Hair Today

A few days ago we were out of the babies' curl cream and I went to the beauty shop to get it. I wanted to get a particular brand but they were out and I was talking to the assistant for a while about products and hair and the babies and so on. We don't go in there all that often, but she remembers us, which is good / bad. She remembers that last time it was J who came in with them. I like that she knows us, but then I freak out about what that means about how few transracial families our town has . And then I remember we have twins, and the twin-mamas all know what it feels like to be conspicuous, whether we match our children or not. Also there's the fact that my children are spectacularly, mind-poppingly beautiful. But I digress.

She looked at Pink's hair and said 'are you going to braid it?' I said 'I've tried, but she's really tender-headed and she won't sit still'. And she shrugged said 'Oh, children never sit still for their mothers. You need to get someone else to do it'. And so I asked 'do you do children's braids here?' and she said 'yes, of course'. And I got all excited and asked 'do you think her hair is long enough?' and she felt it and stretched it out and said 'yes, it's long enough. And it is getting a bit dry. Braids will help it to feel less dry' and then we talked for a while about conditioning, and what I've tried (most of the jars in her shop, it feels like) and what else I can try (every remaining jar, it seems). Sometimes I wonder if they laugh at me after I leave - 'You'll never believe how much I sold her this time! That woman is so insecure she'll buy anything!' Sorry about that college fund, Pink and Blue, I rubbed it all into your heads.

She told me to wash Pink's hair and detangle it a day or two before, then bring her in. I talked to J that evening and agreed that he would look after Blue Saturday morning while I take Pink to the salon. I was super-excited, but I felt a bit sad, too. It's a rite of passage, her first toddler braids. No more baby girl for me.

So today I phoned and made the appointment. I was hoping to speak to the same woman but got someone else entirely. And as soon as I opened my mouth, I realised what a stupid, ridiculous, utterly dumb thing I was doing. I opened my mouth, and said "Hi, I'd like to book an appointment to get my daughter's hair braided" and as soon as I said it I realised Oh no. She can't actually see my kid. Because it's one thing to be a white woman pushing a brown toddler in a pram, and quite another to talk in my white-lady voice on the phone and expect the person at the other end to magically know that my daughter has spirally African curls. And yet another to be thinking oh noooooooo but not quite know how to say 'And by the way, she's black, although you have no doubt correctly deduced that I am not'

She asked 'will she sit still?' and I tried to relay the conversation I had with her colleague because honestly, I will bet you a million space dollars that Pink will NOT sit still and I want to be able to blame someone else for the fact that there will be a nearly-two-year-old screaming her head off in the middle of this person's shop. She sort of 'hmmpphhhh'ed at me and then asked 'do you want cornrows?' and I said 'no, box braids' because, hey, I do want box braids. And then she said very skeptically 'you mean you want one single plait?' and I said 'no, I want small braids over her head' and had a moment of thinking most of my hair knowledge comes from the US. Maybe box braids is not even the right term, in the UK. And it very, very soon became apparent that her skepticism wasn't because I used the wrong word but because she couldn't fathom how braids would ever stay in the slippy, straight hair of a daughter of a woman with a voice like mine. Which is fair enough, I suppose. I tried to explain that Pink's hair will hold braids because of the curls but I do'nt really think I made myself clear, I think she was under the impression that I am trying to do this to my daughter.

which I totally am not. She asked me if Pink had Afro curls and I said 'YES' and she said 'oh, she is mixed' and I said 'No, she is Ethiopian' and the whole time there were dryers or maybe jet engines going in the background and I was standing in a spare office at work shouting down the phone and wishing I had never gone into the shop for curl cream yesterday and we were just going to spend Saturday at the park, like usual.

She asked me what Pink's name was, and I told her, and she said 'her name is WHAT?' and I had to spell it, twice, and I felt like a fool for having given my daughter this beautiful African name that the womanfrom the salon clearly thinks is ridiculous. Her accent sounded maybe West African, and she didn't sound like her own first name was Annabel or Charlotte. The salon was not where I expected to get grief for an Ethiopian name that means Precious Jewel.

It was such a difficult conversation. I'm used to eye-rolling at my incompetence when it comes to hair, and mostly I think I take it in pretty good spirit. I understand that I'm incompetent. I do my research, but I haven't had a black childhood of my own. I haven't got any instinctive knowledge about when my daughter should begin to get her hair braided because I don't remember what age I was when I got my first braids because I've never had braids. (Except for that one time in Zimbabwe, and that was a mistake). I can spend as much time as I like reading I love My Hair with my daughter but it doesn't actually mean I have the faintest clue what I'm doing. I'm an adult in the white community, but in the black community, when it comes to hair, I don't feel like an adult. I feel like a child. I feel like a child because I make stupid mistakes, because I don't know basic things like what age my daughter should start to have her hair braided. I feel like a child because I am so utterly inexperienced. I feel like a child because I always, always have to ask other people for help.

