How Far We Have to Go

Th spiky urchin is ill, but I’m not going to let a little puking ruin NaBloPoMo on the very last day. So here’s a little quote, chosen with sharing my nausea in mind:

“The U.S. is seen as a model for adoption and reform in these other countries. We have an amazing opportunity to set a standard across the world for adoptions and orphan care.”–Carolyn Twietmeyer

The more I read it, the colder my blood feels. Ugh.

The Worst Thing I Have Ever Read

I warned you.

Here’s a poem (? containing no rhyme, meter, poetic language or anything else we use to define poetry) by an a’mom who will obviously enjoy celebrating the differences an adoptee brings to a family. It’s so bad I feel compelled to tell you that bolding will mark the places where the reality of this thing ends and the snark begins. It’s called

I WILL BE THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE MOMMA AND YOU WILL BOW DOWN BEFORE ME………….

I will be the momma. I know it will happen someday. I will be
the one that sees the excellent plan God puts into motion.

As a non-Christian, I’ve got to confess god’s plan is not visible to me. But if it’s really invisible to everyone but one entitled PAP, well, hiding your light under one lady’s bushel is no way to convert the world, Jesus.

I will be the
one that walks into the room with a baby in arms while people stare

“at me, me, ME! YES! Look at MEEEEE! How I will sparkle and curtsey on that wonderful day I rub my friends’ noses in it!”

in
shock, then smile, knowing I wasn’t pregnant, so ‘why do I have this
baby’?
We will be the ones that realize that without us…….a plan for a baby
would have never been what it could be.

Without special, special You (and Mister You, who’s slightly less special because hardly mentioned, but still quite special, being good enough for You), no plan for a baby could succeed, let alone be all it could be. Only You (and Mister You) are worthy.

I know this will happen
someday.

“And when it does, I will holler ‘IN YOUR FACE! MINE! See this baby? Innit cuuuute? You want it? You want this cute little baby, don’t you? CAN’T HAVE IT! I win! Me! MINE! I TOLD you god loves me best!’ And I will gloat and gloat and gloat and gloat and I will lock the baby in a treasure chest so no one can look at it without my permission, and when I am sad I will go into the closet and I will open the chest and I will look inside and I will whisper ‘Mine.'”

I will be the one that finds the nooks and crannies of this child’s
personality

Holy shit, is that ever creepy.

and know that without us…….those might never have been
found.

It’s, um (snif) sorry, gimme a second–It’s actually kind of hard to type right now, because I just thought about all the other children, the billions of children who spent and are spending their entire lives without the benefit of Your very special probings of their personality crannies. It’s not fair, God. Why did you only make one You (and one Mister You)? Why can’t They raise everyone? Whyyyy [shakes fist at sky]?!?!

I will be the one

I’ve never seen this sort of insistent repetition of “I will be the one” outside of comic books and cartoons, where it’s never said by anyone but the villain. In fact, I’m starting to hear The Monarch in my head as I read this “poem,” this thing, this magical invocation for producing a child.

“Yes, I will be the one. And I will RULE THE WORLD!”

to know that my husband and I are the ones

“I will be the one to” what now? I think I just got whiplash from the recursion. “I will be the one to know that I–er, we–Um, I will be the one to know that we will be the ones to be the ones who are the ones who will be the ones who were promised, the ones who were prophesied, the ones who were foretold, the ones who will raise all your children and do the best job ever done at it too. I’M THE  ONE!”

encouraging and enlightening characteristics that arise….

“unless I do not like them, in which case they must be QUASHED!”

that we are the
ones who will bring experiences to the child’s life…that no one else can
in quite the same way.

“in quite the same way.” Correct, you are unique and special just like everyone else. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a PAP so pissed-off about parents being “interchangeable.” Who does it benefit, after all, but them?

I will be the one

MUAHA HAHA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

who will know which color looks
best on her.

Ah, so it’s to be a girl. A girl to raise in One’s own image. A girl who doesn’t need to learn fashion sense because Mommy will always be right there to tell her how to dress. And I’m not kidding–she WILL BE THERE:

I will be there for the first step, first tooth, first smile.

“Wherever there is injustice, you will find me.
Wherever there is suffering, I’ll be there.
Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find…
THE ONE Amigo–friend to ME and ME ALONE!”

