14 October 2008
Unanswered Questions
Posted by BaBa under: Daily Life; Retrospect; Travel .
Today I pondered the question that almost all adoptive parents ponder. What about the birth parents? Why did my thoughts turn to this today? The answer to this question is much easier than the first. I am in San Francisco and in Chinatown. Everywhere I look I see Chinese faces and I wonder.
Most of the question that I wonder begin with How or Why.
1. Why was he not able to stay with his birth mother? Why did they choose to leave him?
2. How did the social and political climate influence their decision?
3. How could they choose to leave him to the care of others? This seems to be ultimate question.
I wonder what his birth parents are like? I wonder if he resembles his birth relatives.
I hope that I will be prepared to answer these questions and the others that will come slowly at first and then more rapidly as the years go by. I know that with God’s help I will have the words to tell him as much of his story as we know or can discover. We will try and understand the cultural and political factors that contribute to the orphans in China. We will create his story from wheat we know and our best guesses, but will never know the actual answers to some of the questions.
As much fun as we are having raising Sheridan and having him as our son, we must remember that these questions are on our minds and will be on his one day soon.
One Comment so far...
ShariU Says:
17 October 2008 at 6:49 am.
Last night I was reading the Shaoey & Dot book to my Abby (5 years old). There is a page with an illustration of a room in a Chinese orphanage with several babies in walkers and a few others lying in cribs. As I was reading the book, that page just hit me. I told Abby when she was a little baby that she lived in a room like that with lots of other babies. I explained to her that her Chinese Mommy and Daddy couldn’t keep her, so they “took” (won’t cover that with her quite yet) her there to the aunties who took care of her until we could come get her. She said she didn’t know that and she seemed okay with it, but it broke my heart. I know one day she’ll begin to have questions about her origins and I just pray I’ll have the wisdom to give her answers she can understand.