This felt like a lot more than eye rolling, though, it felt like hostility, and I wasn't expecting it. And it can't be because she thinks I'm not caring for my children properly because she hasn't even seen my children. Everyone else I've met there has been really nice. I was really upset afterwards and phoned J and he said 'ummm, I washed their hair but I think I put too much product in because now it's sort of.... crispy' and I wailed in disbelief and he continued 'and I detangled it totally but I think the crispiness has done something awful and now her hair is all tangled again already'. And I almost cried because I already do not want to take my child to get her hair braided by a mean lady, and I'm freaked out about what might happen.

'What's the worst that can happen? asked J.

'Maybe Pink will just scream. And maybe they will tell us that they aren't doing a good job with her hair', I said. 'And maybe they will be right'.

And he said, 'So what? If it's true, we need to learn'. And then he said 'BLUE! NO!' because he was touching the cat's litter box again and then he had to get off the phone to make him stop. And he's right of course, but he's not the one who's actually going.

 So that's me booked up for tomorrow, then. One thing they never told us in pre-adoption training: Here is why pink parents of brown children should be living in diverse towns. Not just so we can foster their self-esteem, ensure they have positive same-race role models and send them to school with lots of other kids who look like them. No, fellow stupid white mamas, the real reason is this: when I get banned from the salon tomorrow for bringing in a wriggly girl with dry, tangled, crispy, wrong-length hair, there are still dozens of others where I can try again. 

And I will, I promise.

Just as soon as I recover from the post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Adoption Paradigms

When I was young, a crazy and wonderful uncle, my mother's younger brother, drove a car like this: 

And it had a sticker on the back that looked like this: 

And I thought that the whole combination was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Obviously I had no idea what the sticker meant. I knew it meant something cool, because my uncle was cool, and the car was hilariously cool, so the sticker must be cool, but I didn't know what that cool meaning actually was. So I asked my mother. 

"Mummy, what is a parra-digg-em?" I asked, my little eyes as round as saucers. 

"Why do you ask, O beloved daughter of mine?" she no doubt replied. 

"I want to know what it means to subvert the dominant parra-digg-em". 

And then she said "Oh" because she had seen the sticker too, of course. Then she answered "Well, a para-dime is like an idea or a way of thinking, and the dominant paradigm is the most common way of thinking, the way that everybody thinks. Subvert means to work against something, so subvert the dominant paradigm means to think differently from how everyone else is thinking and act to change it".  (I've said before that my mother is a teacher, right?)

Well, okay then. I was duly impressed. My mother ended up driving that car, sadly sans sticker, but I've thought about the sentiment off and on in the years since.  And I'm thinking about it again now, obviously. I've been reading back through a lot (and I mean a lot) of blogs over the last few days, (for reasons that are very sensible (trust me) but which I don't want to go into right now). Anyway. It's been particularly interesting to read a lot of adult adoptee and first mother blogs at the same time as a lot of adoptive parent blogs. What I'm noticing is just how unexpectedly similar we can all sound, while drawing totally different conclusions. I've been interested to find just how often different triad members say: 

Everybody thinks that adoption is like this, and they are wrong, and here's why. 

We are all trying to subvert the dominant paradigm. 

The problem is, we don't agree on what the dominant paradigm is. 

Speaking as a fertility-challenged adoptive parent, when I wonder 'how does the world view adoption?' my answer would probably be: everybody thinks adoption is nice, but that it's not as worthwhile or as wonderful as having 'your own kids'. 

This was especially true when we were at the beginning of our process - making decisions and telling people. These painful messages were what I felt like I was getting. It hurt. It was really, really important to me to speak out against that attitude, to write about it, and to do what I could to act to change it. (It still is). I had never talked to people very much about adoption before that point in my life. When people said "you're adopting? Oh, I'm sorry to hear that" it really shaped how I felt like the world viewed adoption, how the world viewed my family. Negative, negative, negative. Comments like that helped to build my view of the dominant paradigm. 

But this is obviously not the dominant paradigm that many adult adoptees (and first mothers) see. 

If I was going to summarise the dominant paradigm, the 'everybody thinks'  that I think is often operating on the other side of the triad fence, it would be this: everybody thinks adoption is really great and there is no pain involved and adoptees should be happy and grateful and shut up. 

And thinking about me, thinking about my own life experience, thinking about what I have experienced, that doesn't feel like the dominant paradigm to me. And honestly - that's why I sometimes get really frustrated reading adult adoptee blogs. Not for the reason that is sometimes assumed - because I want to deny adoption loss - believe me, I'm fully convinced of the reality and importance of adoption loss.  Nope - it's because I disagree about what the assumptions are about what everybody thinks. Because honestly, I don't think any of those things. And anyway, I know what everybody thinks, everybody thinks adoption is nice, but that it's not as worthwhile or as wonderful as having 'your own kids'.  Right? Right? 

And then I think about my kids, as they grow up. I really didn't think very much about adoption before I decided to do it. My children are going to live with adoption every day of their lives. And we're in different positions, so we will get different messages. I'm the parent, so people relate to me as someone who might have had other, biological, children, and didn't. That affects what they say to me about adoption. But my children are going to get their first, and by far their most dominant, adoption messages from us, from me and J. My children will grow up hearing how much we love them and even if we don't do the happy-shiny-look-there's-a-unicorn version of adoption (which we won't) they are still going to get the overwhelming impression that we are glad we adopted them (because we are) and that we think their adoption was, on balance, a good thing (because we do).  (For them, in their specific situation. Not saying adoption is always good, so please don't hear that). Positive, positive, positive. 