It will
be ‘my voice’ this baby takes after(girl) ;

“because I will get a tiny tape recorder of My Voice and I will fix her larynx. Fix it good! No child of Mine is going to have her own voice! Also, it WILL be a girl if I have to cut its junk off, so you’d better get it right, God!”

and my husband’s and my eyes
this child will seek comfort in. It will be our home that this child knows
is safe.

“Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiine”

I will be the one

ME! THE MONARCH!

who will hold this baby and know that she’s part of
our family—That though I might not have borne the pain of delivery, I
have borne a different type of pain through waiting and worry…even
beyond the nine month span.

“My kind of pain is more painful. Not because it’s lasted longer than nine months, dear no. Because it’s Mine. Mine is a Very Special Pain. It demands your consideration.”

We will be the ones that know the ‘secret’

THAT secret over THERE! It’s MI–OURS!

……. that children are NOT to
be taken lightly…..

“(but are to be wrenched away from their mothers with appropriate force! Shh, ONLY WE KNOW THIS)”

that they are conceived by many

No, Honey, just by two apiece. Your sex ed class must have been a hoot, though.

…..but loved in a
special way by “chosen” mommas and daddys.

Adoptive parents are not inherently superior to natural parents. Not even when the adoptive parents are both You, which is (again, this is so tragic for the children of the world) not possible. And “chosen” by whom? Last I heard, it was the adopted child we were supposed to console with this “chosen” bullshit. Is there nothing You won’t take for Yourself?

I will be the one who will hold this baby on dedication day.

“MEEEE! No, Mister Me, you can’t touch her now. This is MY moment!”

It will be
our name this child knows.

“And she’ll STAY in that closet until she LEARNS to PRONOUNCE it PROPERLY! GOODBYE, SIR!”

This baby will have my relatives as her
own……and only by a liquid flowing through her veins, will there ever be
any difference……….

You know how you can have your own blood stored before surgery in case you need it? I figure if You and Mister You dropped a pint every couple of months, you’d very quickly be able to come up with a baby girl’s worth. When you get her, just have a doctor crack her chest and fill her heart with the correct blood. While he’s in there, he can install Your voice, give the kid appropriate plastic surgery so she looks like You (only not *quite* as pretty), and perform any other adjustments needed to make her indistinguishable from Your Own. The awesome part is that all this medical trauma won’t be a bit more inconvenient or painful for her than having to *pretend* to be a replica of You all her life would have been. Because, let’s face it, she’ll never measure up. Lady, there’s no one like You!

…I hope.

It goes on like that. I’m going to skip a little. Let’s go past the parts about OUR baby spoon and OUR lock of hair and OUR blessings and how WE found this child (she was hiding in someone else’s family, can you believe it?). Let’s get back to the important shit, which is how THEY ARE THE ONES:

My husband and I will be the ones in the ‘waiting room’

the SO CALLED… “waiting room.” DUHN DUHN DUH that’s sinister supervillain shit right there!

when this child
has an operation.

“which I shall arrange, necessary or not, because part of the parenting experience I want is watching My child eat ice cream after her tonsils come out!”

We will be the ones up during the night because of
coughs and sore throats. It will be us who will be the ones to console
her when relatives pass away and we are left to discuss ‘death and eternal
life’.

HOW MANY TIMES MUST I TELL YOU FOOLS?

Also, that’s kinda morbid. Do most mothers-to-be anticipate the joy of discussing the death of a relative with Baby?

And when this child becomes a teen…….it will be me who will stay up
late and wait until he returns from his first ‘car date’. And yes, it will be
us to explain the actions of his birthparents

“which we will invent, because I need to have saved this baby from a fire, starvation, or rampaging bears”

and his adoption.

That’s twice now. Say, Martha, what sex is this kid you and George had anyway? Did it come with detachable parts, like that Visible Woman toy I had that could be pregnant or not pregnant?

And when she

IT DID! IT DID! Why, anything’s possible when your mommy is This Lady!

And how convenient that the specified girl becomes a boy when and only when it’s old enough to engage in sexytimes. That way it won’t get knocked up like its slut of a mo–um, sorry, You are The Mother, so its slut of an incubator!

is grown and on her own…….

at which time it is at liberty to be female again because Your reputation can no longer be damaged by its filthy behavior

it will be me who is known
as ‘momma and he who is known as ‘daddy’.

