Dear Amy - My family is using their shower to raise adoption funds

From Newsday...

Baby shower can't finance adoption

Roberta's Note: I personally hate the idea of trolling for funds. This isn't the same as the expectant grandparents offering a special gift. This isn't the same as working a second job or cutting back expenses or making something to sell something.

Those are all generally fine to my way of thinking.

But the blatant, naked call for funds - Help us bring little BooBoo home - gives me the creepy crawleys. (I know very few folks who troll to fund IVF. "My eggs suck, help me find and bake new eggs. Send $$$ to PayPal.")

Before folks commit to adoption, they need to have a legitimate funding plan in advance. Not that you need to have all the $$ upfront, but you do need to be able to say, "Ok, total fees are X. We have Y. We will need to fund through Z, and AA, BB, CC over a XX month period."

It may take a village to raise a child, but via birth or adoption, making a family should be a private matter. Otherwise adoption veers dangerously close to an act of charity far and beyond the desire to parent.

File Under: What the F***?

I'm always looking for new products and distributors for items I sell in AdoptShoppe.

I came upon a baby blanket wholesaler. Didn't care for what I saw, but then I came upon this. Note it's organized under Baby Blanket/Licensed Crib Throw. Although my mind raced with the comic possibilities, I'll let you make your own jokes.

Scarface = The Baby Blanket

Brangelina & Adopting, Yet Another Party Heard From

Oh, I dunno ... I'm having a hard time getting worked up whether or not Angelina and Brad make another baby or adopt one. Obviously, she loves kids. Guess he does, too. They have a ton of money so why not make a big family.

Does it only count as vainglorious if they adopt to make a big family or is making the babes themselves equally vainglorious? (Every day I'm a little sorry we didn't add one more child to our family. I had no idea how much I loved being a mom until I became a mom.)

Anyway, here is another attack on Angelina, Brad, and international adoption in general. The writer gets the basic facts right, but sheesh, the tone. Go ahead and tell her how much you didn't enjoy her article.

She'd love to hear from you, I'm sure.

How to Shop for Kids the Brangelina Way
Angelina's "looking at different countries" to find another child to adopt. We weigh some likely possibilities.

Thinking about Dads

** My father died in 1975 at 51 from a heart attack. With today's cardiac pharma and technology, I have no doubt he would have survived that first attack and might even still be with us. He was a stout, outwardly gruff man with a tri-color van dyke goatee and thick Hungarian accent. He was super-smart, soft as mush on the inside, a progressive-thinker, and one of the most tolerant individuals I've ever known.

Folks say I have his personality. Perhaps I do with a few more prickles. There isn't a day I don't think of him or use one of his "dad-isms" in a story or post. My kids love the stories about Grandpa Harry.

It's important to note that my dad didn't have his dad, my Grandpa Sam, in his life for the first 13 years of his life. Grandpa left Czechoslovakia for the US when dad was 6 months old. It took Hitler and a 13-year old who wanted to know his father to get my grandmother to finally leave Europe. After Pearl Harbor, my dad at 17 volunteered for the Army and remained in service until he was 22.

The whole dad thing was a mystery to him, but he was charming in his sometimes awkwardness. G-d, I miss him.

** My husband takes his fatherhood duties with great seriousness and responsibility, but the everyday of it still gives him pause. His own dad was and is a standoffish dad and grandpa. Little talking, little sharing, little much of anything substantial. So I play parent coach when necessary :=)

Last night (as we do every Saturday night) was movie night. We watched "Cheaper by the Dozen 2." At the end, a baby is born and a family regroups, recognizing children grow up and out. Hubby was all misty as he gets when the same scenario is played in other movies. Unlike his own dad, the dad to my kids "gets" it.

** My youngest children's birth dads. These are men who are generally cyphers in my children's thoughts. These men are relegated to wisps of biology as my children talk about their first moms with far more interest and regularity, even when I remind them it took 2 people to make them and try to bring the birth dad into the discussion.

But I'll continue to try, to make real the male side of my children's equation.

Eating Good in the 'Hood

This morning we all piled into hubby's Volvo for a trip to Lotte, a large Korean/Asian supermarket in Ellicott City, MD and we had a terrific time and in some ways it was a trip for hubby and me into supermarkets past.

If you're of a certain age, you may remember more neighborhoody grocery stores. Sawdust on the floor, narrower aisles, generally less square footage and the distinct smell of fresh food in the air. Very unlike today's overpackaged, overprocessed mega markets that have absolutely no smell at all.

Lotte has that old-fashioned grocery story smell and look. Live talapia, eel and grouper in the fish tanks. Live crabs in baskets. Tables overflowing with produce.