And my children are going to get a very different set of messages about adoption from the wider world than I do. Honestly? Most of the time, nobody is talking or caring about adoption. Which is a separate issue. But when they do talk about it, if some people feel a bit sorry for me because I don't have bio kids (which is stupid), an equal number of people will probably feel like my kids should be grateful because they get to grow up in the West (which is equally stupid). These are two equally ill-informed messages about adoption being sent. Two different ways to build up what I see, what they see, as the dominant paradigm. The one I get is a message telling me adoption is bad, the one my kids get is telling them adoption is good. 

Equal ignorance about the issues, totally different messages. I guess that is one of the reasons why adoptees experience as much dissonance reading AP blogs as we do, the other way around, even when everyone is well intentioned.  They see that we are operating under an assumption of everybody thinks adoption is nice, but that it's not as worthwhile or as wonderful as having 'your own kids' and want to spew milk out of their collective noses. Seriously? You people think THAT is the dominant paradigm? 

But we're all getting different messages. So when I say everybody thinks adoption is nice, but that it's not as worthwhile or as wonderful as having 'your own kids' please believe that I really experience this, in my specific situation as an adoptive parent. 

And if you say: everybody thinks adoption is really great and there is no pain involved and adoptees should be happy and grateful and shut up, I will believe that you experience this, too. 

I think that it would be a good thing if all members of the triad were able to remember that we are all getting a different set of messages from the world. We all get a different set of messages about what everybody thinks. I can't know what it's like growing up with parents who always talk about my adoption as a wonderful, lucky thing, because that hasn't happened to me.  I can't know what messages I would find most painful as a first mother because I haven't been there, either. You can't know what messages it sends when people look at your beloved children and feel a little bit sorry for you, if that hasn't happened to you. 

So many different messages. There really is no one dominant paradigm in adoption. And that is its own lesson, I think. We probably need to be careful - all of us - about drawing conclusions about majority opinion from the minority who make our hackles rise. Most people are not stupid. Most people are not unkind. Talking to myself most of all, here. And where possible we should probably try to keep it in the first person, speaking for ourselves, using 'feeling words', rather than deciding what other people think. "I feel like everybody thinks the following terribly offensive thing" is probably an improvement on the same sentence without those first three words.  (One important fact I've learned recently in arguments  discussions with my husband is that if I put the words "I feel like" in front of my argument, I cannot be wrong. It's awesome. Try it). 

But in the meantime: 

'adoption is nice, but that it's not as worthwhile or as wonderful as having 'your own kids'  & 

'adoption is really great and there is no pain involved and adoptees should be happy and grateful and shut up'

I think both of those paradigms are worth subverting. Where people do think either of those things, or anything else that we know to be wrong or unkind or unhelpful, we should act for change. 

So I guess we should all keep on writing.  Back to your keyboards, girls. 

Vanity (and some other things)

People left some really thought-provoking comments about beauty*.  It seems the main reason people are reluctant to tell girls they are beautiful is because they don't want to encourage vanity. With good reason, I suppose - there's nothing much less fun than being around a vain woman, unless it's being around a vain man. People who are wrapped up in their own good looks are very little fun - probably all of us know someone like that. But I think there's a big difference between being secure and being vain. In my view, the difference is this: a woman who is happy about the way she looks, but not vain, is also able to be glad when someone else looks good. A vain woman has to be the most beautiful. 

One of the most beautiful people I have ever met is also the most generous with her praise of other women. I knew her for a while before I realised this. She would tell me about people who she knew, and would always preface descriptions with 'oh, Shirley (or Magda or Katie or whoever) is so beautiful'. And for a while, I just thought that she happened to only have really good looking friends. And then I met most of these girls, and they looked just like you or me. But Bethan looks at all of these ordinary women and genuinely sees beauty. She has waist-length blonde hair, great legs, blue eyes and a killer smile and if anybody has reason to be vain, it would be her. I'm sure she knows she is good looking (I mean, the girl has a mirror) but she wears it lightly.  She can see her own beauty, but it doesn't stop her seeing the beauty of other women too. It's not a competition, for her. 

I think what I'm saying is that want my daughter to grow up to be like Bethan. Happy in her own gorgeousness, but equally happy to see gorgeousness in others. Anybody got any ideas on how to make that happen? 

******

Speaking of vanity (well, it's sister vice of pride) can I tell you something I'm really really proud of? (No! It's not my collection of useless academic qualifications, which I swear I must have mentioned here before but it seemed to surprise people so maybe not. Anyway, now I feel awkward about it). Last week I worked out how to install social networking buttons on my posts with the icons of my choice. (There are some really cool icons out there). I'm really not at all sure anybody wants them, but in the end it was a fight to the death between me and the html (and I really don't know anything about html) and by golly I won. I think. I don't really use social networking. So, with that confidence-inspiring background, does anybody else want to know how to do it? If so, let me know soon and I'll write a how-to before it all falls out of my head. 

******

Also speaking of proud (sort of) by Jingo I felt proud of my adopted country on Friday. A wedding? A very beautiful dress? A free day off? Which is then spent guilt-free in front of someone else's television, eating cupcakes? What's not to like? I loved the whole thing. 