I can see her now, sitting at her typewriter at the Overlook Hotel, composing her novel. And I see a stack of her completed pages next to the typewriter:

I’M THE MOMMY I’M THE MOMMY I’M THE MOMMY. I’M THE MOMMY! I’M? THE MOMMY; I’M THE MOMMY, I’M THE MOMMY (I’M THE MOMMY). “I’M THE MOMMY,” I’M, THE MOMMY….

(only with screwed-up, single quotation marks.)

And in the end…..it will
only be that liquid flowing through her veins that will not be influenced
by us……..

“Control the baby, CONTROL THE UNIVERSE!”

Seriously, you’re a sick woman, and you are going to raise a very broken child someday.

(No, I’m not posting a link to this one. Even I have some Niceness in me.)

STILL Defending Torry Hansen

The spiky urchin has an opinion about opinions like the one held by Kim Strickland of Chicago Now. It’s Ms. Strickland’s opinion that if you haven’t committed or experienced a thing, you have to shut up about it. Such opinions get on my spines, hard:

In news story after news story and blog after blog, I watched parents (and probably some non-parents, too) practically getting-off on their vitriolic condemnation of Torry Hansen and her mother, Nancy.

So, I ask them: Did it make you feel better? Did it? Are you currently swaggering around, a cross between Mother Teresa, Erma Bombeck and Carol Brady, feeling oh so much more like perfect parents because you didn’t ship your kid off to Russia?

Well, if I may stay up on my high horse here, I refused to spew such vitriol. Most of these people chiming-in hadn’t adopted an older child, and while I haven’t walked in the Hansen family’s shoes, I’ve walked in a pair similar to theirs. My daughter arrived from Russia just over two-and-a-half-years ago.

Ah. So when I see something bad, I have to shut up about it while those who have either done or endured the bad thing themselves judge. I never thought about it before, but I suppose that’s why murder suspects get a jury of their true peers: six convicted murderers and six people who have been falsely accused of murder.

By that I mean, of course: Screw you, Ms. Strickland–you’re a self-righteous jerk of the sort you complain about. Shit, I probably wouldn’t be talking about poor Artyom right now if you hadn’t trotted out his tragedy. What’s worse is that you only did so because it makes such a perfect introduction for your story about how you’re–hey, let’s face it!–a much better mother than Ms. Hansen or Carol Brady, because you can and have dealt with the stuff that “put Torry Hansen over” the edge.

“POW! Supermum!”

….Even though you just said your daughter is nothing like as “bad” as Artyom. It’s a good thing you pretend you didn’t want any praise, because you’re not making your case very well here.

You don’t play fair with the Hansen case, either. You don’t mention that we have no corroborating evidence for his horrible sociopathic behavior. None. No visits to a psychologist. No school. You say you believe the Hansens “didn’t know they had other options,” but I see no evidence they bothered looking for any.

Nor did I witness the display of orgiastic finger-pointing you described. I saw some outrage–and I saw every ounce of it countered by an equal and opposite comment about how we all have to shut up if we haven’t walked in Torry Hansen’s shoes, that raising adopted kids is harrrrd, that if a lay woman decides a boy is a sociopath he is a by-gods sociopath, that we have no idea what she went through.

And it’s true: I have no idea what Torry Hansen or her mother went through. I know what they put that seven-year-old boy through. I know at least sixteen Russian kids have been killed by their American parents and nobody seems to give a rat’s ass as long as they keep exporting the product.

And I know what it’s like to grow up adopted hearing people whisper about Children Like That around you. To hear grown-ups make jokes about how they didn’t realize sending kids back was an option.

You’re not saying anything new here, Ms. Strickland. Your side, the P/AP side, of adoption (“the edge”) is and always has been the only side that matters.

And no, I don’t feel any better. I’ll feel better when the killing stops.

 

A Challenge From The Adopted Ones blog

Challenge

I was gonna wait until I had done all the “whether or not” things so I could type a triumphant “I teach six college courses and I still did all this, so you can too!” post, but I’m running out of November here. I haven’t done all those things, but I’ve done the main thing, so I challenge my readers anyway:

–To publicly stand up and state your feelings in a post on your blog this month about Adoptee Rights and to challenge your readers to do the same and then talk about it and don’t stop talking about it.