It was great. Most of the signs and labels were in Korean, Chinese and English as were the labels of most of the products so it made shopping something of an adventure. In addition to the usual produce and meats (we passed on the octopus this time) stuff, we added Korean candy, instant honeyed plum teas, and pineapple soda.

And dinner tonite was fabulous :=)

If you live within an hour's drive of Ellicott City, MD, throw the kids in the car, pack a cooler with ice, and check out the offerings at Lotte (they also have a small department store which we'll explore on other trip.)

If you haven't as yet explored Korean cuisine, here's a great introduction to the common foods, tastes, and spices. (And don't forget the candy :=)

2006-06 School Year: Retrospective

Okay, last day of school. We moved from MD's second worst performing county school system to its best, into a school district that feeds into the state's #2 high school.

So, was it worth it? Yep, hands down. It was the best thing we could do for our family. This is what the children discovered along with their mom:

** Eldest daughter discovered being smart and well-behaved wasn't enough to getting good grades and certificates of merit. (Last year, with a strong but not stellar academic year, she came home with a raft of certificates. Mostly for having a smile on her face and a sharpened pencil everyday, I think.) She found out that when you don't hand in your homework on time, you get a big fat 0. She was challenged and made friends and found a place to fit in.

** Middle child and son discovered how much learning can go on when the teacher isn't being constantly distracted with behavior issues. "School went really fast here, Mom." He had a solid year of learning and growth.

He made good friends, many who look just like him. Asian-ness, Korean-ness doesn't require a trip in the car to someplace or something. It's not a special event. It's all about next door, the neighborhood, the school and the community. Asian-ness is now the norm.

** Youngest child and #2? Well, she just had a good year making friends and adjusting to a more academically rigorous school system. She doesn't sweat the small stuff much, or the large. She's interested in learning to read/write Korean. We may hire a tutor for her and me. (Son isn't sure he wants to.)

No, it doesn't quite feel like home to me. But it hasn't been quite a year yet in the new digs. But there's no question this was the right move for my family, even if we don't have a Starbucks right in town and everything except the grocery store is always 5 miles or more away.

:: whine ::

I'd do the move again in a heartbeat.

And now for something... well, I don't even know what

From McDonald's ...

Yes, this is the actual URL name:

I-Am-Asian.com

Just leaves me speechless. (And judging from my last post, you know I'm not usually at a loss for words.)

I'll show you mine if you show me yours...

On ThirdMom's blog (please add it to your must-read blog list), I commented on a discussion about adoption, sex, and morality. This was further commented on by a few of the birth moms who have found a sensitive and sympathetic place to share their pain with mostly APs.

Some of what I said was a little misconstrued, I think. But while I have given birth to a child, I was never faced with the choice (a loaded term since for some the decision to place their child for adoption wasn't really a choice at all) of not parenting my child. I can only guess at the depth of that pain which can only be made akin to losing a child by death. And even that doesn't adequately describe it either.

I forget sometimes, that we can only evaluate others through the lens of our personal experience.

Let's talk a little about infertility/miscarriage

I started trying for a family in my mid-30s. Two very early miscarriages that left me sad but undaunted, and then my one and only successful pregnancy. At 39, we tried again. A molar pregnancy (feel free to look it up), and several miscarriages more. This time, each time, the ground would open up and swallow me whole. My sorrow was that I got pregnant easily so I stayed on the treadmill longer than I probably should have. Maybe this one, maybe that one.

The one that crystallized my grief was the one where a chromosomal report had been made. A boy, a son, still not to be.

During this time, I joined a number of post-miscarriage lists for support. Instead, I suppose in part because I did have one perfect little daughter already, I couldn't relate at all. Like we do on adoption lists, the posters would have their special signatures. Angel #1, brought to heaven [this date]. Okay, I can work with that, I thought. My signature simply said, "1 beautiful daughter, too many miscarriages to count"

But what finally did me in were those who had names for each potential son or daughter lost. Even if the pregnancy was only a few days old (called chemical in the infertility world), it merited a name.

Okay, I thought. I'm out of here and I moved to an over-40 infertility group. I spent about two years there. Some opted out for adoption, as I did. Others remained firmly and sometimes grimly on the IVF treadmill. Some like me, had one or two children at home, but wanted just one more. Others were still waiting to bring forth their own fruit.

I never did any IVF or similar. Thought about donor egg for about two seconds and dismissed it. As my RE (reproductive endocrinologist) told me, "Roberta, 95% of our technology is to get the woman pregnant. That's not your problem. Overly ripe eggs that don't divide properly are your problem. So what do you want to do?"

