Family

I am not naive and I doubt anyone would say I am obtund.

At the beginning of each day my son is my son. He is not my flesh nor my blood, but my feelings for him are not directed by blood or biology. He is my son. I live every day aware, painfully aware at times, that he was born of another woman’s body. I wish I could have given birth to him, taken credit for his beauty, his brains and his wit. I wish I could have made it easier, but then we wouldn’t be the people we have become. It seems strange to me at times when I remember that I never watched him slip out of my body, never saw my body grow and change. My heart has changed though. My love and my intensity has changed.

My son doesn’t yet understand adoption. I talk about Vietnam and the beautiful woman who carried him below her heart for nine months.

For now my son is blissfully ignorant that “mommy” in our family has more than one meaning. For now he doesn’t have to question what “mommy” means to him. At the end of today and the beginning of tomorrow we are simply mommy and babe. Some days I wish people saw the same thing I see—a family. Not an adoptive family. Not a single mom. Not an adopted child. A family. No more questions. No more nosy looks. Just us. A mother and her son. Family.

‘night night

A few weeks ago Duc had the stomach flu. The first night he vomited in his sleep and never cried out. It freaked me out so bad that the next night I insisted that I needed to see him all night. Since I don’t go to bed at 8 pm I put him on the couch so I could watch him. I really enjoyed having him so close. I enjoyed watching him sleep and I discovered he talks in his sleep. The most frequent word? Mommy. The rest were nee-nee (the name he gave his pacifier), Saige and Si (his cousins).

God, how I love this boy.

Enigma

Two years ago today I saw my son’s face for the first time. I remember everything about that day. I remember the dragonfly socks—part of a matching pair for us—that I wore in memory of my grandma. I remember working in the “command center” while supporting a new application implementation at work. I remember the call. And the tears. I remember calling my mother and the sound of the gravel gritting under her feet as she sprinted for the car. I remember feeling absolutely enamored and completely confused.

My son is, in some ways, as much as an enigma today as he was the first time I saw him. I was expecting a scrawny, sickly, pale, unhappy child. What I saw was a chubby baby with the most beautiful golden brown skin that I had ever laid my eyes on. In one of his first photos I saw a happy giggling baby, but in subsequent photos I saw something else. A child that looked somewhat desperate, his eyes searching for something he couldn’t verbalize. At the time I looked past all that not seeing what I didn’t yet understand. Three and a half months later I walked into his orphanage, picked him up and both of our lives changed. Instead of crying he held my face with both of his hands, smiled and held my stare as I cried. As the days turned to months I realized that he was looking for a family. The before and after photos on the mantle paint a different picture of his life in an orphanage.

I know my son better than anyone else alive. I know his favorite color (yellow), I know that nothing in life makes him as happy as Opa & Oma, race cars, helicopters and ambulances. I know the expression he makes when he feels unsure about someone that approaches us. I know how ornery he is and what words will make him laugh until he throws his head back and giggles a high pitch little giggle that only little children can do.

Yet I find myself looking at him and aching for all the things I don’t know. For the questions I have and the questions that he will someday have. We often get comments on how similar we are—same evil giggle, same infectious belly laugh. We are both ornery. We have the same horrific cowlicks and the same strange hereditary ear birth defect (until the international doctor told me it was a birth defect I just always thought of it as a family trait—and don’t bother comparing our ears in this picture because you can’t see it). People can say all those things and more, but I know those things belong to the faces of two people I have never met.

My birthday was this week. My friends and family know the worst thing they can tell me is “I know what you are getting for your birthday!”. It makes me crazy, the unknowing. Even if it is a good thing it still makes me crazy. And every once in a while I feel that same crazy when I look at my son. I hate the not knowing.

And because I can’t leave you without something fun, check out this video. I almost blew lemonade out my nose when it came on the TV. This is so Duc.