I did this part, so YOU! Yes, you! Behind the bikesheds! If you’re not blogging already, then Pikachu, I challenge YOU!

Whether or not (and feel free to add why)…

1.  you support Adult Adoptees right to their original birth certificate.
(yes duh)

2.  you support retroactively restoring this right to all Adult Adoptees.
(hellz yes)

3.  you have written a letter to the National Counsel For Adoption stating your support for Adoptee Rights activism and urging them to change their position.
(Er, I should definitely do that.)

4.  you have told your state representatives you support Adoptee Rights.
(I hope I never claimed to be an activist, cause I suck at the active part.)

5.  you are aware of any current pending legislation that will restore the right to Adult Adoptees to their Original Birth Certificate in YOUR state.
(Now that’s just plain depressing. Who in NC would I–oh!)

Adoptee Rights Coalition November post with a link to your representative.

Thanks!

So how about you, Bastard Readers? How many challenge components have you completed? And I don’t wanna hear any complaints–you have two whole days. 😉

I’m Having Paper Hot Flashes

“LABOR PAINS! Yes we are in labor!” announces a blogger about to receive a four-year-old girl from China.

Both of you? Sorry to sound creepy, but can I watch his? I must know how he manages. And that must hurt. How on earth do you keep your womb(s?) in China and the rest of you here? And how can your new daughter sport “princess shoes, earrings and purse” for the camera unless your womb(s?) contains room not only for a four-year-old, but for furniture, draperies and a photographer too? Stop that, it’s tacky.

But it isn’t like these bloggers thought up this grotesque metaphor. It’s been around awhile in various forms, like this:

Sure it is. And that’s a real baby you’re holding to prove it!

No, it’s the same old pregnant. Someone got The Same Old Pregnant and you are raising her child. The least you could do is acknowledge her existence. Stop that, it’s an insult.

Then there’s this:

Origami baby on board?

You are not Paper Pregnant unless you intend to become a paper mother by giving birth to a paper infant, which I don’t recommend, because the paper cuts, my gods the paper cuts. Stop that, it’s a lie. (Unless you really have given birth to a ream of one hundred per cent white cotton bond paper, in which case I apologize and offer as consolation the fact that your son will one day be perfect for copying a doctoral dissertation onto.)

If family-making were a sport, this would be cheating. It’s the equivalent of buying something and insisting you made it yourself when you try to resell it on Etsy, which makes you petty and shameless. And I wish that were all it did, but this stuff isn’t cute and it isn’t harmless. It lets the world know before your adoption is completed that you can’t deal with raising a child you didn’t give birth to, even though that’s exactly what you signed on for.

I’m not trying to be mean here, I’m just saying something obvious that a lot of PAPs don’t seem to get: You did not engender your adopted child.

Did the first mother pick you? Do you know all about her and the father? You still didn’t give birth, your child still had parents before you, and your child will still need you to acknowledge, even celebrate this.

Do you have an open adoption? You still didn’t give birth, and your child still had parents before you.

Did you go to every prenatal checkup? You still didn’t give birth, your child still had parents before you, and your child will still need you to acknowledge, even celebrate this.

Did you go into the delivery room and cut the cord? You still didn’t give birth, your child still had parents before you, and your child will still need you to acknowledge, even celebrate this.

No matter how young s/he is when you get him/er, no matter how little s/he seems to remember, your child will need you to acknowledge and celebrate the fact that s/he is, but is not, entirely yours. When you you walk around with a T-shirt representing the entire country of China as the womb in a fake ultrasound, you don’t look ready for the task at all.

Hi! I’m a Straight-Up Racist!

(You look like a colonialist running dog, but that’s another story for another day.)

Your child is yours, but s/he will never be “yours” in the sense that s/he will look like you, act like you, have your family’s talents and dreams and eyes. The sooner you deal with that, the happier your child will be, because an adopted child needs to grow up with parents who acknowledge and can deal with the fact that s/he had parents before them.

These days my face gets red and I break a sweat just reading about this crap. May I try the paper menopause please?

Religious discrimination in adoption

…NOT.

