"Is he yours?" A question I get on a fairly regular basis -- particularly if I venture into the bowels of Antigua's vast Mercado, where the heat and noise and maternal anxiety level almost invariably lead to a fit of screaming on the part of the infant whose status has just been questioned. The question is asked by a Mayan woman, older -- smiling -- and is often accompanied by an exploratory poke of El Pablito, an admiring coo over his hair, his size, his general beauty. "¡Que lindo! ¿Es suyo?" "¡Que pelo! ¿Es suyo?" "¿Cuántos meses -- es suyo?" I have yet to figure out the proper response, if there even is one; the answer, the true answer, it seems to me, is anything but the simple "sí" or "no" that the question appears to require.
Legally, to start with, no, Pablo is not mine. He will not be "mine" until the day PGN declares the adoption process complete, until a new birth certificate is issued, and my last name becomes his. From that point forward, from the governmental perspective, both Guatemalan and U.S., he will be mine forever. But until then, as much as I may feed him, change him, carry him, kiss him, cuddle him, soothe him, love him, mother him -- I have no right to this child. If something went dreadfully amiss with the adoption process -- something that might have nothing to do with me, or with him, but with a piece of paper deemed insufficient by the bureaucrats in charge -- he could become an orphan, could be placed in an orphanage, could be lost to his first mother, his second mother, any mother, forever. It is unlikely -- it is almost unthinkable to me -- but it is not an impossibility.
It is also true, I remind myself regularly, that things can go terribly wrong with a biological pregnancy. Babies are born too soon, they are born too late, they can be sick, they can have terrible disabilities, they can die. As a midwife, I have watched all of that happen; I have cautioned again and again "there are no guarantees"; I have stood witness to the cruel messages that Mother Nature occasionally sends to remind us that babies are not always ours to keep. I do not know what it feels like to have a sick child, a critically sick child, to not know if my child will live or die. I do not know, as some of my fellow adoptive parents do, what it feels like to lose a referred child. I do know about losing a pregnancy, about the sorrow of a miscarriage. These are all separate pains, individual struggles, unique losses. But there is common ground as well: the truth, the sometimes slap-in-the-face truth, that as parents we are not in control. Perhaps there is something useful in learning that lesson right at the beginning, rather than down the road a bit when our children turn two, three, seventeen. The trick, I think, is learning to deal with uncertainty by loving more, not less. For the potential is certainly there to detach, to hold back, to think, perhaps unconsciously, "he's not really mine" -- to fear the loss, and thus to keep a part of one's heart closed off. But the truth is that the threat of loss -- even, one might argue, the inevitability of it -- is always there, biological or adoptive, sick or healthy. In this sense, Pablo will never be "mine," will never be a static, secure possession, guaranteed to satisfy my mothering instincts. How much better, though, if I can love him purely for the sweet boy he is today, rather than for the son I hope he will be tomorrow.
There is another level, however, on which adoptive and biological parents really do face different challenges in claiming their children. In adoption circles, the concept is often labeled "entitlement"; it is seen as a crucial psychological task for adoptive parents, that we grow to feel that our children truly belong in our families, that we are their real parents. It is a question never asked when the parental relationship is also the biological one. But in adoption, there is an arbitrary aspect to it all -- the match is dependent not on DNA and umbilical cord, but on paperwork, lawyers, timing. The "pick-up" room where I first met Pablo was a surreal little space in the lobby of the Westin in Guatemala City. There must have been five families crowded into a tiny room -- five adoptive families, five babies (with their foster mothers) all experiencing a momentous event in a particularly banal location. The first baby handed to me was -- not Pablo. Another beautiful little boy, looking enough like my referral photo for me not to question his identity. It was only after a few minutes of holding and cooing at him that the mistake was rectified -- "oops, sorry, wrong baby" -- and I received my own gorgeous child. Arbitrary. Surreal.
