Dear Diary,
Shouldn't voice-overs be considered an utterly passé gimmick, 11 years after the debut of "Sex and the City"? Sure, they're great as a comic device on "Glee," but do I really want the bland, soulless teen models of the CW's "Vampire Diaries" (premieres 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10), telling me their innermost thoughts in a hokey "Dear Diary"-style voice-over, considering that those thoughts are about as compelling as the graffiti scrawled inside the stalls of the girls' bathroom at the local high school?
Why must these characters relay their impoverished inner lives to me as if I'm their diary, Diary, or worse yet, as if I'm their overpaid psychotherapist and not just a pathetic human being who has nothing better to do than listen to the sad notions running through a teenager's mind, as imagined by an overpaid 40-something writer who makes his nut by plugging the words "vampire," "horror" and "hotties" into his John Hughes Automated Scriptwriting Software?
And while I'm complaining to you, trusted Diary, let me add that I'm tired of vampires. Yes, it's true that I've grown unnaturally fond of "True Blood," with its kaleidoscope of depravity and viciousness. I especially love Eric, and want to see him rip Sookie out of the arms of that wet rag Bill. I love that Alan Ball's vampires are ghoulish and disgusting but still sympathetic, I love Jason Stackhouse's recent alliance with Deputy Andy, and I love Michelle Forbes' Maryann, in all her hideous, heart-devouring glory.
But pretty, sensible teenage vampires who talk like depressed extras on "Hannah Montana"? Why, Diary? Why?
Don't give me that look, Diary. I know I should work on my unrealistic expectations. But I have to whine to someone, don't I? I knew I never should've left you alone with the Tao Te Ching the other day.
Sincerely,
ILTW
Dear ILTW,
Caught in desire, you only see black and white. When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. You "love" "True Blood," and so, of course, "Vampire Diaries" must be hated. I would feel pity for you, if I hadn't transcended such limiting emotions by practicing non-attachment.
Voice-overs, like vampires and the tao itself, are timeless. Just because you, as a subjective human being, clawing blindly in the dark, don't want to watch a bunch of irreproachably cute teenagers experiencing unconvincing turmoil over their blank-faced crushes, that doesn't mean that lots of very nice if slightly unoriginal preteens might not enjoy doing so. Just because you're allergic to bad dialogue and awkward blocking, just because you roll your eyes and sigh when there are bloodshot eyes and black crows, and an ungodly volume of dry ice in the mix, that doesn't mean that there aren't tens of thousands of dimwitted kids who'd dig this sort of thing.
The Master doesn't take sides, and therefore wouldn't offer either a spiritual thumbs up or thumbs down on "Vampire Diaries," but personally, I find the extreme emptiness of these teenagers, who've been encouraged to feign soulful, passionate feelings they've never felt before, somewhat inspiring. In the void of their hollow smiles, there are infinite possibilities.
Unlike you, I recognize the appeal of Elena (Nina Dobrev), the brooding but perky, recently orphaned heroine, with her flat-ironed hair and her unthreatening, every-girl good looks, the kind that would be right at home in a Playtex tampon advertisement in the pages of Seventeen magazine. I appreciate the poignant, almost nostalgic, "Afterschool Special" flavor of Jeremy (Steven R. McQueen), Elena's little brother who, predictably enough, smokes doobies, peddles mind-altering pills, and has become something of a rebel in the wake of his parents' sudden death. I welcome the ways that Stefan (Paul Wesley), the sweet-hearted vampire, conjures James Van Der Beek from "Dawson's Creek," both in his cluelessness and in the way he squints hard whenever he's trying to pretend that he's feeling something weighty and important. I don't blame him for falling for Elena, since their flavorless looks and flat affect seem to match perfectly. I also approve of the temperamental stylings of Damon (Ian Somerhalder), the Eeeevil Vampire Brother, with his little violent outbursts and manipulative ways. Why, he appears almost as complexly layered as Trey, Ryan's violent, devil-may-care brother on "The OC"!
In short, I applaud the audacity of ripping off "Twilight" whole hog, but dumbing it down even more for a television audience. It’s like stealing your neighbor’s pig just to make bologna sandwiches. Boldly bland, courageously commercial! If you disapprove of that, it's only because you're dead-set on comparing and competing, on being unfair and ungenerous. Keep sharpening your knife, and it will be blunt. The more you talk, the less you understand!
Having without possessing,
Diary
Soon-yi shall receive
Dear Diary,
Do you think it's fair that people with fertility issues should tell their stories as the cameras roll, making viewers at home feel uncomfortable emotions like sadness and compassion for them? Is it right that we should be forced to ride the roller coaster of sentiment along with them, breaking down weeping at every turn at the possibility that their adoptions won't go through after so many years of hoping and praying for a baby to call their own?
Diary, I know that I'm unsteady and haunted by my petty thoughts and desires, but isn't it natural for me to feel guilty for complaining, just this morning, about having to wake up twice to feed my baby, when WE's "Adoption Diaries" (premieres 10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12) introduces us to couples who would tolerate any level of sleep deprivation without complaint, so ardent is their desire for a child?