We've just got back from being away for Royal Wedding / May Day long weekend, and now normal life starts again tomorrow. It's the end of about 15 days of off-on holidays for us. That, I do not like. 

(Although if I'm totally, totally honest - I've missed the computer). 

******

*Not from this lady, however. She claims she had a "brilliant, insightful, earth-shattering" comment which blogger ate. Do we believe it? You be the jury.  

Risen

Jerusalem, about AD 30. 

They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Two rebels were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” In the same way the rebels who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.” Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. The rest said, “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to save him.” And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”

Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.

As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus’ body, and Pilate ordered that it be given to him. Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there opposite the tomb.

The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.”

“Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

Matthew 27:33-28:8 

Happy Easter, everybody. 

Beauty

The older I get the more convinced I am that every woman, every girl, is beautiful. And I'm not talking about that inner beauty nonsense, I mean good old-fashioned external beauty, the type you can see in the mirror. Most of us aren't a size four, many of us don't have perfect skin or an expensive haircut, but all of us look good when we make an effort, all of us have something about us that makes us beautiful. I am an average-looking woman, but that's okay because I'm coming to realise that average is quite beautiful enough.

I did not always know this. When I was growing up, I did not feel beautiful. My parents didn't say I was beautiful; I'm not sure they realised it was important. My mother knew enough from her own childhood not to actively criticise her daughters' features in the way her parents had done to her, and I'm grateful for that. I like to think we're improving with every generation; at this rate I expect Pink will be entering her daughter in pageants. But I think I needed more than just not being criticised. Like every teenager, I stared in the mirror and had no idea whether what I saw was beauty or horror. Some days I was convinced it was one, other days, the other. My face was never going to launch a thousand ships, but I had nice hair and I don't think it would have been too much of a stretch to find something to compliment. Occasionally my mother would look at my colouring and sigh and say ' I do so envy you that you can wear beige. I cannot wear beige at all'. And she was right - she couldn't - and it was the nineties so being able to look good in beige was no small advantage. But I craved more. Once, in desperation, I asked my mother whether I was pretty and she paused and said 'you are quite nice-looking. Now, your sister is very pretty' and you'd probably think that would leave a bigger scar than it does. Thing is - it was true. She got the blue eyes, you see.

But now I have a daughter of my own, and I realise just how fiercely I want her to know that she is beautiful, always, all her life. I have a degree and a PhD in engineering. I do not have a Disney Princess view of a woman's role. I support education for women, and equal pay for equal work, and the right for all of us to do whatever we want to with our lives without being held back by anybody's expectations of what a woman can or should do. I also support being a nice person, nurturing inner character, and not confusing a person's looks with a person's worth. But I think every woman does want to be beautiful, and I don't want her to grow up wondering.

When I was sixteen, for the first time a boy wrote me a letter and told me that he thought I was pretty. If I could go back in time, I would tell my former self not to take this too seriously, that it was not destiny, that sixteen year old boys are attracted to anything with a pulse. But at the time, I honestly thought that this meant we were going to be together forever. I began to make plans for our future married life. I really wish I was exaggerating, but I am not. For the first time in my life I felt beautiful, and that gave him far more power over me than it should have. Fortunately for me - although it did not feel fortunate at the time - he did not really want that power and he did not really want me. But I would have moved heaven and earth for this boy, if he had asked me to. And when it became clear that I expected more of this relationship than he did, it was all I could do not to shout at him but you told me I was pretty! Doesn't that mean anything? Because of course it doesn't. But I didn't know that at the time.

And so, my daughter. What is it going to mean for me, a white mother, to raise a black daughter to see herself as beautiful? Sometimes I wonder if the reason us white folk have been so eager to embrace Ethiopian adoption is because Habesha beauty is.... how can I say this? Maybe this is what I mean: typical Habesha beauty is easy for Europeans to relate to. High cheekbones, slim noses and oval faces? We get that. Loose, long curls? Ditto. It is not a big leap to look at Habesha women and see beauty that we recognise, beauty that reminds us of, well, us. A coffee-coloured, slimmer, taller, more elegant version of us. I'm not saying this preference for this type of Ethiopian beauty over other African beauty is a good thing, by the way, I'm just noticing that it's there.

My daughter does not fit this mould. She has a tiny little button nose, and chubby cheeks rather than sharp cheekbones. She has a high, prominent forehead. She has tightly spiralled curls. She looks nothing like Liya Kebede. And she is beautiful, so beautiful.

When I first met the babies, they seemed so unknown to me. They didn't have my hair or my eyes or my nose. I did not recognise them. Now I know every fold of their skin, every expression of their face, every curl of their hair. It's a strange thing, learning to love a beauty that is not your own, and a beauty that is, if I am honest, different from the beauty I expected. It's intoxicating, too. I know every mother thinks their child is the most beautiful creature the world has ever seen, but my daughter? Honestly, you should see my daughter.

It startles me when I remember that not everybody sees my girl this way. Everywhere we go, people compliment her little toddler curls. But several people have sighed and said 'oh, she's going to hate that hair when she's a teenager'. And I am reminded that not everyone sees her spirals and sees beauty. Cuteness, maybe, but not beauty. It takes my breath away that people say this out loud, in front of her. I usually snap something like 'I hope she always knows her hair is very beautiful' and think remind me to keep my daughter away from your son.