For some, there is a sense of "love at first sight" upon meeting their adopted child. For others -- for most, I would guess -- there is a process. "It felt like two months of babysitting," one of my fellow a-moms told me, "but every day he crept closer into my heart." For me it has been a little bit of both. There are times when I look at him, when he smiles at me, and I feel connected on an elemental level -- he is mine, I am his. There are other times: particularly, say, when I look at us together in a mirror, and I wonder "Who is this beautiful baby boy? Where did he come from? What is he doing in my arms?"
Because of course, he did not come from me. He came from his birth mother, from the Guatemalan highlands: he came from the world of the Mayan woman at the Mercado, and I have stolen him away from that life forever. I understand, when she looks at me with a smile on her lips but not in her eyes; I understand, or at least think I do, that a part of what is thought but not said is: "Es nuestro hijo." "He belongs to us." I hear it in the myriad responses to his cries issuing from each vendor's stall: "¡quiere pacha!" "¡esta apretado!" "¡necesita aire!" "¡tiene calor!" "¡tiene frio!" "It takes a village," we gringa mamas often grumble to each other, appreciating the comic aspect, but resenting the intrusion nevertheless. It is not always easy, when one is already hard at work internalizing the idea This Is My Child, to be reminded that others might dispute the claim.
"¿Fue regalado, o lo compró?" "Was he given away, or did you buy him?" While I have had a hard time coming up with an answer to "¿Es suyo?," I was completely dumbfounded by this question, asked with the usual smile and appreciative, exploratory probe. My reply was at once grandiose and insipid -- something along the lines of "well of course I didn't buy him -- you cannot buy a person." But of course, from the perspective of the average Guatemalteco, that is exactly what we Norteamericanos do every day; we buy their children and import them, just as we have always bought up the products of the land: bananas, coffee, sugar, petroleum, clothing, babies. It does not help that the urban legend of babies sold for body parts is widely credited here -- even by the mainstream press. It does not help that corruption is well documented, and rarely prosecuted, throughout the adoption system. It does not help that the private Guatemalan lawyers earn thousands of dollars for processing each adoption case, while the birth parents are in many cases struggling to earn enough to keep their other children from starving to death. Payments to birth mothers are prohibited by Guatemalan and U.S. law: no one wants a system in which the decision to relinquish a child is linked to monetary compensation. But it is hard to ignore the irony of a system in which those who lose the most also gain the least; it is difficult, for me at any rate, to condemn those birth mothers who do end up receiving money under the table.
One of my priorities in planning to adopt was to work with a trustworthy, ethical agency, and as far as I know, Pablo's adoption has been entirely above board; I have no reason to doubt either his birth mother's motivation, my agency's process, or the conduct of my lawyer. That said, however, the process itself is still far from transparent, and I will never know exactly where and to whom and for what my money has gone. That is part of the deal with Guatemalan adoptions, and something I have made my peace with. It all stands in contrast to, for example, domestic U.S. adoption, where payments to birth mothers are common, and may amount to several thousands of dollars, although couched in language of "housing and medical costs." And yet, it is international adoption that is frequently criticized, even denounced, as a form of child trafficking. In certain social science quarters, the two are regularly linked, as though it were possible to equate a parent adopting a child with a criminal buying children for slave labor or forced prostitution.
I doubt that the average New Yorker will look at Pablo and me and think that we are part of a criminal conspiracy. I'm sure that at some point he will hear denunciations of the way in which we became a family; he may even grow to share the conviction of some international adoptees that the institution itself is fatally flawed. I hope not. What I brace myself for, in the more immediate future, is the next phase of questions, the full range from curious to invasive to downright rude, that I anticipate once we return to the U.S. -- where it will usually be Pablo, and not me, who stands out as other. Brown boy and white mother; we will face a lifetime of comments and doubletakes, wherever we travel. I can dream of a multicultural society, in which a family of different colors elicits nothing more than an appreciative smile, but I know better than to expect that for my child. What I hope for is a smaller triumph: I hope that my boy will grow secure in the knowledge that he is Both/And, not Either/Or. He will be a U.S. citizen, Guatemalan-born, and together we will negotiate what it means to be a multiracial family. I hope that he will learn to define his own community, that he will belong where he chooses, when he chooses. I hope that he will be able, and willing, to at once embrace his Latino roots, and hold tight to his gringamama.