Furthermore, is it right that such a personal look at the process of open adoption should cause me, despite my relative soullessness as a human, to weep snottily, right into my bare hands?
ILTW
Dear ILTW,
Now that I'm enlightened, I'll admit that there was a day in the not-so-distant past when I would sniff my own glue, and then hallucinate that I was beating you over the head with my hard leather exterior. I guess it was probably obvious, before my heart was at peace, that I found you horribly dull, that I cringed at the feel of your moist palms on my otherwise immaculate, pristine pages.
But the tao taught me that I can't have things exactly the way I want them, and neither can you. Just as I am a humble book of pages, bound together forever, unable to choose whether or not I'm acquired by some dashing and courageous world traveler or spiritual leader like Hemingway or the Dalai Lama, someone certain to take me in his strong hands and translate his glorious adventures and roiling emotions and metaphysical epiphanies into subtle and dexterous prose, you, too, cannot help but be an alarmingly sweaty dullard who weeps snottily into her hands at melodramatic tripe, then scratches out her piteously empty ramblings about the lowest of pop cultural offerings in my bountiful, heretofore unsullied leaves.
Likewise, the producers of "Adoption Diaries" can't be expected to hold back when faced with capturing the gushing tears and restless longings of adoptive mothers, who experience the same guilt at not being able to bear children to their loving husbands that you experience when faced with your own inherently whiny nature. But unlike you, godless, piteous hack that you are, these hopeful families recognize that the Lord (see also: the tao) works in mysterious ways, and that their suffering might one day fill them with gratitude at the blessings bestowed on them.
I don't expect you to understand the weight of the moment in the premiere, hour-long episode when Whittney, a woman who struggled through four miscarriages, was finally able to hear the heartbeat of the son that she prayed would soon be hers. Nor do I imagine you could grasp the full significance of the scene where Kolene, the young birth mother, handed over her baby, even though anyone could see that she was second-guessing herself all the while. "The heart and the head tend to betray each other at this point," explained Dr. Jennifer Bliss, the adoption counselor handling their case. There are so many unknown, uncontrollable variables in play with open adoption, a fact that makes these situations -- to be crass -- very suspenseful television.
Now, if you could watch without leaping to judgment, as I can, you could appreciate how grateful Whittney was when she gushed, "What do you say to the person that has given you your biggest dream? When I think of Kolene, she's our angel, because she's giving us our family, and we love her forever for that."
Of course a shell of a human like yourself couldn't relate when Whittney said, of her new son, "I cannot wait for those moments, those little quiet moments where I can just see the beauty of everything in this world, through him." As someone who has no real understanding of beauty, I assume you encountered such ponderous sentiments with your usual cynical distance. But for those with actual blood flowing through their veins, "Adoption Diaries" is the sort of poignant fare that demonstrates what a generous and loving act adoption is, an incredible gift by the birth mother to hopeful parents longing for their own children.
Or, as Whittney put it: "The piece of me that was missing is here." And while I would urge Whittney to never again view herself as "missing" something, since desires wither the heart, most of us -- those of us who aren't confused and spiritually bankrupt like you, at least -- can relate to how she feels.
Blowing as aimless as the wind,
Diary
About half of American women will have an accidental pregnancy before age 45. So while we like to think of accidental pregnancy as a rare and catastrophic event that happens only to women who take extraordinary sexual risks, it's actually rather common. Nevertheless most stories about accidental pregnancy focus on teenage girls whom many people feel entitled to automatically dismiss as unfit mothers. Thus I was initially excited to see that this month's Self magazine leads with a feature that puts a face on those who constitute the vast majority of unplanned pregnancies, one with the subhead: "Forget Jamie Lynn Spears and Bristol. The new face of accidental pregnancy looks like ... you." But while it starts out by allegedly showing that even "good girls" can get knocked up, it ends up reinforcing some very old stereotypes about what the choices women make say about them.
The article opens up with the story of 28-year-old Kortney Peagram, a woman one can't help noticing is focus-group perfect for defying the stereotype of a young unwed mother. She is a portfolio manager for a consulting firm (whatever that means), who also leads "management training sessions," teaches at a university, trains for a marathon "in her spare time" (!), and dreams of European ski vacations. Translation: This woman is well-educated, hardworking and most likely pretty affluent.
Peagram meets up for dinner with a long-term friend who confesses to her over wine that his marriage isn't working out, and that she's the woman he should have been with all along. They have sex. Afterward, she is "mortified" that she slept with a married man. She stopped taking the pill after her last long-term relationship ended (which tells us that she's a certain kind of girl -- one who is responsible about birth control but doesn't plan for casual sex). She remembers to take the morning-after pill, but gets to the pharmacy a few days late. Eventually, she discovers she's pregnant. That same week, she loses her job. Suddenly, she's a statistic -- a young, unmarried, unemployed pregnant woman.
"This isn't supposed to happen to smart women," writes author Laura Bell. "We want to believe that unwed mothers are teenagers who have been careless or clueless." While not explicitly refuting the idea that teenagers are "careless and clueless," Bell points out that "the majority of unplanned pregnancies and abortions happen to women in their twenties." Educated, high-income women are not immune: "Four in 10 of the 1.1 million annual unplanned pregnancies happen to single women with some college."
