The Braid

"One of the Brown girls had her hair in a heart braid at class on Friday," she says with an accusing smirk.

I'm up to my elbows in coconut oil and hair.  It's washing day and we have already had an issue.  I washed and began drying using the hair dryer.  Which caused pouting and tears from her, anger and frustration from me.  All because she wanted me to use the flat iron to straighten her hair.  Her wet hair...with a flat iron.  She couldn't see that her hair was being straightened with the brush and hair dryer.  So she pouted and shrugged and pulled against the brush.

Grrr.

I reacted.  I turned her to face the mirror and her glare softened.  She apologized and I continued brushing.  Letting my hidden anger out with a sigh.

She barbs me with her comment just as I finish drying her hair.  It's glowing and soft, perfect for braiding. I tell her as much, then she follows with her comment.  Supposed to be an offhanded remark, but I read into it.  I grunt.

Yeah, I grunted.

Because, I just spent an hour on your hair and now, I think, you are going to try to make me feel bad.  She doesn't disappoint me, as she follows up her comment with, "Heart braids are probably too hard for you.  It would be impossible for me to have one."

Oh, here we go, try to manipulate me! Are you daring me to braid your hair into a heart?

Funny.  Bonding over hair.  It always starts with contention.  As I work the coconut oil into her hair, our hearts soften too.  This heart braid, she thinks I can't do it.  And I accept her challenge, just to prove my worthiness.  I always feel this way around our youngest daughter.  A complicated relationship that makes both of us so insecure.  She puts me in a place in order to prove myself capable of raising her.

I. Am. The. Adult.  Said with a foot stomp.

Seriously.

We talk about this heart braid for a minute and agree that it's worth a try.  She cranes her neck and I braid as quickly as I can.  The braid begins to take shape and she chatters happily as I listen.  When it's nearly done, I show her my handiwork and she's delighted.  I'm delighted.  We share a victory.  So much more than just a braid. 

Dear me, what will we do when she begins to do her own hair?  Or the salon? She'll fall in love with another woman!

I Have a Dream

I know our family is in a minority. I'm about to ask a question that only a few will be able to answer. Does anyone else that homeschools their transracial family have a really hard time teaching segregation? I managed to get through the grief and horror of the holocaust with some grace, but segregation stopped me in my tracks. We are moving along through history and stumbled into the 50's and 60's. I usually preview some of the longer books that I let Everett read on his own, but the ones I read aloud I don't read beforehand since I can skip or just close if it turns a corner that I don't want to go. Over a snack last week we were reading about Martin Luther King Jr and I was having a really hard time getting the words out.

The idea of segregation is very far fetched to our children. Almost like, 'Wait this is recent, these are normal people who are treating other normal people like this?' We read several picture books that deal with Jim Crow laws in the south. I was keeping an eye on Sally and skipping some sections that seemed so raw. As I was reading, looking around the table at the kids and their variety of skin tones, I couldn't help but feel like this was a history lesson that they needn't learn so young. I kept cringing at the words, "Whites only" or "Colored". They sounded ugly and confusing. Eli's cheerful take on this was, "Well, if we lived back then we'd just sneak library books for Sally and Jojo since they couldn't get a library card." Hmmm. Except I don't think our family would have existed back then. That thought made me so sad and ashamed.

We ended on a high note with a short video at the end of the week about Martin Luther King Jr's life. With all of my hesitation and worry about giving some kind of residual complex to each of the children about Whites vs. Blacks; the week ended with "one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers." Everett turned the TV off and said, rather optimistically, "Yep, that's just like us. Sisters and brothers."

Wototo Children's Choir

A random message in my inbox mentioned the children’s choir visiting from Uganda. I forwarded the message along to my Mom and Seth, thinking I may be the only person of our family interested in venturing out on a frigid winter night to see a children’s concert. My parents would be in town for the weekend, celebrating birthdays, but that particular weekend happened to be Ethiopian Christmas. When you adopt a child from another country there is an expectation that you help your child to retain, or at least become familiar with, the culture of their birth country. Any opportunity for celebrating the Ethiopian culture that passes, leaves me with a little scar of guilt. Completely skipping any celebrations would leave me with that familiar feeling, but the planned activities with our Ethiopian adoption group weren't going to pan out. This left me wondering what special celebration we could throw together, then the email came from another adoptive mom, mentioning this opportunity. My sister and her boys, my parents, and our family headed out on that blustery night, unsure of what the night may hold.

