Archive for July, 2012

Astrid Dabbeni, adopted from Colombia, searches for and finds her birth mother

Sunday, July 8th, 2012

Adoption Mosaic founder Astrid Dabbeni, 41, of Portland, Oregon, recently searched for and found her long-lost birth mother, Carmenza Castro, in Bucaramanga, Colombia, reports Katy Muldoon in The Oregonian.

Standing atop a hotel patio last December, Astrid Dabbeni scanned Bucaramanga, Colombia’s, urban panorama. Glossy high rises, red-roofed suburbs and gritty slums spread for miles across the city where she and her sister last saw their birth mother 36 years earlier.

Astrid, 41, co-founder and executive director of the Portland-based nonprofit Adoption Mosaic, had long thought of trying to find her. Yet, shortly before Christmas, as she was poised to begin, the logistical and emotional heft of that search sank in.

She had little to go on. Adoption records from the 1970s were sketchy. Even if she found her files, corruption was rampant in Colombia’s adoption pipeline then; birth certificates and other documents were sometimes fabricated and unreliable. Plus, she didn’t speak Spanish.

How could she possibly find one person, she remembers wondering, in a city of more than 1.2 million?

What if her birth mother was dead, as Astrid’s sister suspected?

If she was alive, what if she didn’t want to be found?

Astrid’s daughter, Maya, 9, wrapped her in a tight hug. Her husband, Paolo, did, too.

Tears welled in her eyes.

The story Astrid discovers is heart-rending:

Carmenza Castro hid her two infant girls inside a duffle bag, hoisted it, ran from her home and hopped a bus leaving Bogotá, Colombia. She’d later tell her daughters, Astrid Dabbeni and Maria DelValle, that she fled fearing for her safety and escaping a desperately troubled marriage.

That day in the early 1970s, the bus rumbled north to Bucaramanga, on a plateau in the Colombian Andes, where Carmenza didn’t know a soul. She and her babies disembarked into a new life that would deliver fear, loss, anguish, hope, happiness and – one day – healing.

Bucaramanga’s nickname is La Ciudad de Los Parques, city of parks, and that’s where the three lived for perhaps as long as a month.

A kind stranger witnessed their routine and took mercy. He gave Carmenza enough money to rent a room, so she and her daughters would have a roof over their heads.

They were warm, dry and safe for a time – and that’s where, as Astrid tells it, the story grows fuzzy.

After months or perhaps a couple of years, Carmenza found a better job in another city. She arranged for her landlady to temporarily watch Astrid and Maria, and she sent money home each week or month to cover their care.

Yet, when Carmenza returned, all her belongings had been thrown away, she was banished from the house and the only things right in her world had vanished.

Her girls were gone.

***

I urge you to read the entire fascinating article, which includes a video link. Part 2 begins here.

Like many other people connected to adoption, I know Astrid through her compelling, popular, and thought-provoking presentations at Latin American Heritage Camp, where she leads workshops and has shared details of her journey. Sending best wishes to Astrid and her family! ~

 

 

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Book review: “Home is a Roof Over a Pig,” by Aminta Arrington. About moving to the land of your child’s birth

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

 

Like many other adoptive parents with children born in another country, I harbor a fantasy of someday packing up our family and moving to the land of my children’s birth. In this dream scenario, my husband and I rent a house, enroll the kids in school, and get jobs to pay the bills. Once situated, we learn the language, shop in the local market, experience traditional holidays, and eat authentic food. We transcend the rank of tourist, and become regulars in the neighborhood. More important, so do our children.

Writer and adoptive mother Aminta Arrington has done exactly this, and her newly published memoir, Home is a Roof Over a Pig (Overlook Press), brings to life her family’s story.

The book opens with Aminta and her husband, Chris, as parents in a blended family: two teenage sons from Chris’s first marriage, and three young children together, including their middle child, Grace, a preschooler whom they adopted from China three years earlier. When Chris retires from his 26-year military career, Aminta, who studied in Japan and holds a master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins, gets the couple hired as teachers of English at Taishan Medical College in the province of Shandong, south of Beijing.

As Chris observes after he, Aminta, and their three youngest children settle into their new, small apartment, “It’s China out there. We are in the real China.” Almost everything in the family’s life and world is different, from the alphabet (there is none; they use characters), to child-rearing (for starters, a one-child policy), to philosophies of education (a single textbook, on which is based the dreaded “test”), to politics (a changing economy, where Mao remains an influence). But after the expected shaky start (which really isn’t that shaky, considering), Aminta, Chris, and their children adjust remarkably well. Before long, everyone speaks, reads, and writes Chinese. Six years later, the family lives in Beijing.

Aminta Arrington is the best kind of guide to a foreign country: curious, open-minded, and observant. She befriends several of her students, who reveal their thoughts on Chinese attitudes and mindsets while participating in her informal, after-school salons. Arrington is also a gifted linguist, fascinated with the Chinese language. Among her many lucid explanations of the origins and meanings of pictographs, she relates that the title of her book comes from the Chinese character meaning “home,” rendered as a roof over a pig.