The article suggests several reasons why this might be: Women are getting married later than their mothers did but still start having sex at around the same age. They are living with their partners before marriage. Women in abusive relationships may be bullied by their partners into having unprotected sex. And they point out that birthrates might be going up because more single women are choosing to raise their children -- 54 percent up from 41 percent in 1990.
But whatever the reasons, everyone interviewed agrees in principle that it's not nearly as easy to outright condemn adult women for their sexual choices:
"It's confusing to talk about it," says Shanti Kulkarni, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of social work at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "It's easier to coalesce around this idea that it's not good for teenagers to get pregnant. It's not as clear what pregnancy means for the life of a woman in her 20s." For some women, surprise motherhood ends up being the blessing of a lifetime. Others choose abortion with no regrets. But the high rate of unintended pregnancy remains distressing, Kulkarni says, because "it suggests that women are not as in control of their sexuality and childbearing as we would hope."
Yes, we all would prefer that women of all ages were in control of their sexuality and childbearing. But the rest of the article seesaws between genuinely useful insights, old clichés (just like their teenage counterparts, "Twentysomethings who have not yet found meaning in their life might wonder if having a baby would give them meaning"; others engage in "magical thinking that a pregnancy might lead to a marriage proposal") and the usual Hollywood bashing (Nicole Richie! Jessica Alba! "Knocked Up!") There's some good stuff there, and I highly recommend that anyone who is interested put in the time to read all seven pages.
But for all the outrage about the personal decisions of Hollywood actresses with enough income to fund the raising of entire villages of children, regardless of their marital status, my real problem with the article comes down to an issue of casting. Anyone who has ever written for or edited a mainstream women's magazine will tell you that their editors' real specialty is in identifying "real women" to put a personal face on a larger social trend. And the trajectory of Kortney Peagram's pregnancy will strike most readers as uncannily familiar.
The night before her scheduled abortion Peagram sits "consoling herself with California rolls and wine" (sushi and alcohol, by the way, are high up on the list of items not recommended for pregnant women). She takes a call from her sister, Kim, who at 42 has been trying for years to have a child and is now divorced. "I never expected to ask you this, but I want to make sure you know I would adopt this baby," Kim says. Later that night, Kortney texts Kim from her BlackBerry: "I just had my last glass of wine for the next six months and I made a decision. I'm in if you're in."
You recognize the (indie) Hollywood ending yet? The older sister adds an even juicier twist to the single mother adoption plot, but Kortney's last line -- "I'm in if you're in" -- is swiped verbatim from 16-year-old Juno's hastily scribbled note to the 30-something, soon-to-be divorced adoptive mother played by Jennifer Garner.
I have absolutely nothing negative to say about the personal decisions made by Kortney and Kim Peagram or any of the other women quoted in the articles: I do not know them, and I hope they feel that their stories were fairly represented. But I can't fathom why the editors at Self magazine chose these particular women to represent to readers the typical experience of a pregnant 20-something single woman. About 50 percent of unplanned pregnancies end in abortion, but the article does not contain a single quote from a woman who had one. Besides Kortney Peagram, there are two other women quoted in the article, both of whom kept their children. One was dumped by her boyfriend when he found out she was pregnant and she now lives with her aunt; the other dropped out of grad school and now lives with her parents. While this certainly represents some women's experience, many other women end up supporting themselves and their children on their own and/or with the help of their child's father, to whom about a third of women end up married. Why are they not represented?
I can't tell you how many women in their late 20s give birth to their children, then give them up for adoption, but I can tell you that it's a choice made by only about 1 percent of American women of any age. Given that the average age of a first-time American mother is 25, I don't imagine many 28-year-olds consider doing so. Add to that the number of women who decide to adopt out their child to a much-loved family member who would ensure they had lifelong (if potentially emotionally fraught) contact with their child, and you are in blue moon territory.
So why make those two statistical unicorns stand in for any number of experiences vastly more common among American women? I can't shake the feeling that the piece subtly reinforces a message that seems more and more prominent lately -- so long as there are loving, infertile people out there who wish for a child, abortion is immoral. Likewise, I fail to understand why an article that claims to be about the choices made by educated, relatively affluent adult women could not find a single case of a woman who chose to raise her child without qualifying the experience with statements of regret, hardship and dreams deferred. (Also: Aren't we simultaneously flooded with books and articles warning professional women of the dire consequences of not having kids in their late 20s?) I would never claim that women who choose adoption do not deserve to be represented at all, or dismiss the problems of infertility. But when quite literally 99 percent of pregnant women choose to raise their children themselves or have an abortion, it seems, at the very least, that these are the women whose stories should be heard first.
Dear Cary,
My niece was adopted at birth 35 years ago and has not been told she is adopted. When she was 5 years old my sister remarried and has remained in that marriage for 30 years. My niece's present "stepfather" has led her to believe he is her biological father, and my sister has gone along with the lie to "keep the peace."
