You Do Not Know My Family

By Martha Nichols

The Ethics of Adoption Writing

When my husband and I adopted a baby son in Vietnam in 2002, I never imagined I’d have to explain to our little boy eight years later why another adoptive mother had returned a child. But last April, that’s exactly where I found myself, along with everyone else who watched the sad saga of seven-year-old Artyom Savelyev unfold.

In early April 2010, Artyom was put on an airplane alone by his American adoptive grandmother and flown back to Moscow. He was accompanied only by a note written by his adoptive mother Torry Hansen, a single nurse in Shelbyville, Tennessee.

According to the Associated Press, the note said that she’d been lied to in Russia about the boy’s difficulties: “After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child.”

The why of a news story like this will always hook us. But as an adoptive parent and writer, it’s become a far more intimate ethical struggle for me.

Within days, I had written an Artyom commentary that appeared on the cover of Salon: “Adoption Fearmongers Take Over.” My focus was on the sensationalized news coverage, including a Nightline report about “the inside stories of adoptions that go horribly wrong.” Yet as the week of Artyom stories roared on, other adoptive parents began confessing their difficulties with problem adoptees, often in specific detail and splashed all over NPR, national TV, and the Internet.

It’s an old conundrum of memoir writing: What right does an author have to reveal private details about the lives of other family members—especially their children? My standard for writing autobiographical nonfiction has long been that I must make myself more vulnerable in print than any relative or friend I write about. So far, I believe I’ve hewed to the ethical side of this personal contract.

But it’s also true that a year after Artyom’s flight back to Russia, I’m doing less writing about my son—or, to be scrupulously accurate, the nature of my writing about him has changed. His views of adoption, in particular, do not seem mine to share...

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

---

Editor's Note: The full text of this piece appears in the April 2011 issue of Talking Writing, in which the theme is "Too Much Truth? The Ethics of Memoir Writing."

---

Dipping into the Past



By Fran Cronin for Adopt-a-Tude

The author is planning to return to Russia with her adopted son the summer of 2012. It will be the family's first trip back to Russia since his adoption in 1998.


We are in southern Russia on the banks of the Volga River. My three-year old daughter stands at my side hugging my leg. The smell of cheap cleaning products is still in our nostrils and the sound of our shoes scuffing along on scrubbed floors echoes in our ears. We have just left the orphan ward where my son has lived for the past five months.

Behind us, the sun is low in the sky as we dip our hot, tired feet into the rippling shoreline. In the distance, a high bridge stretches for a mile over the river as it plods along in search of bigger water.

It is late evening in New Jersey where my mother lives, but she has been anticipating my call. "Your beautiful new grandson" I tell her, "is in my arms. Welcome him to the family."

After three and a half anxious months, my son is at last ours. I cradle him tightly in my arms, breathing in again and again his longed for scent: His new clothes, his clean skin, and the soft down of his hair. In contrast to his pale skin and frail form, the river is massive and overwhelming. I want to smother him with my love.

That was 13 years ago.

Next summer we plan to return to Russia. It will be our first trip back since leaving Moscow in 1998. My son, Nick, will have his Bar Mitzvah next June followed by our first pilgrimage back to Russia. From Moscow we will take a boat down the Volga River to Saratov, where Nick was born.

We will return not only because Nick wants to see where he was born and where we became a family. It was also the last time he had a father. My husband died three months after we adopted Nick.

Returning will be bitter sweet. Moscow is where we were living when my husband died. It is also the epicenter of our family formation. During our four and a half years there, my daughter was conceived and we adopted our son. I arrived a bride and left a single mother of two.

In Saratov, Nick's biological mother birthed him and set him on his fateful odyssey from her womb into my arms.

Still in my possession is the hand written letter she wrote three days after Nick was born. It bears her name, an address, and her acknowledgement of her actions. It's just a thin sheet of paper, yet it wraps around me like bondage. It is the only evidence that links my son to her.

Up until several weeks ago, Nick had never broached the subject of his biological mother with me. But driving home in the car with him one afternoon, he did. Although a healthy and inevitable question to ask, I tried not to reveal my panic.

I told Nick about the letter.

On the cusp of puberty, his hormonal growth will pulsate with questions. Although I have all the love he asks for, I don't know if I have the right answers to give. Yet a sheet of paper with very few words flutters in front of him, leading him perhaps to answers and a place I cannot go.

Next summer when we return to the banks of the Volga and see the high bridge that spans its distant shores, I will hold the hands of my children and together we will wade into the waters of our past and perhaps a new future.

