14October2008

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.