Right now, she's just a toddler and beauty usually means clean clothes and a mostly-clean face. I know I have a lot more work to do on how to nurture her awareness of herself as a black woman as she grows. I see the specialist hair relaxers for children on the shelf at the supermarket and swear never. But then I remember that I don't really know what it's like to have this hair on my own head. I see how beautiful her curls are, just the way they are, but one day she may well wish they were different. I was reading the comments on this totally fantastic post and realised that I shouldn't be tempted to use how she feels about her natural curls as a barometer of my own success as a transracial parent. They are her curls, after all, they are not about me. So I guess she gets to decide. Well, maybe when she's eighteen.

Much, much more work to do. In the meantime, I'm going to tell her how lovely she is until she squirms with embarrassment. And make sure her father says it too, over and over again. I remember reading somewhere that daughters take a big chunk of their self-image from what their father says about them, and I can easily believe that it is true. My parents really did a great job, no complaints, but I don't remember my father ever even mentioning what I looked like. He could probably pick me out of a police line-up, but I think that's as much notice as he took. I just don't think it was important to him. But I want Pink to know that there are always at least two people in this world who look at her and see beauty. Not just because of who she is on the inside, but because of her unique combination of skin and bones and flesh and hair that make her beautiful to look at, too. When she is sixteen a boy tells her that she's pretty, I don't want her reacting like I did. I want her to say Thank you. But then I hope she opens her lovely eyes a little bit wider, looks at him again, grins and say I already knew.

Work / Life

On Friday, I had a really bad meeting at work. Well, bad for me. I'd done some work for a senior member of staff, and he loved it, which was great. Unfortunately, he loved it so much that he wants to roll it out further, which means it has to be handed over to someone else. Because I'm part time. And I felt really frustrated that I wouldn't get to complete the project I had spent so long working on.

Work is a funny old thing. I'm not one of these crazy lucky people who has a job they adore, a job they would do for free, but when I try to think of something I'd rather get paid for, I can't. (Except maybe hot air balloon attendant. And I'm not entirely sure that's really a job). And the less I'm there, the more I think about how getting good feedback for doing my job well is a fantastic feeling. Work, when it's all working, is an amazing adrenaline rush. Pouring myself into a project, thinking it's never going to get done, then finding a solution and suddenly seeing it all come together? Magic. Pure magic.

There are big downsides, of course. Those great days come along with a lot of bad days, a lot of frustration, a lot of, well, work. I'm not doing a grass-is-greener thing here about working full-time, I know how difficult it is to get up every morning and go to the office, again, then again, then again. But it turns out that not being there every day really does make a difference to how well I can do my job. I'm less committed; I have to be, unless I want to be working unpaid on my days off, a toddler under each arm, typing on our tiny netbook with my nose. So I can't promise to get something done by tomorrow, because I'm not going to be there tomorrow. It used to be the case that when something needed doing, if it was my kind of thing, people would come to me. But then I was off for a year, and now I'm hardly ever there, and instead I sit in the corner and most of the excitement passes me by.

Which means I'm not the go-to girl anymore. There's a new go-to girl now. This stings*.

A few people have told me that working part time is the perfect solution. These are not usually people who have done it. At the moment, I feel like working part time gives me an unparalleled opportunity to fail at two jobs simultaneously. Sure, I get to do two things, but it's not very satisfying to do two things badly.

I guess I could go back full time, but that's really not what I want. And yes, I know we can only make this choice because we are fortunate. (Although from another perspective you could replace 'fortunate' in that previous sentence with 'willing to stay in a small house'). It's not what I want because I really, really do value all the quantity time that I am able to spend with Pink and Blue.

Sometimes it's easy to talk about making sacrifices for our children but in the same breath we talk as if what we're missing out on isn't that important, actually. This is one of the reasons I'm not keen on talking about motherhood as The Most Important Job In The World®. This implies that sacrificing all that other stuff, like having a job where people take you seriously and you get to flex your brain and hey, they pay you, is just a nothing, a cipher. It's not important, so it's doesn't really matter if you make that sacrifice.

But the thing about making sacrifices is: you have to give something up. And that only matters if the thing matters. I'm really realising that making compromises at work for the sake of family life is no small deal. Accepting that I'm only going to be able to tread water in my job for the next few years is hard. J is having similar difficulties.

And then I went home after work and J was there, and the babies were freshly washed and had just eaten their dinner. We decided to go for an evening trip to the park, since it was still warm and sunny. I took off my work shoes and massaged my sore feet, while J put on some music and danced around the living room with Pink. Low evening sunlight streamed through the window, hitting her curls and lighting them up like a corona. Then we went to the park and Blue walked all the way home, even though it's a third of a mile. He's getting so big, and finally he's worked out how to use the momentum in his little-boy body so that his steps flow and he has lost the plodding gait of an early toddler. He was so pleased with himself. By the time we were at the end of our street, he was so tired that he was weaving like a drunk man. I picked him up and carried him the rest of the way, inhaling the smell of his sun-warmed skin. And I didn't wish that I had made my life's choices any differently.

