Catching Lightening Bugs

I was wondering. How would Americans feel if the rest of the world were adopting our kids? Happy? Indifferent? Mad? Would you feel something or nothing at all?

These weird little thoughts flutter around in my head like lightening bugs, flashing on and off except I don’t have a jar with holes cut in the lid to keep them in. I’m at that point where I find sticky note reminders, already forgotten; in the back pockets of my pants emptied out before putting them in the dirty clothes hamper. Years ago I searched frantically for my car keys sure I was going to be late for work before remembering I had put them in the icebox or as they say in places other than southeast Missouri, the refrigerator. Don’t ask. I had an absolute well thought out reason for putting the keys in there. What I didn’t plan on was forgetting the plan along with the reason.

So, back to the thought about others adopting our kids. I was thinking about this because in reading the adoption blogs of others who have been or who are in China right now, you read about the reaction of the Chinese people when these American families with their new Chinese little one ventures out among the masses.

Overwhelmingly, what you read is positive. The Chinese people seem to respond very favorably to what has to be a very strange and perplexing sight of non-Asian adults obviously parenting an Asian baby. On occasion you will read of a family who encountered the rare incident of disapproval. And that is what got me to thinking. How, as Americans, would we react to foreigners strolling along our parks & neighborhoods with our babies, knowing they soon would be leaving with them, never to return? Raising them to speak a different language, a different culture – a world away…

We’re at peace with our adoption plan. We both are reading as much as we can on what to expect and what is expected. We’re in contact with other adoptive parents. We’ve joined a local group of families who have adopted from China. We want to think that when the time comes, and it will, when Alyzabeth questions how she came to be a part of our hearts, our American hearts, we will have answers that brings peace to her awakening adoption reality.

We don’t have all her answers yet but we’re working on them. We will. Still, there are all these lightening bugs. Flashing on and off…