***

Please comment if you have a similar story you would like to share. We would like to start posting reader comments in the future.

Letters to Iris and Leo

GUEST POST BY ZEREN EARLS FOR  ADOPT-A-TUDE

---

Opening Note by Fran Cronin

"Some day you will be able to assemble your rich and varied heritage: Flemish birth parents, American and Greek adoptive fathers, and Turkish-American and Greek grandmothers. It is my hope these letters will assist you in understanding your heritage. You have inspired me to write my life story for you."

So Zeren Earls, Turkish by birth, now a U.S. citizen, wrote when first watching her baby granddaughter sleep. In July 2004, Iris was born in Brussels and soon adopted by Earls’s son Selim and his partner Kimon. Selim and Kimon have been joined in civic union for 18 years; ever since they met, they hoped to adopt and have a family.

In Letters to Iris and Leo, Earls recalls her intrepid journey from girlhood to grandmotherhood. Transcending personal history, this richly detailed memoir, told over the course of 98 letters from 2004 to 2009, hovers like a protective canopy over her grandchildren. It’s not a cautionary tale but the equivalent of an elder affectionately welcoming the next generation into the wonders of life. Earls juxtaposes her memories with observations of Iris, and then her brother Leo, as they grow through their first years.

"The book finished itself when I got to the present time in my life," she told me in a recent interview. As a special feature in Adopt-a-tude, the first three entries from Letters to Iris and Leo appear below.

Earls, an attractive, elegant, and energetic 74-year-old, was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1937. Her father was a government-trained scientist and her well-bred mother trained in the customary domestic arts of sewing and knitting. Earls likens her parents to a bridge between the fading Ottoman Empire and the burgeoning Turkish Republic. Her mother, sensitive to her own lack of educational opportunities, pushed Zeren and her younger sister, Fulya, to excel academically.

The carefully parented life the sisters shared came crashing down when Earls was 16. While at boarding school, she received word her father had abruptly died from a cerebral hemorrhage. He was 57.

Earls speaks of herself with reserve and modesty, but it is clear she’s made the most of her industrious nature. She finished her English-language high school studies on a scholarship and was then awarded a full scholarship in 1957 to attend Duke University. According to Earls, she was the first international student to attend Duke. She graduated in 1960 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

In 1976, Earls was among the original group of civic-minded artists that created First Night, an evening of arts and cultural activities around Boston on New Year’s Eve. In 1992, she became the founding president of Boston's First Night International, the umbrella organization for all the First Night communities (currently there are 180).

Earls is also a prolific, globetrotting travel writer for Berkshire Fine Arts.

Intertwining her past with her son’s real-time adoption of two children, Earls has crafted an unusual and tender book. She’s also asserted her independence and chosen to self-publish it. Working with Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Mass., she used the store’s on-site Paige M. Gutenborg digital printer. Books take 15 minutes to produce and can be created on demand. They sell for $20.

For more information about Letters to Iris and Leo, click here. You can also visit Harvard Bookstore’s website (www.harvard.com) and then click on the Paige M. Gutenborg tab for the bookstore’s catalog of self-published books.

---

July 21, 2004
Little Compton, Rhode Island

Dear Iris,

Your birth is two days away. Early this morning my son Selim called to tell me that the adoption agency had given him the good news: Your birth mother, a twenty-nine-year-old Flemish single parent, has agreed to your adoption by him and his partner Kimon.

My excitement is boundless, yet tinged with fear. What if your birth mother changes her mind at the last minute? The agency says that this has happened in another case. Life can be full of barriers for same-sex couples. Selim and Kimon have been on a waiting list for two years, a longer period than is the case for couples of opposite sex. Not everyone realizes that non-traditional families are perfectly capable of raising healthy and happy children. I find comfort in knowing that your birth mother considered your adoption by a gay couple before reaching a decision. I applaud her fortitude.

Since they met in Greece in 1992, Selim and Kimon have wished for a family with children. It is fortunate that they relocated to Belgium, where same-sex adoption was possible. They went to an agency in Antwerp called Gewenst Kind (Wanted Child), which had been founded by a gay man and which had placed several children with same-sex couples in the past. The process required traveling monthly to classes in parenting and adoption issues for a year and a half, along with home visits and interviews with a psychologist, social workers, experienced adoptive parents, and police officers. Selim and Kimon had to hire an interpreter, since the classes were conducted in Dutch.

