ARE YOU FREAKIN’ KIDDING ME??!!!???

And yes, I am yelling.

I won’t bore you with the details about how I found this picture this after noon but….I am hoping someone can answer me some questions. Now take a good look at it.

Now let me add a few more details.

1. The woman is 33 years old.
2. She is an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
3. She is not married (see, no ring on her left hand? Plus, I have first hand knowledge she is not married, has never been married, and has no prospect of getting married. If you want to know how I know, drop me an email and I will fill you in on the details.)
4. The infant she is holding was procured through a hasty adoption after the Haitian earthquake.
5. She is white and clearly does not know how to do her own hair, much less African American hair (which as a former beautician/cosmetologist I can assure you is an art unto itself and NOT something a white-bread chic from small-town Utah can pick up in an instant. How do I know? She tells us all about it on her blog and posts pictures of this sweet boy crying his eyes out while she does a hack job on him).

Now before you get all upset that I have posted a picture of a minor child who is not my minor child on my blog, let me assure you this is from her very open, very public blog. In fact, this was the publicity photo used in the Daily Herald press release about the Haitian toddler finally coming “home.” The blog also houses entries such as a FULL ON PICTURE of his green card with a caption along the lines of “Well, it is REALLY mine since I did all the work. He just stood there and looked cute.”

Now answer me these few questions:

1. Why is just fine and dandy for HER to be a single mother in the LDS church but it wasn’t for me?
2. Do you think for ONE MOMENT her Bishop, her parents, or her ward members EVER pulled her aside and told her she was being selfish for wanting to parent? That she needed to give her son to a man and a woman who were sealed in the temple?
3. And what of the blessings of the sealing ordinance? Isn’t her son just as “bereft” of them as my daughter was? Isn’t he just as entitled to being raised by a husband AND a wife who were sealed in the temple (for at least two years, according to LDSFS)?

Let me repeat my first question: Why is just fine and dandy for HER to be a single mother in the LDS church and culture (she lives in Utah Valley) but it wasn’t for me? Is it because she bought her baby from a Haitian orphanage instead of (gasp) getting pregnant?

 

Why Transracial (Now) Closed Adoptions Suck

 

Family debating my race. about 14 hours ago via txt

I am going to go cry for the entire month of March that you don’t even know this about yourself. What a wretched legacy this whole adoption crap has left you with. I can’t imagine not even knowing what race I am. And yet….my own daughter doesn’t know.  Somehow this didn’t turn out how I imagined/was told by my Bishop, parents, and social worker/pleaded with God that it would turn out.

On pani popo & other things

Dear Ms. Feverfew –

I woke in the wee small hours of the morning (as I frequently do with this pregnancy), and ever since then, I have been consumed with cravings for pani popo.   Oh what I wouldn’t give for some of  those warm, sticky, sweet coconut buns to just…poof!!! magically appear in my oven.

Then, in the shivering, shimmering darkness of a January morning, with nothing but my bedside alarm clock illuminating my wide-awake eyes,  it really hit me…

You probably don’t know how to make pani popo.  A nearly full grown woman who is half Samoan by blood and by birthright doesn’t know how to make pani popo.

But me, a palagi, a haole, does.

And I then I wept.

Silent, hot tears of shame for what I have done to both you and your Samoan grandmother Berta, the one who taught me how to make pani popo but never had the chance to teach you. I  deprived both of you of what you rightfully deserve and is so vital to the Samoan culture: family. I cut you off from that heritage when I relinquished you to adoption and that, dear Ms. Feverfew, simply isn’t right.

Then more questions tumbled out through my tears. Do you even own a lavalava? Have you been to a fiafia? Do you know where Apia is located? Pago Pago? Do you know the difference between Western and American Samoa? Did you learn to dance the Taualunga, the Sasa, or the Siva fia? Have you ever worn a sei? Do you know what ou te alofa outou or talo’fa mean? Could you recognize pani popo, palusami, koko araisa, fa’alify fa’i, or vaisu? Would you like them as much as I do?

While this mother hopes all of these questions can be answered in the affirmative, I realized this morning that more likely than not, they will be answered in the negative.  It would be an absolute miracle for an island girl like yourself to discover those kinds of things in the small, land-locked farming community you have grown up in.

Today, I am going to believe in miracles because I cannot undo what is done. Today, I am going to believe that your adoptive parents (who know full well you are 1/2 Samoan and 1/2 palagi) were wise enough to provide you with experiences, connections, and people who would help you understand and embrace that side of you.  That is my plan for today.

Tomorrow might be a different story though.

Much love and belief –

M.