But I still felt sad about work.

[Update, August : I've just linked this over at Tortoise Mum's 'Opportunity Cost' blog hop].

*Can I please say, for the record, that the new go-to girl happens to be one of my favourite people on the planet. Just in case you ever read this, H, you know I love you, right?

Monday Movies

The stupid no-real-blogging-before-finishing-chapters promise I made to J has officially come back to bite me in the butt. Since I'm still beating my head against a brick wall working on the same chapter I started about a fortnight ago, this blog is strictly a no-musing zone today. So less talking, more movies!

Welcome to my house, which my children seem to think is basically a theme park called ToddlerWorld. Star attraction? The world's most patient cat, guarded by an attendant who sounds reeeeeally grumpy. (Is it just me or do all of you find that listening to your own voice on video makes your spine want to dissolve with horror?) Like all theme parks, someone is wearing a silly hat that she will later regret.

Even the accommodation has entertainment. If you know this song, you know that the actions for the first half are supposed to be head in hands, quietly pretending to sleep. But our two little bunnies love this song SO MUCH that they just can't keep the hopping in until the second half starts.



While I was uploading these, I found that I never worked out how to got around to uploading videos during our first six months or so home. So there was a big backlog. These were the two that brought back the strongest memories.

Splashing the baby girl. This used to be her favourite, favourite thing.



(And just for comparison - here's seven seconds of one taken this week in the exact same spot. I find it hard to believe this is the same child, only a year later).



Can't really think of any way to explain this one. Taken during our first two weeks or so home. We were encouraged to help them move their limbs. It was winter. I was inside the house a lot, and we had banned visitors for the first month.

I think what I'm maybe trying to say is that I was just the teeeeeensiest bit bored.

Oh, and their father got them dressed that day.



And I have clearly not got a shimmering career in front of me as a choreographer.

Why Motherhood Is Like A Diet

I love to cook and I love to bake and I love to buy cookbooks and most of all I love to eat. Unfortunately, this has consequences. In 2008 I had to admit that my weight was creeping up and I decided to diet. It worked, I forgot about it, all was good. Until recently, when my jeans started getting tight again and I thought how can this be happening to me? I honestly had no idea. And then one day I was feeding the children their lunch and I realised that I had eaten all of their crusts. And they have a lot of crusts. And then I realised that the night before, I ate a good few mouthfuls of their dinner to check it had cooled down enough for them. And the night before, the same thing. And again the night before that. What's going on? I asked myself. How did I become this person? How did I become the woman who thinks that second-hand bread is a good snack? Do I really have that little self-respect?

Apparently so. For while I was standing there asking myself this question, I grabbed a half-eaten slice of Blue's discarded pear and unconsciously ate that, too, because it was easier than walking across the room and putting it in the bin.

I guess that explains the squeezy jeans, then. And I'm horrified at myself. It's one thing to get overly Rubenesque on loving good food too much, but quite another to do so on table scraps, on fruit that has already been chewed once and is now covered in breadcrumbs from the highchair tray. And so I've begun to think about dieting again. And thinking about this has made me realise how similar it is to what I've been doing for the last year and a half. These are the ways that I think motherhood is like going on a diet:

It's all about saying no

When I was dieting, I felt like I spent my life saying no. Bad: no to cake. Worse: no to chocolate. Unbearable: no to chips. Unimaginable: no to wine. They became occasional treats, and I think that was probably the time in my life when I developed my extreme aversion to the word 'treat'. It's so mealy-mouthed. I hate the way it suggests pleasure carefully meted out. I hate the way it suggests that I should be pathetically grateful for whatever the 'treat' is, like a peasant being granted a favour by a king. I don't want to see wine as a treat. I want it to flow through my life like a rich ruby river, flowing over the chocolate and the cake and the chips that surround me in abundance. But that way lies heart disease, so I learned to say 'no'. I learned to count and ration and measure and weigh and it wasn't the end of the world.

What does sometimes feel like the end of the world, to me, is all the times I have to say no because I am the mother. No to them: no hitting, no scratching, no biting, no tantrums, no standing up on the sofa, no touching the diaper genie. No to other people: no, we can't come over because it's nap time. No, I can't take on another commitment because right now I'm barely keeping my head above water and my children clean. No, we can't travel that far in a day because the children are awful at being in the car. No, we can't come over for dinner because we have nobody to watch them unless we call in a huge favour. No, no, no. No to being the cool and competent mother I always hoped to be: No time to do all that I want to. No chance to recover from one tiny crisis before the next one hits. No way to keep one child happy for any length of time without upsetting the other. And of course: no to myself. Every day, trying to mother them well calls for a thousand tiny sacrifices, of which my three most painful are always no to sleeping, no to reading, no to writing. I feel like my life is spent saying no. That is:

Except when it's more important to say yes

I found that the hardest times, dieting, are when the food is out of my control. I might know that I have seven points left for the day, but if I am eating at someone else's house, they don't know that, and they also don't care. I had times when I was almost weeping because I had been so good - so good - and then I felt like all my efforts for the day (or in extreme cases, the week) were derailed by someone else's menu. Sometimes, the buttery creamy delicousness tasted like ashes in my mouth because I was only thinking oh nooooo, the caaaaaaloriiiiiiies! And yet, at those times, I ended up deciding that it was absolutely worth it to eat up, be happy, say thank you and ask for seconds. Food is how we show love, so it stands to reason it's how we receive love, too, and refusing to receive the buttery creamy love is a stunningly effective way to passive-aggressively hurt the hostess' feelings. If I go to someone's house and make a face like I'm sucking a lemon when they bring out dessert, then diet or no diet I'm not being a very good friend.