We arrived at the old, crowded Methodist church and wandered through the maze of hallways connecting the parking lot to the sanctuary. The place was packed and we were happy to get seats near the back. The church was old, built before stadium seating and immediately each child clamored onto a lap hoping to get a better view of the stage. We looked around and realized this wouldn't work. We unloaded ourselves from the pew and wound up the stairs to a small balcony. As we settled in, the lights turned down and the concert began.

I wondered how each of the children would do, whether they would enjoy the music and be touched by the stories they would hear. I shouldn’t have worried. As the children's choir filed in singing, Josiah stood on the pew with a light in his eyes. I whispered to him, asking if he could see, but he was too enthralled to turn his eyes and just nodded. Completely engaged. The songs were interspersed with video clips and children stepping out to tell their personal stories. Most of the children had devastation in their lives that left them as orphans. My youngest nephew, four years old, turned to Sally and stage whispered, “Sally! These kids are from Africa, did you know you are from Africa?!” An epiphany.

My eyes misted as I heard about the crisis that each child has survived. Their tales were too close to home for me and I wondered how my mom might be reacting after being in Ethiopia so recently. In the middle of my 'moment', I noticed Josiah was thoroughly enjoying the music. He was shaking his money maker and I was glad we weren't down on the main floor so he could enjoy himself fully. Then he looked at me and yelped, "I need to potty, RIGHT NOW!" Evidently, the potty dance looks a lot like three year old Ugandan praise music dance moves. I made it down one flight of stairs to an usher and another flight of stairs into a vacant fellowship hall before the warmth spread across my hip. By the time we made it around the corner and into the bathroom it was far too late.

So, our wonderful experience at the Wototo Children's concert was infused with our usual antics. Josiah singing, clapping, and dancing with brown paper towels stuffed into his smelly pants standing in the pew to avoid stinking up the ancient fabric beneath him. Sitting next to the urine soaked child, in my own urine soaked jeans, I was still touched by the children singing, my children, and my older nephew--who moved onto his mom's lap during one of the children's stories about losing their family.

I Love My Hair

I saw this today and loved it. I read the criticisms and, honestly, I still love it!

Let's be realistic-- We can wax on eloquently about the hairstyles that this little muppet has. We can discuss that she sings one thing and her hair is doing something else. Or we could just be happy that Sesame Street produced such a cute, affirming video for African-American girls who have hair envy.

I don't think the Sesame Street crowd notices that our lovely muppet's hair gets a 'relaxed' look halfway through for a few seconds or that she gets incredibly long braided extensions towards the end. She's singing about loving her afro and cornrows. She's a lovable muppet! How could you be so upset and read into this song so much as to get angry. This is a great thing for my afro-wearing daughter to see! Affirmation that she does have wonderful hair that she can wear in so many amazing styles. It's great.

The story behind the video makes it even better. Here's the article from NPR:

A little Muppet girl has started a sensation. The unnamed puppet with an afro sings a love song to her hair.

"I Love My Hair" debuted on the Oct. 4 episode of Sesame Street. It was posted on the show's YouTube page — and then women began posting the video on their Facebook pages.

African-American bloggers wrote that it brought them to tears because of the message it sends to young black girls.

Joey Mazzarino, the head writer of Sesame Street, is also a Muppeteer who wrote the song for his daughter. Mazzarino is Italian. He and his wife adopted their 5-year-old daughter, Segi, from Ethiopia when she was a year old.

Mazzarino says he wrote the song after noticing his daughter playing with dolls.

"She wanted to have long blond hair and straight hair, and she wanted to be able to bounce it around," he tells NPR's Melissa Block.