Legally, to start with, no, Pablo is not mine. He will not be "mine" until the day PGN declares the adoption process complete, until a new birth certificate is issued, and my last name becomes his. From that point forward, from the governmental perspective, both Guatemalan and U.S., he will be mine forever. But until then, as much as I may feed him, change him, carry him, kiss him, cuddle him, soothe him, love him, mother him -- I have no right to this child. If something went dreadfully amiss with the adoption process -- something that might have nothing to do with me, or with him, but with a piece of paper deemed insufficient by the bureaucrats in charge -- he could become an orphan, could be placed in an orphanage, could be lost to his first mother, his second mother, any mother, forever. It is unlikely -- it is almost unthinkable to me -- but it is not an impossibility.
It is also true, I remind myself regularly, that things can go terribly wrong with a biological pregnancy. Babies are born too soon, they are born too late, they can be sick, they can have terrible disabilities, they can die. As a midwife, I have watched all of that happen; I have cautioned again and again "there are no guarantees"; I have stood witness to the cruel messages that Mother Nature occasionally sends to remind us that babies are not always ours to keep. I do not know what it feels like to have a sick child, a critically sick child, to not know if my child will live or die. I do not know, as some of my fellow adoptive parents do, what it feels like to lose a referred child. I do know about losing a pregnancy, about the sorrow of a miscarriage. These are all separate pains, individual struggles, unique losses. But there is common ground as well: the truth, the sometimes slap-in-the-face truth, that as parents we are not in control. Perhaps there is something useful in learning that lesson right at the beginning, rather than down the road a bit when our children turn two, three, seventeen. The trick, I think, is learning to deal with uncertainty by loving more, not less. For the potential is certainly there to detach, to hold back, to think, perhaps unconsciously, "he's not really mine" -- to fear the loss, and thus to keep a part of one's heart closed off. But the truth is that the threat of loss -- even, one might argue, the inevitability of it -- is always there, biological or adoptive, sick or healthy. In this sense, Pablo will never be "mine," will never be a static, secure possession, guaranteed to satisfy my mothering instincts. How much better, though, if I can love him purely for the sweet boy he is today, rather than for the son I hope he will be tomorrow.
There is another level, however, on which adoptive and biological parents really do face different challenges in claiming their children. In adoption circles, the concept is often labeled "entitlement"; it is seen as a crucial psychological task for adoptive parents, that we grow to feel that our children truly belong in our families, that we are their real parents. It is a question never asked when the parental relationship is also the biological one. But in adoption, there is an arbitrary aspect to it all -- the match is dependent not on DNA and umbilical cord, but on paperwork, lawyers, timing. The "pick-up" room where I first met Pablo was a surreal little space in the lobby of the Westin in Guatemala City. There must have been five families crowded into a tiny room -- five adoptive families, five babies (with their foster mothers) all experiencing a momentous event in a particularly banal location. The first baby handed to me was -- not Pablo. Another beautiful little boy, looking enough like my referral photo for me not to question his identity. It was only after a few minutes of holding and cooing at him that the mistake was rectified -- "oops, sorry, wrong baby" -- and I received my own gorgeous child. Arbitrary. Surreal.
For some, there is a sense of "love at first sight" upon meeting their adopted child. For others -- for most, I would guess -- there is a process. "It felt like two months of babysitting," one of my fellow a-moms told me, "but every day he crept closer into my heart." For me it has been a little bit of both. There are times when I look at him, when he smiles at me, and I feel connected on an elemental level -- he is mine, I am his. There are other times: particularly, say, when I look at us together in a mirror, and I wonder "Who is this beautiful baby boy? Where did he come from? What is he doing in my arms?"
