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 | I Am Not Special
by Teresa R. Funke |
Despite what everyone’s been saying lately, I am not special. I’m a woman following my heart, as I have always done. So why, now, do they insist on calling me special? It’s there in bold print in the e-mails I receive, I hear it in the italicized voices of long-distance calls and I expect to see it on the “welcome baby” cards that will arrive soon. But I don’t feel it. In some odd way, I almost resent it.
In Korea a child waits. She is 8 months old, relinquished by her unwed mother, unknown to her father. Her name, Yun Hwa, means “pretty” and “harmony” and, judging from her picture, she embodies her name. She is small for her age, has a possible hernia and an intolerance for certain baby formulas. She is alert and vocal but slightly delayed on motor skills. She has a beautiful smile.
In a few days she will be bundled by her foster mother and sent on a journey over thousands of miles — leaving behind her country and all she has known — to greet me, a stranger. She will cry and at first I will not know how to comfort her. She will teach me how to be her mother. She is special.
From the days of my childhood I have dreamed of this. Unlike my friends, I knew at least one of my children would come not from my body, but from my soul, that she would cross a continent to be with me, that she would be born into a culture unlike her own to parents who looked nothing like her. Don’t ask me how I knew. Maybe I saw a picture once of an orphaned child or heard a news report about abandoned babies, maybe my heart went out to those kids and I never got it back. But it seems more to have been a feeling I was born with, hence one I never questioned. I was not special; I was young and full of hope.
And I was grounded in my beliefs. I’d been raised to value tolerance, to celebrate other cultures, to shun racial slurs. It felt natural to picture myself the mother of a foreign-born child. With certainty I believed my family would see things as I did. I was naive.
“How can you be surprised?” I ask them. “Haven’t I always said I would adopt a baby?”
“Yes, but we thought once you married and had children, you’d change your mind,” they answer with concern.
My father and stepmother are kind, but they question whether I can handle three small children as my son is 5, my daughter nearly 3. When I assure them I can, my father says I am special to do this.
My mother responds with tears in her eyes. Mexican by heritage, American by birth, she knows what it is like to be caught between two cultures. “How can you think to remove a child from her culture?” she asks. “If you want to help, why not send money to support the mother?” I tell her with all my heart I believe in mothers and children staying together. In a perfect world, I would wish it for every child. I would wish it for this child. But it was not meant to be.
I call my brother who has finished a stint teaching English in Japan and is now in the Peace Corps in Africa. He’s visited more than 30 countries in his 29 years and speaks four languages. I expect him, above the others, to understand, to be my soul mate in this adventure. “Cool,” he says, “but it’s not something I would ever do.”
I am shocked by their responses. I fault them for lacking faith. What it comes down to is that in all those youthful fantasies I never once imagined anything less than overwhelming, we’re-in-sync-with-you-honey, 100 percent support.
But I am trusting. I know they’ll come around. Before I married my husband, I told him of my dream of adopting. He did not understand at first either, but I was smart enough to know I couldn’t pressure him, that the decision had to come from his heart and gradually he warmed to the idea, so much so, you would think he thought it up himself. He is in this with me and I am thrilled. His parents, on the other hand, are baffled by our decision. Among their many concerns is the cost.
“Thirteen thousand dollars,” says my father-in-law. “You have such good health insurance,” his wife offers. “You could have another baby for next to nothing.”
I guess parents never stop worrying about how much their kids can handle, never stop wanting to protect them from the unknown. I should have known it would be easier for friends to be excited.
They cock their heads and marvel at my announcement. They tell me it’s the best news they’ve heard in ages. I am touched by their outpouring of joy, but distressed by their insistence on praise. If they think this is so unusual, so awe-inspiring, maybe there’s something I have not allowed myself to see, some aspect I have not considered. I begin to doubt myself.
I question why this can’t be like giving birth to a baby. Why everyone has to see it as something more. After 13 months of waiting, the stress is getting to me. I don’t know how she is being cared for in Korea or whether they are meeting her medical needs. I cannot assure the paperwork process will run smoothly, that she won’t be delayed in arriving. I can only hope she is growing, since she started out so small. I can’t stop wondering if her birthmother left out something important in her family history.
Will my daughter be accepted? Will she feel out of place? Will she find heartache on the day she searches out her birthmother? Will I react correctly to her questions and concerns?
The stress has been in not knowing. I have felt that stress take hold in my body lately and manifest in my dreams, like the one where we go to pick up the baby, and the social worker warns she is the ugliest child anyone has ever seen. But when they place her in my arms, I see she is truly beautiful, and I’m exasperated no one else can see it.
But I am sensitive, so I will not call this stress. Anticipation is a far kinder word.
What words does her birthmother use to describe her journey, I wonder, and again I feel a connection to a woman I may never meet, yet one who shares her flesh with me. I do not try to imagine her, I do not put myself in her shoes. I simply try to feel her, to know that her presence is somewhere in my child’s world. I reach out for her wisdom, hoping that somehow, when the time comes, she will help me find the words to tell my daughter about her past, needing to believe that, though she could not give her arms and heart to mothering, somehow she has given some of her spirit.
“I shouldn’t ask this,” says a friend. “But do you ever worry you won’t love your adopted daughter as much as your other two?”
I answer her honestly. “No, that I never worry about.”
“Well, you sure are special,” she says, and I cringe.
Then I go home and reread the articles, quiz the social worker, plan future dialogues with my daughter, and wait — impatiently, I wait. When I can’t stand it any longer, I focus on one moment. I am, after all, still a card-carrying optimist and a believer in suspension of time.
It happens when a child is laid wet and bloody on your stomach, when the cord is still attached and you are yet one. A darkness closes in, engulfing everything — doctors, nurses, medical monitors, IV drips and your husband. It swallows sound and vanquishes pain. It holds you tightly, and you’ve never felt so grounded.
And there’s this newborn baby whom you’ve been told can see no farther than a few inches, yet she’s looking you in the eye, and knows exactly who you are. You draw her close, and she hears your thoughts. “You’re here at last and so much more beautiful than I imagined. Remember that I will ask only this of you — just be. Be who you are, who you’re meant to be, and know that I will love you, always.”
The baby cries, the stale hospital air rushes your lungs, the nurse gathers up your child, and the earth jumps and moves again. This is how it begins, this mother-child bond, and this is how I imagine it will be with my new daughter; not in a hospital room but at an airport; not with doctors and nurses standing by but with strangers looking on; not with my husband leaning over my bed, but standing by my side. Time will stop again and she’ll know, somehow she’ll know I am her mother. And I will ask only one thing of her — just be.
There, you see? I am romantic, but I am not special. I’m sa woman fulfilling her destiny, and maybe a child’s, doing my best to trust that all will be well, that God has a plan, that fate will be kind.
But then again, isn’t that what every mother does?
Teresa R. Funke is the author of the award-winning novel “Remember Wake.” Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including the September 2000 issue of Adoption TODAY. Her adopted daughter, Ava, is now 6 years old and thriving. She is the delight of her parents and grandparents’ lives.
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