Mazzarino says he began to get worried, but he thought it was only a problem that white parents of African-American children have. Then he realized the problem was much larger.

In writing the song, he wanted to say in song what he says to his daughter: "Your hair is great. You can put it in ponytails. You can put it in cornrows. I wish I had hair like you."

That simple message has caused an outpouring of responses from women. Mazzarino got a call from an African woman who told him the song brought her to tears. "I was amazed, 'cause I sort of wrote this little thing for my daughter, and here this adult woman, it touched her," he says.

Mazzarino says he's happy to report that Segi loves the song — and her hair.

In My Own Backyard

She makes the quiet statement about a boy who has been spending his days in our yard. "I don't like him."

It's obvious she's been thinking about what she just said. She's visibly upset, her eyes fill with tears as she finishes her thought, "He said he didn't want to play with me. I have this skin. Brown skin. He doesn't like brown skin."

She's pointing to her arm with disgust. The emotion I see is so strong and terrifying that I hug her tightly and start sobbing with her. I have no words that can undo the hurt she feels.

On the kitchen floor.

Cradling our six year old in my lap.

Both of us crying.

I can't believe our daughter met prejudice for the first time swinging on her swing set.

Adoption Angst

When I'm done tucking the girls in, Sally stalls. I think she's stalling. She usually starts asking me hard questions. If she didn't wait until I was standing at the door of the bedroom, I would think she was actually interested in my answers. Rather, I think she is grasping at straws hoping to baffle me long enough to get a few more minutes with the light on.

She finally struck "stalling gold." Her line of questioning wound itself around to, "Whose belly did I come from?"

Sigh.

Seems like we have talked about this before. Seems like I've been having this talk for the past five years. Rather, Ella follows up with, "Well, I grew in your belly."

Ahem.

I remind the girls gently that they grew in another belly far, far away. And I began to tell them their amazing stories. It seems, to me, that I've been telling Ella her story since we brought her home. Until now, nearly six years later, she hasn't been too interested. Her face was betraying her feelings and it dawned on her that she spent years without us. It seems impossible.

Though Sally was older, she hardly remembers the way things really unfolded. She can't believe that she and Josiah didn't come 'from the same belly' in Ethiopia. I tell her about the long line of mommies who have babies that didn't grow in their bellies. Starting with their own Daddy and moving down their family tree.

To me, that makes it easier, knowing that so many of your family have been adopted. They have been loved and they have become mommies and daddies too. To my five year old that made no difference. After my sweet words and good intentions her only comment was, "But I wish that I was from your belly just like the boys."

Oh, how my heart breaks.

That was only the beginning. At any random moment during the day Sally will approach me asking 'Whose belly did ____ (insert friend or relative) come from?' Of course, none of them would happen to be adopted. I feel ill equipped to deal with the onslaught of questions. My (adopted) husband is no help either. Simply stated by him, "She loves you and wants to have as much of you as possible." But he can give no great response to ease all of her insecurities and worries. If he can't, who can?

We tread very lightly around our house. In a family comprised of children who have come into our family by birth and adoption, we can easily make someone feel alienated by making the other feel too special. In an effort to keep everyone feeling loved, perhaps we've been too cautious.

I've used the "grew in my heart" line to no avail. I've told them that their stories are amazing and God brought them right into our family. It seems that they are stuck on the unknown. I have no names, stories, or pictures. Honestly, the bits and pieces we know are too much for either of the girls to handle. I have to be relatively creative in censoring their stories.

Any words of wisdom?

NPR's adoption series

Seth works an hour away from our home and generally puts his time in the car to good use. He's dedicated himself to catching up on all the classics that he was supposed to read in high school, but sometimes he's had enough of Poe, Hemingway, and Steinbeck so he turns on the radio. On Monday he caught the beginning of this series on NPR. Initially I was excited, but it seems (to both of us) that they are doing the nasty media thing and putting a spin on adoption that may seem discouraging. They have a short clip about transracial adoption and some tips on raising kids from an adoptive mom.