I am an MSW adoption social worker of 40 years and believe adoptees should be told of their adoption when they are able to understand, or at the minimum when they reach maturity, age 21. In other words, they should not be continually lied to by their adoptive parents due to the parents' need to "own" the child completely. I am uncomfortable being a part of this ongoing deceit. I feel my niece should know the truth of who she is, and perhaps in her knowing she would search out her birth parents before they die.
Should I, in maybe some anonymous way, tell my niece she is adopted? Or should I just live with helping in perpetuating the lie?
Undecided
Dear Undecided,
I do not know what the right answer to this question is. I think it is something that you must decide for yourself. On principle, I agree with you. It seems a terrible injustice to deceive someone. If I were in your shoes, I would probably tell her. But you must consider for yourself the effect of the action you are contemplating, keeping in mind that when we take actions within a family, they sometimes have unintended consequences. I am sure, with your experience and your background, that you know this and perhaps have seen it in action.
I am a slow learner. One of the hardest things to learn has been how fundamentally different other people are. They really are other people! I don't know how to say that so it sounds smart, because it is such a simple matter. It's just that it takes a long time to fully accept. For instance, people do not see things the way we do. We may take an action out of a concern for justice and principle, but others will not necessarily see our actions as stemming from our concern for justice and principle. They will interpret our actions in accordance with their own assumptions. In the same way that we tend to assume others are like us, others assume we are like them. And if they are not accustomed to taking actions based on principle and a concern for justice, i.e. that no person should live her life being deceived about her origins, then they will not assume that's what our motive was. They will assume that our motive was whatever their motive would be in a similar situation -- to gain power or influence, to harm someone, to make us appear a certain way.
There are probably people who think there is a right answer to this question. And, in the abstract, from a formal philosophical perspective, there may be a right answer. I am not schooled in formal philosophy. I do think I know what I would do if I were in your shoes. But if I were in your shoes, my primary concern would be the niece. In the instant situation, my primary concern is not with the niece, but with you. That is how this column works: My concern is with the person who asks the question. I have to ask what action would be best for you. And I can't know that. You have to decide. If you are willing to take whatever consequences accrue from your decision, then you are free to do what you believe is right.
All I can say is that you are cursed with freedom of choice. You have certain beliefs and these beliefs are of course valid. But you cannot know whether in acting on these beliefs you will improve the lives of others and incur their gratitude, or make their lives more harried and tenuous and incur their wrath. My experience has been that in matters of family we cannot predict what will happen when we take certain actions.
If we are prepared to accept the consequences of our actions, we can freely act on principle. I just can't in good conscience advise you to do what I might do.
You must decide this one yourself.
What? You want more advice?
No money, more problems: The recession has everyone fretting these days, but apparently more women than men are anxious about their economic state. According to a recent poll by the National Women's Law Center, 59 percent of women claimed they were "worried and concernd" compared to only 46 percent of men. The poll suggests men and women have different priorities: More women than men said the government should increase its role in helping people plan for retirement and its funding for childcare, and 77 percent of women want to see the government address the issue of pay equity.
More men adopt?: It's the first time the CDC has gathered adoption stats from men, and the findings may surprise you. Twice as many men as women adopt children. The numbers are clear, but the trend is complicated. Some attribute the glaring imbalance to divorce settlements, which usually place children with their mothers, leaving remarried men more likely than their wives to adopt stepchildren. Others credit the lack of options for gay men who want children: Gay men generally adopt, while gay women can have their own children.
Keep your hands to yourself, perv: New York subways are telling passengers to mind the gap -- not the one between the train and the platform, but the one between you and the person next to you. Over the next three months, MTA will circulate 2,000 posters that say, "Sexual harassment is a crime in the subway, too -- a crowded train is no excuse for an improper touch. Don't stand for it or feel ashamed, or be afraid to speak up." The ad campaign is a response to last year's unsettling report that 10 percent of women were sexually abused and 63 percent were sexually harassed while riding New York City Transit.
Remember the old-fashioned days, when people just had sex for money?: First it was sex for real estate, then it was sex for gas. The increasingly disturbing sex trade trend has stripped down to the essentials: sex for food. Growing food prices worldwide have forced women in the Pacific and Africa to offer sex in exchange for vital items like fish and cooking oil. It may be the only way for many women to get food, but the consequences are potentially deadly. U.N. officials say the horrifying trend is contributing to the spread of AIDS in malnourished women who aren't likely to survive an infection.
Stepford lives: Repression, subjugation and inequality aside, the '50s were totally great! Actually, besides that Great Depression and the subsequent war, the '30s and '40s were even better! For three women who think they're literally living in the past, having no dignity isn't so bad -- it's heaven. The women dress and live like they're living in the '30s, '40s and '50s. Sure, the women's desire to retreat from the rampant materialism of the present is reasonable, but the results are downright disturbing: "My job is to devote myself to Martin. He has a physical, stressful job and he loves coming home to a wife who looks pretty, has his meal ready in an immaculate house and has all the time in the world for him."
