This week I started teaching a course new to me, a college level multicultural lit course for seniors in high school. One of the objectives of the course is for the students to understand a text from multiple perspectives other than their own. This is a challenge for students who simply by nature of their development are quite focused on their own story.
On the first day of the course I asked each student to share a story of a defining moment in their life. Each one was unique, though we were able to see a common thread; that defining some aspect of ourselves is almost always done in relationship with another person who opens our eyes to something new.
Here is one of my moments that I chose to share in class that day. It is much more personal than what I typically share, but if I am asking my students to open themselves to new experiences, I need to make myself vulnerable as well. This version is a little different from the story I told in class, certainly more personal I would say, because the nature of stories is that they change overtime, with reflection and perspective. Here is today's version.
When we travelled to Ethiopia to pick up our baby son, Ian, I was on the precipice of motherhood, without really understanding the changes to my identity that were about to take place. I was filled with such overwhelming excitement, joy and anticipation, for this was something I had waited for a very long time. For weeks I had carried a grainy photo of a sad-eyed baby who was now in my arms warm and wriggly and wonderful.
The day after we met Ian for the first time, we had the opportunity to travel to meet his parents. During the long, dusty trip I clutched a notebook full of questions to ask, my thoughts with my baby back at the care center. Pulling into the courtyard of our meeting, I immediately recognized the mother of my son, as he bears her features, most strikingly in his eyes, and before we knew it, we were all ushered into a tiny room with an interpreter to begin.
But what was so very clear is that this beginning for John and me, was an ending for this couple before us. Grief washed over them, filling the room, drowning our silly questions and splashing us with the realization that our joy was their heartbreak. So we decided that the most appropriate action was to simply grieve with them. Now, the rest of this story lies with our son, of private conversation that belongs to him.
When I left that room, I had a more complete understanding of what it meant to be Ian's mom. And when we finally arrived back in Addis, I broke some major protocol, and literally raced through the dusk toward the care center, a weepy, dusty mess, unwilling to be turned away at the gate until I held my child close, carrying the love and grief of two mothers in my heart for him always.
What my defining moment was about is really the collision of two stories. And how when I understood that my own story of adoption was incomplete without realizing, accepting and embracing my child's Ethiopian story, the love, tragedy and heartbreak.
Two stories, now three, incomplete without the others, forever intertwined, full of the tragic, complicated, all encompassing love that is my identity as a mom to my two precious sons.
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