We’ve already seen that allowing gay couples to adopt is somehow religious discrimination. Guess what else is? Crazy-ass international regulations that keep a family who

–already has fourteen children (eight bio, six adopted)
–but has not registered itself as a foster care family
–because foster care families aren’t allowed that many children,

from adding number fifteen:

In order to adopt children from countries such as Uganda, India and the Philippines, parents must be licensed by the state as foster care families. That’s a problem for the Twietmeyers and other families who far exceed the standard licensing limit.

You already have more children than Uganda or America would let you have if they weren’t societal discards, but you’re doing Jesus’ work on earth, so you’re entitled to more? Fine, they’re just poor children, have more–but you can’t have this one because Uganda doesn’t do things that way, see? You could probably get a nice orphan from elsewhere to raise (in a closet or wherever you have space left over) while continuing to break the rules because you’re so very very very Good. But no, you want THIS orphan.

But social workers at the Twietmeyers’ adoption agency say they have been told the family won’t be licensed for more children, a necessary step to adopt from Uganda, where adoptions are not finalized until after children reach the U.S.

The conflict pits the families’ desire to live out their religious mission of caring for orphans against the state’s mission to protect children.

God bless the state. It just doesn’t understand how holy and important this family’s missions is. Screw child welfare! Screw their health! Screw the size of whatever structure they’re all living in! I want to rescue another orphan and that means I can!

“I feel like it’s all an act of God when we finish these adoptions because everything is a roadblock that we’re constantly trying to scale,” Carolyn Twietmeyer said. “This is no easy process. We shouldn’t have to go through what we need to go through to be a family. To climb the mountain of DCFS on top of church barriers and financial barriers is really unacceptable.”

And I feel like you want too much, and expect it too easily.
And I feel like if it had been easy for you to adopt, you’d’ve called that God’s will too.
And I feel that, in complaining you have to lift a single finger to adopt, you’re implying that you’re taking in worthless broken children nobody else would have as your Christian duty, that these kids are not worth the trouble if they can’t glorify you.
And I feel a great deal of hope that none of them ever read this interview.
And I feel that for you to pretend you suffer a damned thing by not having This Particular Orphan is shameless, egotistical drama. You’re cloaking your greed in the language used by people who have not been able to have or adopt any kids at all–the stuff we “go through to be a family”–when you have fourteen.

Fourteen, and you stamp your feet and cry Jesus. I hope the poor AIDS orphan does get a better home, but not yours. I think he’ll be better off where he can be the center of attention. He shouldn’t have to perform as yet another HIV-positive prop for Jesus’ glorification of your family, vying daily with fourteen other kids for attention and love (kinda like a small orphanage) while listening to Mom rant about how he should have been shipped over here for free.

Nobody’s picking on you, Mrs. Twietmeyer. It’s just that your days of getting exceptions made for you when you say “Jesus” may be coming to an end. You’ve become too outrageous in your expectations. Don’t they say God answers all our prayers, but that sometimes the answer is “no”?

Adoption: Do It For the Taxpayers!

Or, Worst Reason To Adopt Ever!

Here’s an “article” (it reads like a press release) by Ms. Jennifer Marshall, who says we don’t adopt enough. Seeing as how, in my experience, we adopt like the planet is our BabyMaking Is Going Out Of Business Sale, the spiky urchin read more. I was happy to see a mention of the kids in foster care who need homes (even if they are all said to be “languishing”). That’s what National Adoption Month should be all about, Lady! Good for y–Oh fuck, here we go:

The spotlight on the promise of adoption also is welcome for children just entering the world. When it comes to unplanned pregnancies, abortion and single parenting are far more common than adoption.

Then she talks about how horrible it is that abortions exist, and how criminal it is that Planned Parenthood doesn’t manage to talk at least one woman into relinquishing for every woman who has an abortion, like women’s reproductive choices are a contest. But that’s not why Ms. Marshall gets on my spines. This is:

“A fairly common attitude in the child welfare system is that infant adoption should almost never happen,” Atwood notes. “Instead, the government should provide adequate resources for single mothers so that they do not need to place their children for adoption.”