If it's not possible to diet and be polite at the same time, if it's not possible to diet and be a good friend at the same time, then the diet is going to have to take a hit. Manners are more important than my jeans size. Friendships are more important than getting thin as quickly as possible. And as long as I'm not using the friendships as an excuse (meeting someone for coffee doesn't mean I have to order a venti gingerbread latte with whipped cream, much as I wish it did, Starbucks does have other options) I need to prioritise people over food control.

I think the same principle applies to parenting, to baby control. Mothering is stonkingly hard work, and requires so much of me that it's easy for me to forget that I have other responsibilities too, as a friend, as a wife, as a human being. I remember very well how it felt to be on the receiving end of maternal de-prioritisation, when my friends had kids before me. I know I don't get the balance anywhere near right, but I'm trying to remember that sometimes other people's needs have to come before my children's immediate needs, or their routine. Sometimes a friend needs me more than my children do, and I need to get in the car even though it isn't the best thing for them. I don't do this enough. I'm working on it. The world does not revolve around my children, no matter how much I love them. They need to know that they are unutterably precious to me, but they are not the centre of the universe. I struggle and fail to get this balance right. My brain hurts. My body is tired. And so:

Some days, I don't really feel like doing it

No, really. Too much effort. For both categories. And yet:

It's such a good problem to have

When the babies were tiny, we were once stuck for an hour or so without formula. I can't remember why it happened, but I will never ever forget what it felt like to look at my babies and know that I couldn't give them the food they were screaming for. I knew it was temporary, but it tore my heart in half. For too many mothers and fathers across the world, this is not a temporary problem. Too many mothers and fathers know this reality daily. For them, I suspect give us this day our daily bread is prayed with more fervour than I can muster. I know this, I've seen this sort of suffering with my own eyes, and yet I feel sorry for myself because I have too much food to feed myself and my children? I feel sorry for myself because I get too many calories in a day? I feel sorry for myself because oh, it's so hard to say no to the butter and the cream and the delicious delicious pistachio macarons? Bored, with three hours until dinner, it is hard to say no. But honestly, this is such a good problem to have.

And so it is with motherhood. I know that there are so many women who are still waiting for this to become a reality, whether they are waiting for their first child to come home, or their second, or their seventh. Right now, I'm particularly thinking of those of you who are waiting for court or embassy or travel - those of you who are in that almost-but-not-yet stage of motherhood which is more painful than I can describe, which felt, when it was happening to me, more painful than I could bear. And I am painfully aware of the other mothers, too, the women who have had a child, but said goodbye. And I am reminded of how much I have been given. I longed for these children for so long, and here they are, safe and well and happy and in my arms. Right now, they are sleeping in their cots upstairs, with their heads buried in their blankets and their bottoms pointing heavenward and I could not be more thankful that they are there, that they are mine.

This job - some days it feels like too much. But I stroke their curly heads and snuggle their warm little bodies and watch them learn to say duck and car and cat and I know with all my heart that this too-much-ness is such a good problem to have. Of all the problems in the world, I am grateful to have this one.

Here Comes The Sun

On behalf of SAD suffers all over the Northern Hemisphere. And I don't care if you are at work, you've really got to play the music.


Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun,


and I say it's all right

Little darling

it's been a long cold lonely winter

Little darling

it feels like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun

here comes the sun

and I say it's all right


Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces


Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here


Here comes the sun, here comes the sun

and I say it's all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...


Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting

Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say, it's alright


here comes the sun, here comes the sun,

and I say it's all right

It's all right

In Which I Ask You All A Question

I always expected to have at least three kids. So did J. (He always said four, minimum). And then we actually acquired some children, and suddenly two began to feel like a WHOLE LOT OF KID. For a year or so, the idea of having any more never really crossed my mind. But suddenly, it is starting to. When people ask the question any more planned? I've stopped laughing in their faces and started saying hmmmmm, we don't quite know.

Because honestly, we don't. We don't feel like this is the right time for #3 (or, who knows, #3 and #4) but it is starting to feel like the right time to start thinking about it. Know what I mean? And we really haven't thought about it yet. We've talked about it for probably less than ten minutes, all together, over the course of about three short conversations. So right now, I have no opinions and no prejudices and that's why I'm asking for your opinions.

Because we have one important complicating factor. Four years ago, we decided that because of my messed-up DNA, pregnancy wasn't the right choice for us. But in the meantime, IVF techniques have been developed that could be game-changers. (we have ethical reservations about some of the IVF techniques that could have helped in the past - these newer techniques address those concerns. Not going to say any more about that because my total ignorance of all matters reproductive would VERY quickly become apparent).