Hubby and I decided to ride two rails and begin to explore adoption and try one more time for a successful pregnancy. I went to "Intro to Adoption" classes 6 weeks pregnant and nauseated. I told my OB I wouldn't consent to one more prenatal exam until I had an ultrasound at 8 weeks.

I did. It was perfect, a little heartbeat and all. I was sick as a dog and hoped that this meant all was well. We went on vacation. Came back for my prenatal.

Next day I started to spot. At 12 weeks, I lost my last pregnancy. A month later, we began adoption in earnest. Not as a cure for my infertility, but as another option that would allow me to extend my desire to parent.

My personal refusal and stubbornness to define myself in terms of failure.

What is resilience? How do we learn it, how do we teach it? We learn how to compartmentalize and how to reframe the experience. (When I divorced my first husband, my mother used to go on and on about the failure of my marriage. I told her the marriage didn't fail. It merely concluded. Now that made her crazy :=)

My secondary infertility/miscarriages didn't make me feel like a failure, but boy, they surely pissed me off. Worse, were the sad faces, the whispers. The prayers to St Jude (patron saint of hopeless causes) from my husband's side of the family. Hey, knock it off already!

"What am I supposed to learn from this?" became a personal mantra. It's not bad, it's a teaching moment!

I couldn't ultimately relate to giving my lost little zygotes names, that would mean my whole personhood was being defined by personal loss. I couldn't ultimately relate to the relentless drive for a second pregnancy, because that too would have defined me by my cranky biology, aging eggs, and an unfilled womb. Uh uh, that wasn't going to fly for me either.

My mother was the poster child for emotionally stuck in a bad place.

In response, I became the emotional equivalent of "MacGyver" - no matter how bad it is, I have the resources and tools to get me out of yet another jam.

Yet in my fear, it was easy to tamp down raw emotions that didn't quite fit the MacGyver mold I developed for myself. I prefer to "do" myself through emotional hurt rather than ponder it, even when ponder is all you can do ... or should do.

Even while awaiting the arrival of our son from Korea, I had to do (I had already completed several needlework and bead pieces) and with that I began to write the first pages of what became adoptkorea.com

None of us can feel each other's grief. Both my parents are deceased, my husband's parents are still living. He has no idea of what it feels like to be an "adult orphan" (perhaps a posting for another time.) And why should he. This is an event for the future. Merely an abstract at some time ahead.

So how can I expect to understand anything at all about birth mothers who rail at me. Or they me. I can't unless they and I find what is common to our shared losses as well as shared gains. I can give my children everything except a genetic past and linkage, critical elements to who they are and will become. The contribution of every biological parent is the piece of themselves in each child. Deep in the DNA where APs like me can only view from a distance.

We can, we should reach to each other from the chasm of our individual pain. It's not about them or us ... it's not about whose contribution is more vital ... nature vs nurture ... the terms we're allowed to call ourselves and what others will call us. It's about wholeness for the children we share. By coming together for them, we can heal ourselves, as well.

Exploration of the Black/White Divide and Judaism

Our merry little family band started out as inter-religious. Me the Jew. My husband the retired Catholic. We agreed from the first date (yeah, it was some kinda first date) that since my Judaism was a core factor of who I was, upon marriage and children we would be a one-faith household.

Then we adopted two children from Korea.

Then we were a transracial, interfaith family with bio and adopted kids.

Today, we are a singular Jewish family -- some from birth, some from conversion -- with racial challenges.

Here is a series of articles about being Black & Jewish, Bi-Racial and Jewish, with a bit of Islam thrown in for good measure.

As Asians face somewhat different racial/ethnic challenges, but there's a lot here for us white APs, Jewish and otherwise to ponder.

Multicultural Interfaith Families

Love the Statue of Liberty? Prove it!

This week, Homeland Security Chief, Michael Chertoff and his team decided that Tampa, FL and Charlotte, NC were more deserving of anti-terrorism grants than NY and Washington, DC. He's looking to cut these cities back by 40%.

His reason? NY and DC are low-risk security targets, no "icons" worth protecting.

???

I won't bore you with my personal list of DC and NY icons. Suffice it so say, "What has the Secretary been smoking?"

I'm a former NYer, if there is such a thing. If you live, lived, visited or just love the idea of NY, visit Senator Hillary Clinton's "Send a Postcard" site and dash off a picture postcard to Michael.

No matter how you stand on her politics, she has partnered with Congressman Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Committee, to remind Secretary Chertoff what's at stake for New York and for all of us when Homeland Security funds to high-risk areas are slashed.

