Antidote to All Things Buggy.
My latest personal bugspray:
This diaper/wipes pouch 
and this bib 
and this diaper bag 
.
I love the imagery of the skull-and-crossbones, the candy-skulls, and the tattoos, especially used to adorn All Things Baby. It flies in the face of sentiment and, right now, sentimentality is wreaking havoc on the adoption world. Anything that stands up to its onslaught is allright by me.
What’s wrong with a little sentiment, you ask? And by that question, you mean besides the fact that it leads
to this 
and this: An invisible red thread connects those that are destined to meet regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may tangle but will never break. ~ Ancient Chinese proverb
and, yes, even this: Do not be afraid, for I am with you, I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west.~Isaiah 43:5 ?
Sentimentality sounds the death-knell of what’s real because, in fact, the effect of sentimentality is to erase the present moment and replace it with a romanticized version of the facts–a sort of dreamy netherworld. That’s why those who reject sentiment are often accused of being unromantic. Or unpatriotic. Or uncooperative. The world at large really wants to buy into the Hallmark Card. And the ladybugs. And the red thread.
But it is possible for couples to be completely in-love-feel-it-to-your-toes romantic without sentimentality. It is also possible to adopt a child with a sense of outrageous - excitement - about - how - this - is - going - to - change - your - life - forever without sentimentality. It is even possible to swoon over the child’s clothes, her 100 wishes quilt, her nursery, and her diaper bag without sentimentality. Not without swoon. Without sentiment. There’s a difference.
Please don’t misunderstand: I am not advocating my particular taste for Dios de los Muertos fabric as a remedy to sentiment. Avoiding sentiment can be accomplished by a myriad of different tastes. Dress the kid in martian fabric or puppy fabric or ferris-wheel fabric–whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn’t serve the coded purpose of turning your adoption into a fairy tale…because that is what the ladybugs and the red threads do. I bought the tatooed bib and the calaveras diaper bag because I had never before imagined that flaming hearts and skeletons could be associated with baby (other people are way ahead of me in this realm). In other words, I was not going to opt for the buggy fabric that acts like a secret handshake, that says, hey, I’m one of you, too, and aren’t we all neat, and (queue music) it’s a small world after all. (Pat back here.) Because I don’t believe that. The world is more complex than that, and it’s a damn good thing that it is.
The alternative to living with complexity is to live in a ladybug world. And I have a deep distrust of the ladybug world, not because I am an angry grouch, or because I have some deep-seeded paranoia, or because I want to flaunt my easy sense of counter-culture. That is not the goal. Yes, the cutesiepie bug-and-thread stuff can rise to the vomitous level. Some days (like on referral days), reading some blogs, I come away feeling like I need to get in the shower and wash it all off. It’s that sticky.
But that is not really it either.
I distrust the ladybug world because it exchanges many of the hard truths of IA for platitudes. And it is not that I need to push the hard truths of IA on myself all the time. I’m truly not in the business of self-flagellation. If I lived there all the time, I wouldn’t be adopting. But to never discuss or debate the challenges inherent in IA, to see this opportunity to parent a Chinese-born child as only a way to the warm fuzzies, is to ladybug it.
So, what I’m really saying is that sentimentality is subtly connected to a sense of denial. It has political undertones. If you believe that God wrote in the bible that your children will be brought to you from the east by way of adoption in China, well, then, congratulations…you’ve discovered a spiritual mandate to adopt…If a-parents are connected to their Chinese-born children from the beginning of time by a red thread, then…heck…the birth parents couldn’t have really struggled over their decision because this abandonment was meant to be.
Never mind that the verse from Isaiah was meant as a type of formulae for the destruction of Israel’s enemies and not a commentary on international adoption. Never mind that the original context of the legend of the red thread is a romantic one, a legend about married couples finding each other, not about parents and children. Never mind about that. As Scarlett O’Hara says at the end of GWTW, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
That’s the trouble with sentimentality. It’s subtle. It’s easy. It’s familiar. But it makes things disappear.
__________________________
Read this post from the Twice the Rice blog, written by an adult Korean adoptee, for additional perspective on why the buggy-fying (and red-thread-ifying) of international adoption is so off the mark.
___________________________
In an effort to be consistent (something I’m not always so good at), I am going to take my blog’s epigraph (”Keep a green bough in your heart, and the singing bird will come”) down off the site. Although I’ve only ever seen it on one other a-parent blog and so it hasn’t attained the star status that the others I’ve quoted above have, it has the potential to misrepresent the entire IA process as one that is destined to be. And destiny has no place in the IA world. The concept of destiny relies on sentiment to do its dirty work.
I chose this epigraph originally because it seemed to work well for both infertility and adoption, and because it’s a line of poetry and I’m a poet, but my reasons are really beside the point. The point is that it romanticizes adoption (and infertility, for that matter), and so it’s gone.
It’s probably more accurate in my case to talk about a dead branch and a squawking bird anyway. I’ll keep the SBird moniker, though, because I have a birdy name in RL, so it fits that.
Right On!!!! Great post!
Shelby
Comment by: Shelby - 08.25.2006 - 1.56 pm
You’ve put to words the same thoughts that I have about these topics. To attribute one’s fortunes for good or ill to destinty, fate, God, or what have you—that opens the door to a scary place. A place where kings have divine rights, slaves deserve their lot, and material wealth is a sign that one belongs to the elect.
Or, to put it in a way that hits closer to home, to buy into the red thread is to also buy into those comments from folks who say that maybe infertile people “just weren’t meant to be” parents.