To let those dirty sluts keep their children instead of handing them off to their betters–it’s obscene! Almost as if we were more focused on helping children than punishing their mothers. Is that crazy or what?! We need to go right back to rigging things so women “need” to place their children. It’s choices that got us into this mess! Bring back the old days of strapping their arms to the table so they won’t reach for the fruit of their sinful loins! Why, if we take women’s choices away, we’ll have SCADS more kids languishing in foster ca–wait…no, that’s not what I meant to prove at all…

This outlook results in obvious strains on taxpayers. More than $300 billion annually goes to welfare benefits for single-parent households. Plenty of data show the significant stresses on single mothers as well. For example, the Census Bureau reports that the poverty rate in 2009 for households headed by single mothers was 38.5 percent, compared to 8.3 percent for married parents with children.

So we’re killing the taxpayers, not by fighting multiple wars at the same time, or letting the rich and corporations not pay their share, but by keeping families together. Yet despite the monster cash infusions, these families remain poor. Obviously we’re doing too much to help them!

This is straight up bullshit. I doubt much of my tax dollars goes to help single mothers. I wouldn’t mind if more went to that and less to the defense department. And the very idea that anyone would adopt to take the tax burden off others repulses me. That’s no reason to adopt. Surely you see how terrible it sounds? But you’re not presenting it as a reason to adopt, are you, Ms. Marshall? You’re presenting it as a reason to take babies off those horrible slutty slut sluts who spread their legs without being married, in order to punish them. And once the babies have been taken away, they have to be fed, preferably by a good Christian family who’s only doing it to be superior. Your type never changes: your hatred for women will always betray you and make you act as if you also hate children, those “by-products of women.”

Expectant single mothers should know their options. And more could-be adoptive parents should hear about the need.

No, No, and Hell no. Look, Lady, do you think there’s one unmarried pregnant woman in the US who hasn’t been told and told and told and told about the wonders of adoption? Do you think there’s a single childless couple in America who hasn’t had adoption suggested to them a dozen times? (I’ll bet you do, because your type believes there are people in America who haven’t heard The Good News and that it’s your duty to bother them with it.) And are you really arguing that people who aren’t currently interested in adopting be talked into it, be pressured into raising someone else’s child because what the hell, they have a house or something? Would you have wanted half-hearted parents who only raised you because the people at their church told them to? I wouldn’t.

That’s the goal of initiatives such as Wait No More, launched in 2008 by Focus on the Family to alert more Americans to the urgency of the need for adoption. The program gathers government leaders, churches, private adoption agencies and prospective adoptive parents to provide information and opportunities to begin the adoption process on site.

I’m confused. If I want to adopt a kid who really needs me, a foster kid, surely I don’t have to bother with a private agency or my church. I could just contact the government when I felt I was ready to parent. It couldn’t be that Dr. Dobson’s band of hateful busybodies are making money off adoption, could it?

Now, you’d think maybe some of the new gay parents could take up the slack now that they’re being allowed to adopt. Hooray, right? Nope, tragedy:

In Illinois, just 10 days before Thanksgiving, Catholic Charities announced the closing of foster care and adoption services after the state insisted that it allow placements with same-sex couples. As attorney Peter Breen observed in a statement issued by the Thomas More Society, which represented Catholic Charities, the announcement “marks the tragic end to 90 years of foster care service by some of the most effective child welfare agencies in Illinois.” In Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, similar policies already had forced religious groups out of foster care and adoption — a loss for many needy children.

No, the groups’ own bigotry forced them out of foster care and adoption at the expense of those waiting children. Better they should languish than have a real home with same sex parents. I’m not a Christian, but I suspect Jesus thinks these people are assholes.

I’ve Figured It Out

Bear with me, Bastards. This is crazy, but it explains everything. OK, so there’s this fluffy sparkle cloud that surrounds the word “adoption” for most people, and it smells like cinnamon popcorn inside the cloud, and sweet music plays there all the time while friendly fairies push magical no-cal eclairs into your mouth. And the longer you keep your head in there, the better it gets. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Example: Here’s the rare news story that actually does a little adoption truth telling–and in November! It quotes Joan Didion as saying “Adoption…is hard to get right” and Marlou Russell saying “Attachment and abandonment issues are part of every adoption.” (Marlou also expertly warns parents against telling their children they were “chosen” or that they were given up out of love. Thanks!) And here’s Jean Strauss: “[The] secrets inherent in adoption are diminishing and disempowering” even if you’re–yes, we’re not done with the poor man yet–Steve Jobs.

So what did one reader get out of that?