This isn't about politics or grandstanding.It's about common sense. And yes, it's the right thing to do.

I Love NY.

Video Game Addiction - Centered in South Korea

Washington Post had an article today (I'd give you the link but you need to register with WashingtonPost.com) about the growing addiction of South Koreans to video games. In part, this is a reaction to the academic pressures teens face in a hotly competitive educational environment, but the addiction is creeping into the adult population, as well.

Tragically, kids are dying. They won't eat, won't go to the bathroom, and some have died from sitting in a single position for several days.

I think about the extreme pressure on these kids in Korea compared to my work hard, live passionately attitude with my own children. I expect genuine effort but not perfection. College not in a child's future? No problem, you still have to find your meaning and you still have to work. Use your brains, don't forget your heart.

My laissez faire attitude runs a little counter to the community where we live, as well. Very competitive for grades, sports, etc and some kids have committed suicide over the pressure.

I tell my oldest there's nothing wrong with doing your first two years of college at the local community college and work part-time. Chances are you'll be taught by a full professor rather than a Teaching Assistant. Save your $$ (and mine) and be more thoughtful about what you want to do and where you want to go.

(A business friend of mine had his daughter at a top 20 university. She majored in Creative Writing. $150,000 for a degree in creative writing. CREATIVE WRITING! I have no problem if one of my kids decides to go into the trades. G-d knows, the world needs plumbers.)

I think about my youngest kids and wonder if the Korean educational system might have crushed their exuberant spirit.

Another "Make More Babies, Please" Article

Now Russia, also facing low birth and high death rates, is bribing its women to have second babies.

From The Christian Science Monitor:

A second baby? Russia's mothers aren't persuaded.

Wishing Everyone a Happy Mother's Day

Nothing much or profound to share tosay. Today I think about my own mom who passed away 6 years ago in body, but left me orphaned in spirit many years prior ... I think about my youngest children's birthmoms who may or may not know today we celebrate Mother's Day ... I think about the speed in which the years pass, me tired and distracted by the details of daily life, and find myself confronted with children who grew by stealth in my haze and daze ...

My next door neighbor just had her 3rd child - her second child now age 13, her first born 14. The dad tells me how much harder it is to raise babies in your 40s. He fails to realize hubby and I had 2 babies in our 40s, practically back to back. I just smile and nod in agreement.

I think how nice it might be to have a fourth child, but at 51, wonder how fair that would be to him/her or to my family in its current five-ness. (I have close high school friends who are awaiting their first grandchild.)

I wish I were 43 again :=)

Korean Law Maker Wants to Ban International Adoption

From the Korean Herald

Lawmaker pushes ban on overseas adoption

I think the Korean Government specifically and Korean society in general should do more about helping families - meaning single moms - stay intact with financial and program support. Promoting domestic adoption is a great thing, but banning international adoption won't stem the plunging birthrate.

My homegrown baby turns 14

How did it happen that my first born beauty turns 14 today? Of course that makes me, um, somewhat older.

For perspective, my eldest daughter was entering kindergarten when we began the adoption process in 1997. She's getting ready for high school this fall.

Okay, maybe I've grown a little more older than "somewhat." I'm easy to spot, tho. I'm the mom -- feeling nostalgic who sniffled and choked down my high-fiber, oaty-fruity-flaxy, tastes-like-twigs cereal this morning, hoping regularity will keep me going strong for the day I'll be writing about my youngest daughter turning 14 ... and that's just 7 years away.

:: sniff ::

Fewer adoptions in the Bay State

From the Boston Globe:

Lots of factors mentioned -- including the aging out of Baby Boomers (I hadn't considered that)

China's policies lead to drop in Bay State adoptions

Only thing glaringly wrong is the mention of Korea tightening rules because of child trafficking. Korea has long been on the record that it would like to end international adoption of Korean children within the next 10-15 years.

Okay, I know I'm old

I found this concept icky and somewhat hilarious. On the other hand, if I were 25, I'd probably think this was too fun.

Pregnancy Piercings

Ann Tyler's New Book

I was going to write a weepy, sentimental retrospective in celebration of my youngest's daughter's arrival day from Korea seven years ago today. I promise, it would have made you go running for the Puffs box.

However, in today's Washington Post Book World, there's a review of Ann Tyler's new book, Digging to America. A story of two families living in Baltimore who meet while awaiting the arrival of their new Korean-born baby daughters. The kicker is that one of families are Iranian-Americans.

Here's the review.
Here's the first few chapters.

