Close Encounters With a Home Barely Known
LilMtnCbn
07230409/1004/LOCAL
Close Encounters With a Home Barely Known
New York Times
TIM MOORE, 32, grew up in a California home with a shag rug and sand-colored
sofas, but his soul screamed for color. "I liked reds and oranges," he said.
"Only later did I understand why. You like certain things because your
ancestors liked certain things, and it is inside you."
Mr. Moore, who was born in Mexico and adopted by an American family at 3
months, does not fault his adoptive family. "It would have been so helpful if
my parents would have had even a painting of Mexican culture to connect to," he
said. "But they did the best they could and didn't know better."
His older sister, Dellory Matthews, 45, has, however, put his insights into
practice. When she adopted her daughters Emily, now 14, and Katy, 11 in Russia
in 1999, and took them home to Salt Lake City, she embraced their heritage,
buying Russian jewelry for them, along with table linens, vases and holiday
decorations, and learning history and traditions. "I knew how important it is
to validate their culture in the home as well as ours," she said.
Instead of ignoring their children's cultural roots, many adoptive families
today are recognizing that their children will have a dual identity. Parents
are taking language lessons; families are joining culture camps; some parents
are taking the child back where he or she was adopted. And adoptive families
are decorating with objects from the child's birth country.
Maxine Rosenberg, a Manhattan psychotherapist who specializes in adoption and
who wrote "Growing Up Adopted" (Simon & Schuster, 1989), said that adopting a
child abroad raises many issues. "If I don't embrace my child's culture," said
Ms. Rosenberg, who has a 30-year-old daughter adopted from Korea, "then I run
the risk of denying it, which would cause resentment and identity issues. But
if I go overboard, I'm forcing the difference."
The actress Angelina Jolie said recently that she is building a house in
Cambodia, to keep her adopted son, Maddox, in touch with his roots there. Few
adoptive parents go that far, but the author Tama Janowitz has put a Chinese
scholar's rock next to an Andy Warhol painting in her brownstone in Brooklyn
for her 8-year-old daughter, Willow, adopted in China at 9 months. In other
homes, parents are draping a curtain in a Ming dynasty pattern over a
Disney-theme bassinet and mixing SpongeBob SquarePants figures with Russian or
Asian action figures.
Joy Lieberthal, a social worker and the president of Also-Known-As, an Internet
organization for adults who were born in foreign countries and adopted, said
that a decade ago adoption experts began hearing from people in her
organization that they had felt a sense of loss and isolation as children. "We
all had funny last names that didn't match our faces," said Ms. Lieberthal, who
was born in Korea, adopted at 6 and raised in upstate New York.
At the same time, China and Russia began allowing foreigners to adopt children
born there and, like many other countries, started requiring prospective
parents to stay two to three weeks to get visas for their children. (Of the
21,616 international adoptions last year up from 8,102 in 1989 6,859 were in
China, 5,209 in Russia and the rest in such countries as Guatemala, Kazakhstan,
Ukraine, India and Vietnam.)
While waiting for the visas, the parents had time to explore the countryside,
learn about the culture and, of course, go shopping.
"You really relate to the child's culture and appreciate it," said Maureen
Robertazzi, 50. She and her husband, Frank, 46, who live in East Hanover, N.J.,
adopted their 8-year-old daughter, Aubri, as an infant in Hangzhou, China.
"We heard the music, tasted the food, saw things we wouldn't see in Chinatown
or in magazines that we now have in our home including typical floral paintings
and wind chimes," Ms. Robertazzi said. She said that near the White Swan Hotel
in Guangzhou, popular among adoptive parents, there were stores filled with
Chinese furniture and street artists who did paintings for new parents to take
home along with their babies.
The cultural immersion can begin even before the trip. Dr. Andrea Colton, 51, a
dermatologist in Boca Raton, Fla., read everything she could about China before
adopting her daughter Emma, now 10. The trip solidified her appreciation of
Chinese culture.
"I never liked the color red, dark woods, the old wooden beds or the blue and
white pottery before," Dr. Colton said. "Now I love it all. I have a big bowl
of Chinese ceramic balls, silk paintings in Emma's room and blue and white
pottery. I think part of me feels Chinese because of her."
Thomas Heaton, 44, a single United Methodist pastor in Nashville, Ind., has
been making rice and beans for Sunday supper since adopting his son Manuel, 9,
in Guatemala five years ago. (Because Guatemala is one of the few countries
that allow single men to adopt, he returned two years ago and adopted José, now
14.)
As Mr. Heaton's love for his sons grew, so did his appreciation for their
culture and its textiles. A year ago, he started Mayan Traditions, a company
that sells baby blankets, bibs and linens from Guatemala. "If I hadn't visited
the country, I wouldn't have known how looming is part of their culture," he
said, noting that part of the profits are returned to the boys' orphanage.