Dear Cary,
I am a single dad with three boys (ages 2, 3 and 16). I recently bought an older houseboat, but it is in very good condition and I am planning on renovating it soon. I want to eventually move onto the houseboat full time. I have always wanted to live on a houseboat, since before I adopted my children (my eldest six years ago, the youngest two last year). I have also always been a rather unconventional person, going against the grain, doing things my own way in my own time; hence my adoption of three children without ever getting married. My children are my life's dream and I understood the sacrifices I would have to make in order to have a family.
I have weighed the pros and cons of living on a houseboat with children and have concluded it is something we could do with some adjustments. I am apprehensive because of what my friends and family are going to say about the situation, and they would be partially right: That I am being somewhat selfish in wanting this now. Why now? Why can't I wait? I can't honestly answer that question except to say, why wait?
My eldest son thinks it's a bad idea and is giving me a hard time. He says he doesn't want to make the lifestyle changes of living in a much smaller "home." What I don't understand from him is that between school, after-school activities, sports, his part-time job and time with his friends, he hardly spends any time in our house unless he is compelled to, and when he does, all he does is hibernate in his bedroom.
What do you think? Am I being selfish? Am I thrusting my dreams onto my children at their expense? Or am I just continuing my nontraditional, nonconforming ways, which has done me very well in the past? Should I just wait until my children are grown to live this part of my life's dream?
Dad Thrown Overboard
Dear Dad Thrown Overboard,
I have thought this through, and I'll give you my conclusions, or my suggestions, upfront, and then go into the thought process behind it. Basically, I think you should keep your house for the next three years while you work on the houseboat and spend occasional weekends or weeks on it. I think you should let your teenager reach the age of 19 with a stable home and his own room.
Then when he is old enough to live on his own, the youngest kids will still be just 5 and 6, and you can go live on the houseboat with them. If your older son wants to live on the houseboat with you, you can consider that; if he wants to continue living in your house, perhaps you can make an arrangement to rent it to him or sell it to him or give it to him. Or if he goes away to college or moves away for other reasons, you can do with your house as you see fit.
Now here is the thinking and feeling behind that suggestion. I think it's not about the houseboat per se. It's about the fact that your 16-year-old has emotional needs that he can't express. And it's not your job to argue with him about whether his feelings and needs are legitimate, but to try to understand them and meet them.
Let's think about what he might be feeling. You adopted him when he was 10. What happened to his parents? We don't know. But we do know that he's had a loss and needs stability. So for five years it was the two of you. Then last year you adopted two more boys, very young kids.
We can guess that you, being a nonconformist, are not a great fan of stability for its own sake. You like change. You like to do interesting, challenging, unconventional things, and you like new things. That's fine for you.
Yet routine, predictability and convention may be the very things your 16-year-old needs right now. It's possible that you are not hearing him, emotionally speaking, when you say that he stays in his room all the time anyway. The fact that he's staying in his room doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't value the house. It may mean just the opposite -- that more than anything right now he needs the stability of his own room, the control he can exercise over his environment. If you take him into a new environment, you may rob him of that control. So naturally he's anxious about change.
Look at it from his perspective. For five years he was your only son. Then last year you brought two very young boys into the family. So he was displaced a little. Now you are suggesting uprooting him from a stable place.
You may not realize how disturbing this prospect can be, but I do. I grew up in a household headed by a man who was unconventional, a true nonconformist. And there were certain advantages to my upbringing. I learned a lot. I learned to think outside the box -- I didn't even know there was a box.
But like most kids I had emotional needs that were not all that original or interesting. I was just a kid like any other kid. I had the ability to act as though I was happy with things the way they were. But often I was confused and bewildered by the changes that would take place in our household, and by the very complicated ideas about living that both my father and mother had. And though I am now ashamed to admit it, as a child I was ashamed -- yes, ashamed! -- of our unconventional ways, of how we were regarded in the world. I was secretly a very anxious child.
The way I dealt with my anxiety was, I hid it. They had no way of knowing what I was feeling. I wouldn't show it to them. I wouldn't let them know. It was too painful. It would have been almost too painful to actually say, I need this or I need that and face the possibility of explicitly being denied. So I pretended. One might be tempted to say that since I so successfully hid my needs, it isn't their fault that they didn't provide for them; it is true that I collaborated in my own emotional neglect. But the two actors in this are not equal. The parent should not have to be educated by the kid about what the kid needs. The kid cannot say what he needs.
I had nonnegotiable emotional needs that were not being met, and that wasn't my fault. I loved my family of course and still do. But I felt a great deal of emotional pain and anxiety as a child. I was a very anxious teenager and my anxiety manifested itself in drug and alcohol abuse, depression and an inability to plan for the future.
So I'm identifying with your 16-year-old and I'm projecting onto you some of my anger at my father when I hear you say that your 16-year-old doesn't use the house all that much anyway, so why not move to a houseboat. His relationship to the house isn't a function of how many net hours he spends within its walls. What the house means to him isn't quantifiable in that way. What matters is that the house is there and he knows it is there and he knows it isn't going anywhere. When you grow up with unconventional parents you never know what's going to happen next, so knowing that a house is going to be there for you can be of extraordinary importance. It can seem like a life-or-death matter. I know this from personal experience.