I haven't read Ann Tyler (*I'm more of a non-fiction kind of gal - ask me about The Great Influenza, a totally spectacular read about the 1918 flu pandemic.*), but now I just might.

If you're an Ann Tyler fan, I'd love your contribution on this thread.

As we celebrate both Passover and Easter

I wanted to share with you a very well-written article about religion today. I was very moved and hope you'll find it of value. Happy Holidays all!

=================================================================

From Wednesday's Philadelphia Inquirer and Baltimore Sun

Reinventing 'religion' in America
By Scott M. Korb and Leon A. Morris
April 12, 2006

In the Book of Exodus, after hearing God's voice and with Moses on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments, the ancient Israelites create and worship a golden calf, proclaiming, "This is our God."
An angry Moses breaks the stone tablets when he descends to the foot of the mountain. According to the early 20th century commentator Rabbi Meir Simcha Hacohen of what then was Dvinsk, Russia, Moses' shattering of the tablets was not an act of anger. Moses saw that if the people could turn a golden calf into an object of worship, they would likely do the same with the tablets. Faith itself could become an idol.

Today, faith is less threatened by the overriding secular forces in the world than by religion. Religion is increasingly becoming the product of its own undoing. Religiosity is often too narrowly identified with the realm of ritual practice alone - things such as Jews keeping kosher and Catholics showing up on Sunday for Mass - no small commitments, we admit, but only a partial and incomplete notion of religious devotion.

To be less generous, religion is more and more equated with closed-mindedness, triumphalism and, often, violent extremism. And in seeming response, some Americans have become more comfortable defining themselves as "spiritual" rather than "religious."

They build a faith that is tailor-made for themselves and their families rather than subscribe to a set of inherited principles that they imagine to be fundamentally dangerous. They keep their distance from the fanatics. And yet even those believers who feel comfortable calling themselves "religious" have begun to shape an eclectic and individualized set of beliefs that are ever more therapeutic and materialistic.

In each of these cases, the most central notions of our faiths - such as the dignity of our neighbor, created in God's image - are somehow cast aside as less central. We find distressing the results of the National Survey of Youth and Religion, published last year, which show that previously key elements of our religious imagination - repentance, selflessness, social justice, self-discipline, self-sacrifice and humility, for example - no longer hold a prominent place.

Worse, for too many, the hatred and violence we see escalating every day in the name of religion have created additional reasons for youths and others to reject such ethical values, seeing them as too intimately connected with the violent means that some believe will establish God's kingdom on Earth.

We desperately need new ways to think about what it means to be "religious." Hundreds of religious movements have articulated what might be considered liberal positions over the centuries with great profundity, yet, in large part, especially among progressives, religiosity remains synonymous with fanaticism and extremism. Today, those liberal notions of religiosity have failed to elicit sufficient passion; vibrant communities of faith that embody these ideals are rare.

As devoted members of long-standing faith traditions, we find it both unnecessary and undesirable to abandon our institutions, communities and sacred Scriptures to stake out a position of faith that is liberal and humanistic. Judaism, Christianity and Islam - indeed, all religious traditions - have the capacity to bring about more good than bad, more peace than violence, more universalism than chauvinism, if we understand them, and religious duty, in different ways.

As Jews and Christians approach the festivals of Passover and Easter, there is an opportunity to read even our central stories in ways that can smash the idols currently governing religious belief in the U.S.

The Exodus, for example, is about physical and spiritual liberation. As such, it informs how we treat the stranger and denies the deification of human leaders. As ritualized in the Passover Seder, it speaks of the power of story itself and how words can form a chain that links a hundred generations into a single narrative told over a single meal.

For Christians, the Resurrection is about finding peace through long suffering and new life in what seems like death. As ritualized throughout Holy Week, it speaks of our hope for justice in the midst of tyranny.

If religion has been, at least in part, the source of its own destruction in this new century, we believe it can also be the source of its renewal. Faith can be more about meaning than truth. It can celebrate difference as part of God's ethical will. It can read Scriptures seriously if not literally. It can welcome tension and dialectic.

This Passover and this Easter, it is religion itself that needs to be liberated and raised from the dead. Our stories can lead the way.

==================================================================================

Scott M. Korb, a Roman Catholic, is co-author of the forthcoming "The Faith Between Us." Rabbi Leon A. Morris is director of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El in New York City. Their e-mails are smk@ajprint.net and leon@adultjewishlearning.org.

Hines Ward - African-American & Korean - Unlikely Hero

Two articles from the Korean media ...

KOREA HERALD

[EDITORIAL]Racism and prejudice

ASIA TIMES

'Mixed blood' Korean heroes