The weird thing (for me) is just how totally neutral I feel about pregnancy at the moment. While we were waiting to adopt Pink and Blue, I grieved and grieved and grieved about all that I felt like we were missing out on. I grieved the specific losses we faced, but I also grieved the lost opportunity to be normal, to have a family that nobody would feel the need to comment on. And I guess that is one of the big differences from this perspective - no matter how we form our family from here on in, we're already on an unusual path. No number of pregnancies would ever get us our Normal back. Another big difference, of course, is that I'm pretty dang pleased with how our first go at being not-normal has worked out.

And that brings me to my biggest fear about pregnancy, if IVF was successful. It's not the thoroughly unpleasant side effects (the women in my family tend to have horrible pregnancies) and it's not the bit at the end, with all the screaming. No, what I fear most is that if we announced a pregnancy people would burst into tears and hug me tightly and say 'oh, I'm just so, so, so happy for you!' and tell me that they have been praying that this would happen.

This might sound stupid (what? You'd be annoyed because people would be happy for you?) if you haven't become a parent for the first time by adoption. But those of us who have probably all have our own stories about the people who take us aside and tell us their stories about how you never know what will happen! and how they knew someone who adopted, and then after they adopted, they finally had one of their own! I've had one person tell me, with a straight face, that this is definitely going to happen to me, because that is what always happens. I came within a micron of saying to that woman wow, even though I'm on the Pill? That really WOULD be a miracle!

Even J, who turns not-taking-things-personally into an Olympic sport, has noticed this attitude and finds it utterly creepy. There's a thinly veiled not even slightly veiled message from some people that a bio baby would be the right and proper happy ending to our story. Nevermind that they really have no clue what the start of our story was. If we said guess what, we're adopting again! to people, many would be pleased, but I fear that for some, a pregnancy would be the reason to get out the champagne. If people said oh, how INCREDIBLE! I think I would hear finally, the real thing! and its corollory, those twins of yours were just practice babies, a means to an end.

(You are not a means to an end for me, babies).

And then I fear that I would punch one of those people in the mouth and get arrested and then I would have to spend my entire pregnancy in jail. So yeah, that is my biggest pregnancy fear.

Okay, srsly. I guess I had thought that if we had any more kids, it would be via adoption. But suddenly I'm starting to think hmmmmm, it doesn't HAVE to be, necessarily. I absolutely know that IVF doesn't guarantee pregnancy, but it's an option that was never on the table before.

And bringing this option to the table makes me ask all kinds of questions. I always assumed that all of our kids would be adopted, and that they would probably all be brown. What would it mean to Pink and Blue if we gave them a white, non-adopted brother or sister? Ummmm, adopted adults, what do you think? Opinions, parents with mixed families? I've really got no clue because I always assumed all of that stuff would never apply to our family. Adoption is what I'm used to. It feels normal to me, and I don't like change. Adopting again would in some ways be our easiest plan. But adoption is such a complicated issue - three separate people have flagged up this report over the last few days and what can I say? It's eye-watering stuff. (Start at p41 - thanks to Tafel for that pointer). I'm much, much more aware than I was a few years ago of the risks in international adoption, and I'm not talking about developmental delays from institutional care. I don't think it's a cut-and-dried 'no, we shouldn't', but I certainly don't think it's a cut-and-dried 'yes' either. There are no easy answers here. It's not simple.

If we do adopt from Ethiopia again, there's the question of infant or slightly older child. If we did want to adopt, say, a preschooler, we would probably have to get cracking because we would need to start again with being assessed, which would probably take about a year, and I wouldn't want too small an age gap between that child and Pink and Blue. (2009 is already quite crowded enough as a birth year in our family). And if we adopted another infant, I wouldn't want the gap to get too big. Would I? I don't know, that's why I'm asking. What should I be thinking about? School me.

And how about foster-adopt? I found out from our social services department that they ask people to promise that if they start a family by adoption, they won't have any birth children. What's THAT all about? It sounded to me (because the conversation was a bit longer than the one line I've given) like they are saying that it's not possible to love an adopted child as much a a birth child, so you can't have a bio kid after an adopted kid because you'll reject the adopted kid once you find out what REAL love feels like. Ummmmm... do I want to get involved with a social services department who think like that?

IVF (one or two rounds) would be cheaper than adoption.
J thinks that pregnancy is a bit gross.
I feel like some kind of traitor for even thinking about the possibility of pregnancy.
I know that's ridiculous.
I'm confused.

And so I ask this question to all of you - what would YOU do, if you were in our shoes? What should we be thinking about, rather than worrying about prison uniforms? As you can tell, I've got no idea. You won't offend me by blowing my favourite idea out of the water, because I don't have a favourite idea. You can go anonymous on this one if you have strong opinions and don't want me getting cranky at you. If you've decided to adopt after bio kids, or had bio kids after adopting, or just had more than one kid - how did YOU decide? On the other hand, how did you decide not to have any more? Extreeeeeemely curious, here.

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Just one more tiny thing - I've had a new rule imposed (by J) that I'm only allowed to blog (or comment) after I've written drafts of new chapters for this supposed book. I have agreed to this. I have not told him how short the chapters are. But it will definitely slow me down - I'm expecting my blogging speed to go from 'tortoise' to 'sloth'.
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