So yeah, it does make me angry. I'm angry on behalf of your 16-year-old, who can't argue successfully with you because it's not an even playing field. You can throw these logical arguments at him and he doesn't have the vocabulary to refute them, or the sophistication to tell you that logic has nothing to do with his needs as a child.
The implicit pact you made with him is that you will understand for him what he can't understand himself, and you will provide for his needs that he can't explain or express. If kids had to understand their own needs, and instruct their parents on how to meet those needs, they wouldn't get raised. So you are in the position of having to see what he needs. And I think what he's telling you in an indirect and inarticulate way is that he very much needs to stay in that house.
See, I remember that from my childhood: "Give me a good reason. Make a good, sustained argument for why you need that." Are you kidding? You're asking a kid to explain why he needs what he needs? The kid doesn't know why he needs what he needs.
Oh, hell, I'm getting too much into my own story, which I continue to have powerful feelings about. Well, I'm going to see my therapist in a couple of hours, so maybe he and I will talk about this then. But I'm saying this for your benefit, and your 16-year-old's benefit: Try to put yourself in the position of your 16-year-old son and try to empathize, try to imagine what he may be feeling. Not what he's thinking -- but what he's going through, what he's feeling.
So please, please keep the house for three more years while you work on the houseboat. If you do so, I can almost promise you that one day your 16-year-old will be grateful to you for doing that. Even if he never tells you, even if he never explicitly admits it to himself, still, in some corner of his heart, he will be grateful. And then you will know that you have done a very, very good thing in this world.
What? You want more advice?
My daughter Grace was born in the year of the rat. "Very clever," our Chinese nanny, Ju Hua, told us. "Very special." Those born in the year of the rat are sharp witted and funny. They are charming too, and considered good luck. The Christmas that Ju Hua was with our family, she had her husband in Beijing send Grace a gold charm of a small rat hanging on a chain. "Very special," Ju Hua explained. "Special present for a special girl."
Four months later, Grace died from a virulent form of strep. She was five years old. Ju Hua and her daughter had moved into their own apartment by then. When they heard the news, they came immediately. Ju Hua's face was stricken, her crying uncontrollable. "That girl," she said. "So special."
Grace was studying Chinese at school, and even after Ju Hua left us, Grace would visit her and practice Chinese. "Her pronunciation so good!" Ju Hua would tell me when I picked Grace up. They had cooked together, fried rice and dumplings and the pork dish Grace liked so much. Smelling of garlic and sesame, Grace would wave goodbye to Ju Hua as we drove away. Then she would sing me a Chinese song, or count to twenty in Chinese.
That April day when Grace got sick and I rushed her to the emergency room, as they whisked her to the ICU, the doctor ordered me to help keep the oxygen mask on her face. "Grace," I said, trying to hide the fear that had gripped me, "count to ten and then you'll be in room where the doctor can make you better."
Squirming under the oxygen mask, Grace began to count: "Yee, uhr, sahn," she said in perfect Chinese, "sah, woo, lyo…"
When Ju Hua visited us after Grace died, she told us that her own mother had lost a child, a six year old boy. He got sick very suddenly, like Grace, and he died in her mother's arm as she walked miles to the doctor. "My mother never forget this," Ju Hua said. "But if he didn't die, I would never be born."
There are so many cruel decisions parents have to make when their child dies. The funeral director requested a sheet for the coffin, and I sent the cozy flannel one, pale blue with happy snowmen, that had just been put away with the winter linens. They needed clothes to bury her in, and I carefully removed the tags from the new Capri pants with the ruffled hem and the pink shirt that Grace had picked out but never got a chance to wear. We could, we were told, place anything we wanted in her coffin, so my husband Lorne and I gathered her favorite things, the things that comforted her: Biff, her favorite stuffed animal; Cow, the green blanket decorated with cows; her purple leopard lunch box; her glasses; notes from each of us; crayons and paints; and the gold rat on the chain that Ju Hua had sent for her from China.
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I cannot say for certain when the decision to have another child happened. I do remember sitting alone on a summer afternoon in the room we called the Puzzle Room, a room where Grace and my son Sam and I spent many afternoons listening to Nanci Griffith CDs and working on jigsaw puzzles, sitting there as the hot afternoon stretched endlessly and hopelessly before me, and thinking about how my arms ached to hold Grace and my entire body longed for the buzz of activity that used to surround me just a few short months earlier. It was that same summer that my husband and I camped out together on a beach in Maine and he said, "I have the craziest idea." "So do I," I told him. That was when I put words to it. "Let's have another baby," I said. And he said yes. Then we cried. A light from a lighthouse kept swinging past us, illuminating everything.
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First, my husband had to have his vasectomy reversed. Then, I had to have my hormone levels checked. I was 44 years old, and I did not expect good news. But the doctor who everyone told us could help make it happen said that although I might need a little hormonal help, I could indeed get pregnant.
Once a month, my husband and I drove to New York City to the doctor's Park Avenue office where Lorne masturbated into a cup and I was then inseminated with his sperm. Each time, the doctor was optimistic. Lorne's sperm were great -- good swimmers and plentiful. I ovulated on schedule and had good mucous. We'd had babies before. We could do it again.