No ladybugs or pandas for our kid. Whatever it’s going to be–ducks, frogs, wombats, skulls, or pentagrams–it won’t come with the baggage of history rewritten as fairy tale.
Comment by: Snow Monkey - 08.25.2006 - 2.03 pm
I was truly shouting while reading this post. I hardly know you, SBird, but I adore you. I ADORE YOUR WORDS! For the last 10 months now, I’ve felt like the odd-Mom out: no red-thread sentimentality, no ladybugging. It felt like I was the only person in the IA world that was the least bit bothered over the cliched Isaiah quote being used (follow the leader) completely out of context. And, as someone else pointed out, if The Red Thread is invisible, how do we know it’s red. For nearly a year, I have felt like an adoption alien. Not any longer.
The shouting? My scared-the-napping-cats shouting? While reading this post, it was as if I have been watching my team (lagging so far behind on the scoreboard) and, LO and BEHOLD, the ALTDTC ideal scores, scores, SCORES again! What a gift to have your words “out there.” With such diplomatic grace but from a firm, intelligent stance - your words speak for so many. I will read this post again and again.
Can I please have a copy of the new bird image? It’s perfect! And so was this post.
Comment by: Carrie - 08.25.2006 - 2.32 pm
Love your writing here. I fell for every ladybug, red thread saying there was when we first started this process. And then I woke up. Great post.
Comment by: Jacquie - 08.25.2006 - 2.53 pm
What a great post. I was doing the head nod the whole way through.
Like Carrie, I’ve felt very alienated the past 13 months. I’m so happy I finally sought out, and found, like-minded people. What a relief to know others feel the same way.
Oh, and the skull and crossbones rock the house.
Comment by: Jessi - 08.25.2006 - 5.44 pm
Sticky is right. Emetic. And just tragically wrong. Never understood it…
Thanks for putting this out there!
And I love your new print!
Comment by: atomic mama - 08.25.2006 - 6.08 pm
Right on. The whole idea that the child we will adopt was “meant” for us is just repulsive to me. Does that mean she wasn’t “meant” to be with her birth family? That in order for her to be with us, something didn’t go terribly wrong for her? It’s arrogant, presumtious, lazy, and disrespectful.
Comment by: Dee - 08.26.2006 - 12.20 am
Veddy, veddy nice thoughts. I’ve always felt a bit creeped out at the “bug” and the “thread” way of thinking…maybe because I come from that culture and found it…ummm, naive(?) that suddenly embracing these concepts would somehow make this process easier or better.
Let’s put it another way. I don’t think an orphan, laying in his/her crib, awaiting adoption is thinking of red threads or ladybugs.
Comment by: Johnny - 08.27.2006 - 4.24 pm
Extremely well written, very poignant. Thought provoking. Can I say a bit sad? While I don’t think my daughter was meant to be with us, I do feel that she was a perfect fit. Just what we all needed. She needed a family since her first one had to give her up. We wanted to parent a child. It was and is a perfect fit. No one should have to grow up without a loving family…no matter how it came about.
“In a perfect world, there would be no orphans.”
Comment by: Christie - 08.27.2006 - 9.54 pm
Christie–
Well, I imagine for anyone who has embraced these mythologies of their adoption, the loss of the mythologies, the exposure of their false pretenses, may be a bit disorienting, a bit sad. But, as I said in my post, for me it is entirely “a sense of outrageous-excitement-about-how -this-is-going-to-change-my-life-forever.” And I “swoon” over size 12-18M clothes–especially pink dresses–just like the next person! I’m just not depending on ladybugs and red-threads to create a false sense of complacency and good-feelings for me about the adoption. I want to face the realities of IA, not erase them. But it’s not a trade-off–facing the hard realities of IA doesn’t mean you lose the excitement! It doesn’t mean you become all sad and gloomy! You get real, you vow to do something about our largely inadequate responses in this country to IA, and you get very, very happy about your new family member.
Thus, your final point is well-taken: I wouldn’t be adopting if I didn’t believe that we should all have the opportunity to grow up in a loving family.
Comment by: SBird - 08.28.2006 - 11.05 am
I really needed to read this today. I appreciate you putting this out there. I was just coming off of one of those weekends where I felt like I was in the twilight zone for feeling and believing differently than those that were trying to sugar coat it. Thank you. Really, thank you.
Comment by: Nicole - 08.28.2006 - 1.10 pm
Yes, Yes. Thank you for this post and the link to Twice the Rice. “Meant to be” and “everything happens for a reason” made me squirm before I even began the adoption process. It frightens most people to think it, but much of what happens in the world is totally random. And then there’s that pesky free will. If you believe everything happens for a reason, what reason could possibly be good enough to explain why a child must lose their birthparents or a parent must lose their child?? And perfect fits? Our children may become (and become is the key word) wonderful fits with our families, but if they do, it’s because they grow up in our families and we all grow together, not because the “right” child magically appeared at our doorstep.
Comment by: Anne Marie - 08.30.2006 - 6.49 pm
Wow. You’ve done a great job of putting into words the feelings I’ve had about the bugs, thread & some of those interesting wishes I’ve received via Quilt Swappage. Seriously, who wants to romanticise infertility? But, you nailed it by explaining how doing so is an attempt to make it disappear. I often struggle with balancing my desire to be honest/real with another desire to be “positive”. I am an adult child of AMWAY parents - Power of Positive Thinking is something that pervaded (is that a word?) my youth….LOL.
When I think of the red thread - I do so in reference to my family/friends. Most recently b/c we’ve been reconnecting with them after living in the closet of infertility for too many years.
I really appreciated reading this today.
Comment by: wzgirl - 09.01.2006 - 8.28 am
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