“Adoption is fascinating, sad and beautiful. I hope to adopt or foster one day. Beautiful post…!”

Adoption: It’s fascinating, like a fly’s wing under a microscope. And it’s sad but beautiful, like a painting of a crying clown getting kicked by a purple-horned, sparkle-hooved unicorn but glitter flies out his head instead of blood, and standing off to one side looking really sad is a little girl painted by Margaret Keane with big big eyes and raggedy clothes, and she wants me to adopt her so so much…and over it all there’s a rainbow made of kittens. Also it is beautiful.

The snurchin cannot reproduce that painting, but she can help you imagine it:

“Fascinating, sad, and beautiful.”

Sooooo fluffy!

It bleeds rainbows! SQUEE!

That’s how it works. She saw the a-word and was rendered unable to read or think further by the pink puffy floofy fluffy sparkly musical candy goodness. The only kind of Sad that can live in there is the self-indulgent sentimental kind.

If you want to adopt, you have to take your head out of there once in awhile to do things like write checks and fill out paperwork, and you might comment thus:

“it’s nice to hear the positive side of adoption. My husband and I are in the process of adopting a child and it seems like only the negative side is shown the news/tv/movies.”

I don’t remember hearing anything bad about adoption on TV lately–certainly not in November! Perhaps you saw a rerun of Losing Isaiah? Or did you catch a glimpse of reality by mistake and get shaken? I understand. The contrast is startling.

But there’s no reward in taking your head out of that thing, and it’s so pleasant inside….

Note the article title.

“The Dark Side of Adoption. It’s sooo beautiful it probably really does have cookies for me!”

Opinions, O My Bastards?

Adoptive mothers who breastfeed, or consider it, often seem quite surprised by the reactions of adult adoptees like me who see this as a violation.

I see it as adding insult to injury, myself. Imagine you’re an infant minding your own business in, say, Ethiopia when suddenly you are uprooted from everything you know and flown around the world. Everything looks and smells and sounds and moves differently from what you’re used to. The light, the air–everything is different. No matter your age, on some level you grok pretty quickly that it’s you who is expected to adjust to all this, that nothing you perceive will be changing for your benefit, that you had best adapt ASAP.

Then one of these huge white funny-smelling people shoves a tit in your face and croons “I’M your mommy NOW, Jacob” when your name is Dawit and you know perfectly well who your mother is and what she sounds and smells and looks like.

Seriously, it’s like something out of a horror movie. The only way to make it worse for the kid would be if the a’mom wore clown make-up for every feeding.

We’re going to raise a generation of children who cry when they see milk, I know we are.

Sometimes These Things Write Themselves

…which is good, because my mind is a blank today. But really, there’s not much to be added to this one: Jerry Sandusky was nominated for an Angels In Adoption award in 2002 (the same year he was caught raping a child in the shower)…..by RICK SANTORUM.

Sandusky said of Second Mile: “My philosophy is simple: it is easier to groom a child than to rape an adult.” (Nah, not really, that’s just the philosophy he lived.)

Rick Santorum is a current Presidential candidate, filthy slang noun, and firm believer that every child deserves security and happiness until the minute it’s born. (Nah, he hasn’t really said so; that’s just the philosophy he expects you to live: “Santorum is…a family values champion. He is a strong opponent of abortion, critic of contraception, and outspoken foe of such gay and lesbian causes as marriage equality.”)

If I hated children, I’d run on Santorum’s platform. Bring’em into the world at any cost and to Hell with what happens to’em as long as no gay people get their hands on’em. Because something terrible could happen.

Something like getting raped by an Angel.

So how did the nomination happen? ABCNews.go.com says that, as with so many adoption nightmares, some grown-up didn’t bother to do his homework:

Santorum said he doesn’t know Sandusky and “doesn’t recall ever meeting him” […] according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

It’s standard procedure for senators and members of congress to issue awards such as those on an everyday basis, and Santorum said he was “doing those awards routinely for years.”

“He ran a very respected charity who did a lot of work for kids in trouble,” Santorum said. “I had a lot of friends who were on his board and spoke highly of him, so it seemed to me to be pretty natural. But obviously it was a huge mistake.”

No point in checking up on adoptive families after finalization. Obviously anyone who goes to that kind of trouble and jumps through all those hoops (six times!) is a loving dad.