Potpourring our cultures

I’m sometimes asked: “What is it like to have an adopted child?” That is a hard question for me, this is the only child we have-she is, simply, OUR child. She came into our family through adoption, but she is our child. There are times I had a hard time remembering a life without her.

We adopted from Guatemala, and people often want to know what it is like to adopt transnationally. It is hell, to be honest, going through all that we went through, but I think that many people experience hellish problems bringing children into their families, where that is by adoption (domestic private, domestic foster or international) or by birth (vaginal, Caesaria, surrogate, etc.)

Once a child is in your home, he or she is your child. There are times in our lives when I think we all think we’ve “ruined our lives” by adding children into the dynamics, and then others, when we know heaven couldn’t be any better than having this child in our family.

A gift of adoption is that there are really no expectations in terms of intelligence, talent or looks. It is like unwrapping a new gift just about every day. It makes one wonder if “nature” or “nurture” is the key to a child’s gifts. Our daughter went to weekly live music concerts with me every week from the time she was 9 months old. It only stopped the semester she went to public school, and now that she is in a small private school. Was it all that exposure to music that makes her such a good musician, and gives her such a love of music and dance, or is that something innate? When we met her birth family, because of their poverty, her sisters have never had music or dance lessons. It is something completely unknown to them. As her birthmother told us, our daughter has opportunities that her daughters still in Guatemala don’t even know to dream of. She’s smart, too, and really good in math (CLEARLY not my biological child, although my parents were both very good in math.:)

What international adoption does that some people don’t understand is make our children’s birth country a part of our family heritage. We’re no longer a Scottish/Cherokee/German family; we’re a Scottish, Cherokee, Guatemalan, German family. As such, we celebrate that heritage. Lettie and I have kilt skirts that we love to wear, and we’ve got Guatemalan clothing as well. Lettie loves playing Scottish music on the piano, but is learning a Guatemalan ballad as well.

When I was growing up, we spent a lot of time in Mexico and South America, and I grew up with artwork and furniture Latin countries, as well as with brown skinned people. We had relatives who lived in Mexico City, and spent a few weeks there just about every summer as a young child. Adopting from Guatemala just felt right, and it was.

However, as a Scottish, Guatemalan, Cherokee, German, US family, we also acknowledge the intervention that our home country made in Guatemala, and the dire consequences it has had on the country and her people. Do we pretend it never happened? Some parents refuse to acknowledge it, in fact. Do we attempt to take some responsibility for the starving children there and some of the inequities of the system? That has been our response. No matter how one tries to hide it, sooner or later our children WILL read about the US intervention in Guatemala, how we caused their 36 year civil war that decimated so many of the native peoples there, and how we’ve not been really good neighbors to most of Latin America. We figure that even if we didn’t want to, for that reason alone, we need to do what we can to help there.

Yes, there are starving children all over the world, and anytime you do something to save a child, you’re doing a good thing, but THESE children could be our child. What if Dona R. had not decided to relinquish this child? Our child might be suffering from severe malnutrition, along with over 50% of the children in Guatemala. The words from the Bible- “what you do to the least of these, you do to me” is truly brought home in this case, but instead of Jesus’ face, I see our Lettie’s face there.

Land distribution is so inequitable in Guatemala. The rich have thousands of acres, much of it totally unused, and the poor people have so little. They don’t have reliable water to water their subsistence farms, they don’t have medical care, they don’t have accessible schools, and they don’t have all the things that we take for granted in this country.

There are, however, incredible people like our friends Anita & Gregory (www.hands-of-hope.com) and our new friend, Marla Johnson. Anita & Gregory run a medical clinic for the very poor in Guatemala out in the hills outside of Antigua. Marla and her husband run feeding centers in the department of Chiquimula, Guatemala, where they feed well over 600 children a day. I spoke with Marla by phone- she didn’t set out to start feeding centers, but she said the first year they were there, she saw the starving children, and over 100 children died (these were just the reported deaths) from lack of food. She had no clue how to do a feeding center, but she just did. People like these folks make a huge difference. They set out to do something, and sometimes find that there are different needs and they just do it. I admire them for leaving their lives of comfort in the US to move there and work to help people. They are truly following a higher power that leads them into the service of others. As a Christian, I see a BIG difference between those who worship Christ and those who actually follow Him. These are folks who follow and I admire them so.

Since Guatemala is a part of our family, we do what we can from here. Right now we’re working on a fundraising concert that will be held in Austin at Central Presbyterian Church (www.cpcaustin.org) on Sunday, Nov. 22, from 1:30-3:00 PM. Joe McDermott http://www.joemcdermottmusic.com will be our featured artist. His “openers” are April Rain (Chinese dancers), a martial arts demo (with a Guatemalan born child as one of the performers, and our Lettie, playing piano with a friend playing violin, performing “Luna de Xelaju” a popular Guatemalan song. We’re raising money now with sponsorships (from $50-1,000.) and then for the concert, rather than selling tickets, we’re asking for donations for the children. Donations are tax deductible (make checks to Generations Church, the sponsoring church of Marla’s feeding centers) and you may donate any amount. We’re hopeful that we can raise a few thousand for this.

In the spring, we’re working on premiering “Looking for Palladin” (http://www.palladinmovie.com) a movie made in Antigua, Guatemala, in Austin as a fundraiser. The director and distributor are on-board with this, just need to get a theater to donate their services now. If anyone has any “ins” with a theater here, please let me know.

For those families like ours created through international adoption, our lives have been enriched by the addition of another culture. As we “acculturate” our families, we hope that we can enrich our communities with the beauty of these other cultures, while still remembering that we’re raising American children, too.