As an adoptive mother, I was inspired by Arrington’s wholehearted embrace of Chinese culture, and the efforts she made to connect her daughter Grace with the foster family who cared for her as an infant. Readers who wonder about this experience will revel in Arrington’s report of the entire village welcoming Grace, including the “Eldest Brother” who had been her special companion. Although Aminta and Chris decide not to visit the orphanage who placed Grace—the couple objects to the obligatory “donation”—Aminta is able to establish that the official version of her daughter’s birth story—the “finding location” and the identity of the person who found her—is  actually false. Aminta sums up her reaction with these words:

“I did not have the facts surrounding her birth or her finding to give to my daughter. And ultimately, I could not give her the culture or the life she left behind. But I could give her something else. A whole village who remembered her. A knowledge that she was not just Chinese, and not just from somewhere in the Jiangxi province, but from a certain place. Not words on a map but a real place alive with the faces of those who lived there and loved her. I could give her relationships.”

Isn’t that we all hope for our children?

Home is a Roof Over a Pig is a must-read for adoptive parents with children born in China. It will also appeal to anyone interested in contemporary China, its educational system, language, and culture. Armchair travelers will delight in Arrington’s vivid depictions of daily life in China and trips to destinations well-known and off the beaten track. Arrington’s story is engaging from beginning to end. I recommend it.

To learn more about Aminta Arrington, including how to order her book, visit amintaarrington.com.

 

 

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Adoptive parents who are older

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

As an older adoptive parent to two young children (ages 10 and 7), I’m always interested to see how other people handle the situation. Notice I didn’t write “challenge,” because for many folks, older parenting doesn’t present any more challenges than parenting when younger. In fact, couldn’t one say that parenting at any age challenges some more than others? The struggles remain constant regardless of age.

Parenting a child requires love and energy, of course, but it also requires dedication, and a single-minded drive to go the distance. Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. More important than chronological age is level of commitment.

In this article on Huffington Post, Too Old To Adopt? Not The Case For These Parents, Ann Brenoff profiles several women and men who adopted as older parents, and whose children seem to be growing and thriving and doing just fine.

You’re never too old to adopt or love a child, say adoptive parents who were midlifers when they welcomed new family additions. In some cases, the parents had already raised children; for others, it was jumping on the parenting train for the first time before it left the station for good.

***

Lori McCoy’s adoption story had a more painful beginning: She lost her seven-month-old son to a form of muscular dystrophy. Her recovery from the death of her son took years. McCoy, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area (and blogs for The Huffington Post), was 47 when she and her husband adopted Chanti, a 3-1/2-year-old girl from Cambodia. That was 10 years ago.

At 57, Lori finds she’s not the only older mom in her daughter’s class. “I know many who are my age or darn near close to it. Honestly, my age isn’t even a factor in our lives.

***

Karen Bradley, a 50-year-old single mom in the Phoenix area, had three biological children and then adopted another three. At the time of her last adoption, she was a week shy of her 46th birthday. “From a very early age, I always knew I wanted to adopt,” she said. “I fostered kids for nine years, and after seeing children returned to homes that were less than ideal, I decided to pursue international adoption.” Her first adoption was at age 40 — Kevin, a 4-1/2-year-old boy from China. She then adopted two more times: Bryndan, a 2-1/2-year-old girl from China when she was 43 and a seven-month-old baby girl, Macyn, from Ethiopia when she was 45.

“In some ways, being an older parent is easier,” Bradley said, “because I feel like I am more patient and have realistic expectations. I understood, and accepted the fact that adopting at such a late stage in my life would mean pushing retirement out until [Macyn] graduates college,” Bradley said, adding, “[it’s a] small price to pay for the absolute joy she brings to our lives.”

 

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Double dipping

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

As readers of this blog may be aware, I recently joined another, bigger blog, Adoption Under One Roof. The move was motivated by my desire to step away from my Mamalita blog, due primarily to my guilt at not keeping it up. Even when I wasn’t writing blogs, I felt I should be writing blogs. After I wrote a blog, I thought, “Could I edit this better? And does anybody really care?”

Then my mother weighed in. “What do you mean you’re at a new blog? It took me six months to get mamalitathebook on my Favorites. Do I have to take my computer into the shop to add this one? How will I keep up with news of the kids?”

So here I am. Instead of feeling guilty that I’m shortchanging one blog, I now feel guilty that I’m shortchanging two. Leave it to me to make a choice guaranteed to double my anxiety.

Or so I would have thought. Because, for reasons I don’t understand, being accountable to two blogs energizes me to want to write more for both. Or maybe it’s that I just realize that people do care–okay, one person, my mother.

What I haven’t yet figured out is how to make readers of one website aware of recent postings on the other. Example: Yesterday I posted a blog at Adoption Under One Roof that I think you might like. It’s called Tween, and is about Olivia, and her current status as one.  Here’s the first paragraph:

Overnight, my 10-year-old daughter, Olivia, is suddenly a ‘tween. The child who allowed me to shop for her clothes, dutifully wearing the boxy t-shirts and sneakers I purchased, now insists on fitted tops with her leggings, the better to go with her black flats. No backpack for this girl, either. Olivia insists on a “tote.” Tubes of lip gloss fill the bathroom shelves—neutral colors, but still—and her collection of hair ornaments has reached double digits. Her fingers and toes glitter with a rainbow of sparkly polish. I’ve never seen a person wear a scarf with such panache.

 

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