You look just like your Daddy!

The Diversity training brought up so many things to think it about. One of the things that was addressed was adopting a child of a different racial back ground. We had never really talked about that as a couple. It is not something that needs to come up when the plan is having biological children. It is pretty obvious what the race of the baby will be....me plus my husband equals equals a Norwegian, German, Irish baby! And with that mix that baby would probably have a temper! However, in attending this diversity class we started thinking about how we would handle a baby that doesn't look like us. Or did we even want a baby that doesn't look like us.

Leyla told many stories about people that wanted children that looked like them and she gave scenarios on people that didn't care what the child's nationality was. She gave scenarios of Caucasian families adopting African American children and how much the Caucasian families learned about the differences in hair care and skin care for African American children. Or families that adopted Latino children and how the adoptive parents learned as much about the child's ethnicity as possible so they could make new family traditions that included the child's heritage. They were very inspiring stories of open minded people. Leyla also said that as adoptive parents you wouldn't be judged from social services based on if you wanted a child to look like you or not. It was a decision that was completely up to the adoptive parents but it was something that most people didn't think about so we all needed to take sometime to think about it before making a decision.

I knew for me there was no question on if I wanted the baby to look like us or not. I didn't care. I wanted to be a mom and it didn't matter if the child was Caucasian, African American, Latino, Asian, you name it...I didn't care...heck if it was an alien from mars I would have been open to it....well maybe...I mean I would have wanted it to look more like Marvin the Martian from Looney Tunes than that slimy alien Sigoruney Weaver battles in those Alien movies...but I may have even taken slimy if that were my only choice because my main objective was to be a mommy and now since my first plan didn't work out it was to be a mommy to a child in need. But I didn't know how my husband would feel, altho I couldn't imagine he would care either.

After, the diversity training was over we were headed back to the house and we started to talk about how our eyes had been opened up to different things we hadn't thought about... like parents giving up their children because they knew they were dying. Or how our hearts broke for the kids that didn't get to participate in the Christmas activities.....and how wrong we thought it was for the system to allow a child to feel like an outsider. And then we talked about interracial adoption.

I mostly listened to my husband talk. He talked about how in siting in that class it hit him that our child wasn't going to look like us even if the skin tones matched. It would be some else's eyes we looked into instead of our own...no matter what our child would not have a piece of each of us. There probably wouldn't be times that someone said, "You look just like your daddy." Or if they did say it we would know the truth...they didn't get those looks from us! My husband talked about how he always pictured us having a little girl with my hair and his eyes. He thought the little girl would be a spit fire like me but would follow her passion like him. The more he talked the more I felt the lump in my throat get bigger. It made me sad to hear his words...not because they were untrue but because I had thought all these things myself. Suddenly this conversation wasn't about adopting anymore but more about him grieving that little girl he dreamed of. As I tried not to cry I started to think to myself....why can I not give him this gift? Why do we have to be here....where are you God? Are you listening??? And with those thoughts the tears once again began to fall.