But after four months without a pregnancy, the doctor added Clomid to the protocol. Now I went for an intravaginal sonogram, my follicles were counted, and then we went to New York. Four eggs. Six. But no baby.
By March, I was having tests to see if something was going on. In June I had surgery to remove a benign polyp. By fall Lorne was injecting me with Pergonal at almost $2,000 a month, and it was producing less follicles than the Clomid, and I wasn't getting pregnant. Everyone has read about or knows someone who has gone through fertility treatments. It is an emotional nightmare, fueled by false hope and the promise of a treatment that will work. Add grief to that, and the cycle gets even worse.
One day, a friend told me that she knew how to get a baby in Russia, fast. It involved spending time in Finland. It would cost around $40,000, before bribes. The baby was a girl. She had red hair.
Another friend stopped by and told me that she could get children from Hungary. Not babies, but two or three year olds. She could even get twins. Or siblings. It would cost $60,000. Plus donations to various people who would help along the way.
Some people urged me to give up the idea altogether. I heard stories of women who had a child after losing one and forced that new child into the roles of the dead one. I heard of mothers dressing their new baby in their dead child's clothes, making them swim or dance or whatever the other had done. It isn't fair, I was told. Fairness was not something I believed in very much then. If things were fair, a healthy intelligent five year old girl wouldn't die. If things were fair, a family who helped others, who lived a good life together, who love each other, wouldn't be torn apart like this.
By this time, I knew that bringing a baby into our household would help all of us. It would help ease the burden of our grief on Sam, who was only ten years old and read our emotions each morning like barometers. It would bring back the noise and laughter our house had lost. It would fill my empty hours. Babies make you do things for them. They get you up and they get you moving. A baby's smile, I knew, could change everything.
I had spent almost $25,000, and I was out of expendable income. I realized that in this time that had passed and with the money I had spent, we could already have a red haired baby from Russia, or three year old Hungarian twins. Lorne and I decided to stop the fertility treatments and focus on adoption instead. What I knew as soon as we made that decision was that in a year we would have a baby.
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For the next few months, I had coffee with women who had battled Central American governments, rescued children languishing in Russian and Romanian orphanages, lied, borrowed money, corrected cleft palates and crossed eyes and weak hearts, lost babies they had held, named babies they never got to see, traveled thousands of miles more than once, all in pursuit of a baby.
"I don't know if I have the emotional stamina for this," I told Lorne after hearing my friend's story about three failed adoptions in Guatemala and over a hundred thousand dollars spent. She did, finally, have her daughter. But still.
"China," Lorne said. "Everyone I talk to who adopted from China, it went like clockwork."
One afternoon I watched a mother at Sam's school pick up her daughter who she had adopted from China. I sat in my car and watched that little girl leap into her mother's arms and I drove home and emailed that woman. As it turned out, she lived two blocks away from us. "Come over for coffee," she said, "and I'll tell you all about it."
Walking home from her house, Lorne squeezed my hand. "Let's start," he said.
Within a week we were sitting in a crowded room in an adoption agency office in Boston, signing paper, collecting information, beginning the journey that would lead us to China and a baby girl.
I spent the month of April, 2004, filling out paperwork for the adoption. It was exactly two years since Grace had died. This process -- collecting legal documents and getting fingerprinted and asking friends for recommendations -- was the calmest, and most focused thing I had done in two years. I had a purpose, and I moved toward it with a doggedness I had forgotten I possessed.
What I didn't know was that while I filled out papers in triplicate and made appointments and arranged for a home study, a woman in Hunan, China, was giving birth to a baby girl she could not keep. Over a hundred thousand baby girls are abandoned every year in China. Some place the number at even higher than that. In Hunan, as in other provinces, infanticide is not uncommon. Some women give birth with a bucket of water by their beds, and if the baby is a girl, she is drowned. Other women walk for miles from their village to have their baby somewhere that no one knows them. Baby girls are left on footbridges and in parks, at police station doors and orphanage entrances. They are left where their mothers know they will be found. It is illegal to abandon a baby in China, so they are left with no notes or pertinent information. In Hunan, a family who has a girl is allowed to have a second child. But that second child has to be a boy. Therefore, most of the abandoned baby girls in Hunan are second or even third daughters.
A year almost to the day after we began our adoption process, we were on a plane to China to pick up our daughter. We had filed our documents with the Chinese government and then waited for six months to get the call telling us a baby had been referred to us. Her Chinese name was Lou Fu Jing: Lou was the last name given to all the babies in her orphanage, which was in the city of Loudi; Fu was the name given to all the babies in her orphanage because it meant luck, and it was given to counter their bad luck; Jing was the name the orphanage gave her -- bright. She lights up a room, someone wrote on her referral papers.
The name we gave her was Annabelle, Grace's middle name. We had briefly chosen Mamie, and Daisy, and argued over Talullah. But we loved the name Annabelle, and we had loved it enough to almost give it to Grace as her first name. It honored Grace, we decided, without burdening the new baby.