My mind wanders around the house thinking of your future visits. I should not get carried away like this. I must wait until you are entrusted to your adoptive parents. Having waited for two years, I can certainly wait two more days. At least I will head back to my winter home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so that I can leave quickly upon hearing from Selim. But first I’ll go for a quick swim. I can’t wait to introduce you to these shores. Soon we will swim here together.

Love,

Grandma


July 23, 2004
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Dear Iris,

Today is Friday. The call I had been waiting for came late in the day. Before they were able to see you, your parents had to wait until your birth mother had spent some private time with you and was ready to leave the hospital after giving you your first bottle.

“Congratulations, you are a grandmother!” said Selim, sounding happy but exhausted at the other end of the line. Having had only forty-eight hours notice, your new parents have been busy rescheduling prior commitments and preparing to receive you at home.

You were born at 2:30 pm at the Klina Hospital in Brasschaat outside of Antwerp, Belgium. The doctors had to induce your birth mother’s labor, because you had already dropped down in her belly. Thus you arrived two weeks earlier than due. The doctors say this is quite normal since you are your birth mother’s fifth child. You are a healthy baby weighing 2.7 kilos and measuring 50 centimeters in length.

Your birth mother named you Sarah (Sarah Brouwers). Your adoptive parents have given you the name Iris, a name which each had short-listed independently. The name is indicative of your partial Greek heritage, as Iris is the Rainbow Goddess in Greek mythology. This is also the origin of the name of the beautiful flower, which comes in all the colors of the rainbow.

As soon as I received the happy news today, I e-mailed an announcement to all my friends and relatives. I also purchased my plane ticket online. I will see you next Tuesday, a week after you arrive home from the hospital. I am off to shop for presents now.

Love,

Grandma


August 3, 2004
Brussels, Belgium

Dear Iris,

You were asleep when I arrived. Your eyes are closed most of the time. Since you were born two weeks early, you are catching up for time lost in your birth mother’s womb. I have many presents for you from my friends in the States.

You begin sucking your fingers when you wake up, signaling that you are hungry. You are a beautiful and quiet baby. Your new parents tell me that you look like your birth mother, whom they briefly saw in the hospital lobby. You have her fair skin and deep blue eyes.

We bonded instantly. I enjoy holding and feeding you, speaking and singing to you in both English and Turkish, whichever comes to my tongue first. It is amazing that, after living in the States for forty-seven years, I still remember Turkish nursery rhymes. Selim speaks to you in English, Kimon in Greek. You are a Belgian citizen, so you must also learn the languages of your native country, French and Dutch, especially if you want to communicate with your biological brothers, as your mother hoped you would.

Some day you will be able to assemble your rich and varied heritage: Flemish birth parents, American and Greek adoptive fathers, and Turkish-American and Greek grandmothers. It is my hope that these letters will assist you in understanding your heritage. You have inspired me to write my life story for you.

Love,

Grandma

Adoption Books: What's the Message?

By Fran Cronin for Adopt-a-tude

Not Your Average Bedtime Story

 

My fifteen-year-old daughter has banished me from her room. She’s made it clear we are long past reading bedtime stories together. But I still revel in the occasional snuggle with my twelve-year-old son, and I love sinking into a good children’s story—especially if the message is right.

For parents of adopted children, messaging is key when choosing books to read or share, whether a child is a preschooler or near adolescence. The story needs to feel true, the circumstances familiar, and the emotional sensibility realistic.

But somehow these requirements are tough to fill. Few books resonate with my son’s story as a Russian adoptee. How many overly sunny stories about the perfect rainbow family can you read? And he is definitely not a little girl adopted from Asia who took a long plane ride to get here.

On a recent day this fall, I decided to ask a local librarian for advice. At the main branch of the Cambridge Public Library, Amanda Gazin, senior children’s librarian, efficiently rattled off almost a dozen titles about adoption. The result was a broad overview of what the genre offers.

Not surprisingly, far more books have been published for preschoolers. After reading many of those on Gazin’s list, however, I’d say the results are mixed...

 

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING

---

Editor's Note: Fran's piece appears in the December 2010 issue of Talking Writing, in which the theme is children's books. The issue includes references to more than a hundred children's books, multiple author interviews, and cartoon panels from the graphic novels American Born Chinese and City of Spies.

Fran and I think Adopt-a-tude readers will find this TW issue of particular interest. There are lots of discussions about identity, the development of children's imagination, even one middle-school author calling for "no more orphans!" in young adult books. Happy reading—Martha Nichols

---