Dr. Jane Aronson, 52, a Manhattan pediatrician who specializes in treating
children adopted abroad, said that adoption agencies now commonly encourage
families to do things like incorporating décor from the child's culture into
their homes. Such changes, she said, are good for the children.
"Where they came from is an integral part of their identity," she said. " `Yes,
you are adopted and this is your family, but you will now know your whole story
and grow to understand it.' "
Dr. Aronson, who adopted sons in Vietnam and Ethiopia, has brought their
cultures home. When Benjamin, now 4, came home from Vietnam at 4 months, she
draped a Vietnamese flag over the crib. Now the flag is framed and hanging in
the den. "He likes the flag here because it's where he watches TV," Dr. Aronson
said. This year she adopted 6-year-old Desalegn in Ethiopia and brought back
Ethiopian ebony figurines of animals for the mantel. She and her partner, Diana
Leo, also bought a globe, which Desalegn (pronounced DESS-ah-lin) spins to find
Ethiopia. "He will say, `My country, my country,' " Dr. Aronson said.
But she expects that Desalegn will become a typical American. "Kids learn the
language, dress in sneakers and jeans and love it all," she said. "But when
people speak to him and see he looks racially different than me, he will know
and be secure in his cultural identity, too."
Embracing the adopted child's culture goes beyond décor, of course. Holly
Adams, 40, and her husband, David, 42, adopted their 3-year-old son, Benjamin,
in Russia when he was a baby and returned in April to adopt Sarah, 2. Ms. Adams
is Norwegian, her husband Czech; they live in Fitchburg, Wis. "We have a Czech
vase from my husband's grandmother and a Norwegian rose painting," she said.
When they went to Novosibirsk to meet their son they were struck by the
landscape and the graciousness of the people. So they bought a painting of
Russian people playing in the snow, which now hangs in their living room.
The Adamses, who sometimes go on picnics with other families who have adopted
Russian children, say that some parents go overboard. "Every time this family
comes to the picnic, they are dressed in Cossack clothes, and so are their
children," she said. "We don't live in Russia, and everything we have can't be
Russian. I don't dress in Norwegian clothes. That is not who we are. We are all
a family, and it's a mixture of cultures."
On July 11, Kenneth Blakeslee, 50, of Seattle, took his 8-year-old daughter,
Valerie, to an annual cultural festival there, later joining four other
families who had adopted girls in China. (His daughter and the four other
adopted girls call themselves the Su Sisters.) The Blakeslee house has Asian
décor sprinkled throughout; for the garden, Mr. Blakeslee made a gazebo with
Chinese curved arches, dragon décor and Chinese calligraphy for good luck.
A love of Chinese culture started slowly for the Robertazzis, of New Jersey.
They returned to Hangzhou three years ago to buy lavender and gray silk carpets
for the living room, which now has a Chinese garden theme. Fountains gurgle,
wind chimes tinkle soothingly, bamboo greens surround the oyster-gray couch.
Their daughter, Aubri, has for now decided to stop taking Chinese language
classes, but Ms. Robertazzi plans to continue her own Chinese classes in the
fall.
The trend forecaster Faith Popcorn, 53, notes that it was not so long ago that
adoptive parents ignored the child's ethnic identity. "Can you imagine that
there was a family who adopted a Chinese daughter and didn't want her to eat
rice because it was too Chinese?" she said. Ms. Popcorn's daughter, G. G., eats
bok choy grown especially for her in an East Hampton garden and lives with
antiques influenced by Chinese design.
But the pendulum can swing too far. "Some people become a Chinese family, and
everything becomes Chinese," said Dina Rosenfeld, the director of the
undergraduate program in social work at New York University and a specialist in
adoption issues. "It's upsetting, because the family has forgotten who they
are."
Parents like Mr. Blakeslee in Seattle are struggling to find the right balance.
"We have accents in the house," he said. "Not every room is red."
Even innocent mistakes can be painful. A family might make their daughter's
room a Chinese enclave, Ms. Rosenfeld said, and leave the rest of the house
American, which "only leads to a child's sense of isolation."
Ms. Lieberthal, of Also-Known-As, mentioned a family that removed all Korean
artifacts once their daughter went to college. "That was a message that they
did it for her, and it wasn't for them," she said. "What you really want to
translate is that I am equally vested in learning about the culture and you."
And when a child begins saying it's time to sell the balalaikas on eBay or to
send the Guatemalan textiles to Goodwill, experts say that parents should
consider it just normal teenage rebellion. Ms. Lieberthal advises moving the
furniture and cultural artifacts out of the child's room, but not out of the
house. "If the parent holds firm," she said, "it gives the child the freedom to
explore and the freedom to come back."
Failing that, there are always posters of Britney Spears.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
Elizabeth Case
Dellory Matthews helped to run a Mormon internatioanl adoption agency called
Focus On Children.
She left some time ago after a Focus On Children client killed her adopted
Russian daughter (the girl was from Vladivostok - it had been a second
adoption with Focus).
Interesting how Dellory doesn't mention that fact in this quote.
Elizabeth Case