends, new and estranged, around the dinner table, however, I didn't talk about the gaps. I talked about unity, community, Africa, love, and family. I meant every word, and yet, I'm never sure what the words, themselves, really mean.

"I am your mother on earth," I whisper to my girls in the dark. Until very recently, my husband put one girl to sleep while I took the other one. Somehow, his baby always went to sleep faster than mine. I can admit here that I kept my baby up deliberately. I loved the private night hours; I loved all the small things that would happen. Often, my baby would stare up at the ceiling and chatter. I believed--still believe--she was conversing with the spirit of her biological mother, who died in childbirth. Whatever baby I had would point her finger at the ceiling, and then, eventually, look over at me. I would feel a hand on my cheek in the dark. "I am your mother on earth," I said, every time. "That's who I am."

Mother on earth. I thought it to myself as I finished my part of our story at the restaurant. We got the questions and the looks. The patronizing reassurances that, I imagine, all adoptive parents receive from even well-meaning friends. Mother on earth. It makes sense to me. It is the truest, clearest identity I have discovered on all my years on this earth.

Over the course of this blog, I hope it will make sense to you, too.