Because of course, he did not come from me. He came from his birth mother, from the Guatemalan highlands: he came from the world of the Mayan woman at the Mercado, and I have stolen him away from that life forever. I understand, when she looks at me with a smile on her lips but not in her eyes; I understand, or at least think I do, that a part of what is thought but not said is: "Es nuestro hijo." "He belongs to us." I hear it in the myriad responses to his cries issuing from each vendor's stall: "¡quiere pacha!" "¡esta apretado!" "¡necesita aire!" "¡tiene calor!" "¡tiene frio!" "It takes a village," we gringa mamas often grumble to each other, appreciating the comic aspect, but resenting the intrusion nevertheless. It is not always easy, when one is already hard at work internalizing the idea This Is My Child, to be reminded that others might dispute the claim.
"¿Fue regalado, o lo compró?" "Was he given away, or did you buy him?" While I have had a hard time coming up with an answer to "¿Es suyo?," I was completely dumbfounded by this question, asked with the usual smile and appreciative, exploratory probe. My reply was at once grandiose and insipid -- something along the lines of "well of course I didn't buy him -- you cannot buy a person." But of course, from the perspective of the average Guatemalteco, that is exactly what we Norteamericanos do every day; we buy their children and import them, just as we have always bought up the products of the land: bananas, coffee, sugar, petroleum, clothing, babies. It does not help that the urban legend of babies sold for body parts is widely credited here -- even by the mainstream press. It does not help that corruption is well documented, and rarely prosecuted, throughout the adoption system. It does not help that the private Guatemalan lawyers earn thousands of dollars for processing each adoption case, while the birth parents are in many cases struggling to earn enough to keep their other children from starving to death. Payments to birth mothers are prohibited by Guatemalan and U.S. law: no one wants a system in which the decision to relinquish a child is linked to monetary compensation. But it is hard to ignore the irony of a system in which those who lose the most also gain the least; it is difficult, for me at any rate, to condemn those birth mothers who do end up receiving money under the table.
One of my priorities in planning to adopt was to work with a trustworthy, ethical agency, and as far as I know, Pablo's adoption has been entirely above board; I have no reason to doubt either his birth mother's motivation, my agency's process, or the conduct of my lawyer. That said, however, the process itself is still far from transparent, and I will never know exactly where and to whom and for what my money has gone. That is part of the deal with Guatemalan adoptions, and something I have made my peace with. It all stands in contrast to, for example, domestic U.S. adoption, where payments to birth mothers are common, and may amount to several thousands of dollars, although couched in language of "housing and medical costs." And yet, it is international adoption that is frequently criticized, even denounced, as a form of child trafficking. In certain social science quarters, the two are regularly linked, as though it were possible to equate a parent adopting a child with a criminal buying children for slave labor or forced prostitution.
I doubt that the average New Yorker will look at Pablo and me and think that we are part of a criminal conspiracy. I'm sure that at some point he will hear denunciations of the way in which we became a family; he may even grow to share the conviction of some international adoptees that the institution itself is fatally flawed. I hope not. What I brace myself for, in the more immediate future, is the next phase of questions, the full range from curious to invasive to downright rude, that I anticipate once we return to the U.S. -- where it will usually be Pablo, and not me, who stands out as other. Brown boy and white mother; we will face a lifetime of comments and doubletakes, wherever we travel. I can dream of a multicultural society, in which a family of different colors elicits nothing more than an appreciative smile, but I know better than to expect that for my child. What I hope for is a smaller triumph: I hope that my boy will grow secure in the knowledge that he is Both/And, not Either/Or. He will be a U.S. citizen, Guatemalan-born, and together we will negotiate what it means to be a multiracial family. I hope that he will learn to define his own community, that he will belong where he chooses, when he chooses. I hope that he will be able, and willing, to at once embrace his Latino roots, and hold tight to his gringamama.
