Life after adoption

On Friday evening I was returning home from work with a bag full of Chinese food sitting next to me in the car.  I was feeling pretty awesome and glad that it was Friday.  As I approached my street, and my mailbox more specifically, I had the strangest thought: I will never live a life when adoption isn't part of my memories, thoughts, hopes, and history.  Even after my children come home, they will be a daily reminder of adoption and what it has done for our family.  As I head to the store with my two silky black haired children, we will always invite stares, comments and conversations.  I had a few minutes in between the Chinese restaurant and my mailbox that my mind was blissfully not on adoption.  Blissfully, I say because I have been consumed with it of late.  I won't even tell you how many hours a day I am on the computer, blogging to one of several blogs, responding to emails, replying to group messages and checking out everyone else's progress on their blogs. 

I wake up and my first thought goes to my children--are they breathing the same air I am yet or are they still blissfully ignorant of the how hard life can be as they snuggle in their birth mother's womb?  Of my China girl I wonder, has she been conceived yet?  What of her parents?  Are the birth parents for my children happy to be pregnant or are they saddened over knowing what comes next? 

I wonder how my children will face adoption.  I spent yesterday reading my Adoptive Families magazine cover-to-cover and I read the story of an adult adoptee and what her experience was like.  Yesterday I came across the blog of a young woman of 24 who was born in Korea, but raised an American Jew.  She was so angry by what her birth mother had done and upset with her adoptive family for taking her from her homeland.  I've read stories of grown adoptees that got tired of their parents forcing them to learn their native language and go to culture camps or do other things that might make their history more real to them.  Others complain that their parents did not do enough--that their history was ignored. 

I can't recreate their culture in America--it's impossible.  It would essentially be creating a third space--neither all American nor all Chinese or Vietnamese--creating something that doesn't exist in either sphere.  I do plan on celebrating all their holidays--I especially love Tet and Chinese New Year!  I plan on always including foods from their homeland at our table and I imagine that every Thanksgiving we will be eating pho and dim sum along with turkey and stuffing.  I am more fortunate than most since we have a large Asian population and several Asian grocery stores that carry the spices, vegetables and other delicacies of their homelands.  I will do what I can, but will it be enough?  And when is my stupid fingerprint appointment invite going to arrive????  I think we should start taking bets.