Annabelle had been found in a box at the orphanage door, early in the morning of September 6, 2004. They estimated her age as five months. Most of the babies found abandoned are under two weeks old. Many of them still have their umbilical cord stump. No one will ever know what led Annabelle's mother to leave her there after five months. Perhaps she had not wanted to give her up at all. Perhaps a male relative waited until the baby was not nursing as much as a newborn does and then took her from her mother. Perhaps they tried to hide her in the system -- a forbidden second or third daughter -- and were caught. The penalties for this are huge, often involving many years' salary or loss of medical care for the entire family. Perhaps her mother died. Perhaps her mother got pregnant again and hoped for a boy.
We will never know what led to Annabelle being dressed in blue pants, white socks with blue flowers, a thin coat, and put into a cardboard box in a city that was most likely not her own. Around Loudi, there are dusty roads and fields of kale and sweet potatoes. Women walk with a bamboo pole across their backs, and one head of kale or a sweet potato in a basket at the ends. They take this meager yield to a market miles away to sell. It is not green or beautiful there. No mountains or sea, no glittering architecture. It is not the China in glossy magazines. It is poor and rural and the women there sometimes abandon their baby girls rather than drown them.
We will never know Annabelle's story. We only know this: the date they gave her as her birthday -- determined by the age they guessed her to be on September 6, 2004; chosen as an even number because even numbers are lucky -- that birthday, is April 18, the same day that Grace died. Annabelle, like me, was born in the year of the monkey. Monkeys are intelligent and are known to have a great sense of humor. Monkeys and rats are said to be the best of friends.
Annabelle arrived home on April 6, 2005. It was the year of the rooster. In Chinese astrology, there is an improvement of difficult situations during rooster years. They are a time to seek emotional solace. One of the hexagrams of the I Ching that symbolizes the middle third of a rooster year -- the time when Mother's Day falls -- is the image of a small trickle of water flowing from a rock as a container below it slowly begins to fill. It is called, "The humble power of the smallest."
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"They mark them, you know," someone told us before we left for China. "The mothers brand the babies they abandon. It's a sign of love."We had heard stories about babies being found with a yam, a sign of how valuable the baby was. We had heard of a note left that simply said: This is my baby. Take care of her. We had heard of one baby found with a bracelet around her wrist, and another with a river rock to indicate she was from a town near water. But this branding was something new.
The group of ten families with which we traveled to China, all got our babies at the same time, in a nondescript city building in Changsha. Changsha is the capital of Hunan Province, and it is four hours from Loudi and the orphanage. Soon, people were lifting pant legs or the cuffs of sleeves to show the small scars on their babies. "They mark them," one mother said, spreading her new daughter's fingers to reveal a scar in between the index and pointer.
On Annabelle's neck I found a thick rope of scar tissue, round and small. The pediatrician examined it and frowned. "Don't get upset," he said, "but this almost looks like a burn that has healed."
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A month after Grace died, I had my first Mother's Day without my daughter. Sam and Lorne carved a heart out of wood, sanded it smooth as if they could ease the pain in my own heart this way. They threaded the wooden heart on a dark red ribbon, and it still hangs from the rear view mirror of my car. But Lorne also gave me a book he made, with pictures of Grace and descriptions beneath them of what Grace and I did together: cooking, reading, laughing, walking hand in hand. It was the worst Mother's Day I could imagine. Here was Sam, my son, offering me a heart. And here was the empty chair, the silence, my own heart, broken.
Each subsequent Mother's Day brought a new pain -- the passing of time without watching Grace growing up, the burst of spring blossoms in our garden mocking my loss. I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes -- the sparkly ones, the leopard rainboots, the ballet slippers -- stood in a corner. I kept her hairbrush on a shelf in my closet, and the fine strands of her pale blonde hair were still tangled in it. As I walked out the door, I still sometimes paused to bury my nose in her powder blue jacket, as if I might find something of her there.
Three Mother's Days later, I am sitting in my kitchen singing to Annabelle. It is raining, and I am singing an old Lovin' Spoonful song. We can sit and dry just as long as it can pour, cause the way it makes you look makes me hope it rains some more… I am singing to Annabelle, and she is grinning at me, a big toothless grin. When Annabelle laughs, my heart soars. When she presses her hand into mine, or rests her head against my chest, or falls asleep in my arms, I feel myself slowly, slowly coming back to life.
Sometimes I touch that small round scar on her neck and I wonder about the woman who might have put it there. I wonder if she walked down those dusty roads I saw in China, past the endless fields of kale, cradling her daughter in her arms. I wonder if she cried when she placed her in that small box. I wonder what words she might have whispered to her.
On Mother's Day now, each year, I think about Grace. And I think about this woman I will never know. I, of course, thank her, and I praise her strength in doing this seemingly impossible thing: giving her daughter to me. She will never know that I have her daughter because I lost Grace. She will never know the road I traveled to get her.
Annabelle lifts her arms to me, and I pick her up.
"Mama," she whispers.
"Daughter," I whisper back.
Breast panels
My sexiest Canuck
Is My Son Lucky?
Oh my! Monogamy!