Holidays can be a little bit tricky in a Full Spectrum
household. Take Easter, please. The morning egg hunt presents huge problems
when one child goes Machiavellian (strategy, speed, ruthlessness; goal:
vanquishing cousins, sibling…result: victory) and one goes aspergian (general
neural overload - candy, neural/visual/auditory overload – frolicking cousins,
warp-speed sibling; goal: vague…result: paralysis, tears). (Please see
self-explanatory Figures 1 and 2.) Ditto, Birthdays: think piñatas, favors
&c. We have adapted by
focusing on the pre-filled Easter basket, the set number of packets – one for
each child – in the piñata, and so forth.
Figure 1 Figure 2
St. Patrick’s Day, too, has its potential pitfalls. Over
oatmeal breakfast on that fateful day, I was sharing an uplifting story of how
the children’s Scots great-grandfather would wear a button on his bum that
read, “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” much to their Irish great-grandmother’s chagrin,
when Z asked me, “Mama, am I Irish?”
[Censored!] I was completely tongue-tied. There was a long
and (to me) somewhat uncomfortable silence. I’d’ve preferred to have been
thinking about many other questions right then, including my ongoing internal
debate over which is better as the face ages: the jowl-less wrinkles of your
skinnier folk or the wrinkle-free jowls of the pleasantly plump?
Ahem. Since Z was adopted from China, I have a ready-made
response for one of the hardest questions: “Why didn’t my birth mother keep
me?” China’s one-child policy –for all its questionable aspects – offers the
option of a simple answer to this complicated question: “Your birth Mama gave
you up because she had to, since in China most couples are allowed only one
child.”
But what about this question? Is Z Irish or not? Clearly she
is not genetically Irish. But her maternal great-grandmother was fresh off the
boat from Ireland. Pardner, G and I are all genetically part-Irish. As I sat
there, mouth agape, Pardner (Thank you universe for Pardner! Thank you! Thank
you!) came to the rescue, assuring her in a strong brogue that, “Everyone’s
Irish on St. Paddy’s Day!”
“Good,” she said, “because the leprechauns are going to come
to our school this weekend and turn everybody’s chairs over.”
Oh.
Walking into school several weeks after St. Patrick’s Day,
Z asked me, “Mama, if we can have ancestors…can we also have ‘anbrothers?’”
After I stopped laughing and, frankly, bragging to everyone I ran into over the
next few hours about how funny Z is, it hit me that she is still thinking about
ancestry a great deal.
Maybe all those Easter eggs – and all those other material,
tangible, often-edible (and sometimes eaten even when not-edible) things --
feel vitally important to a little girl who’s not quite sure what’s inside
herself.
Next year I am just going to say, “Yes. Yes, you are Irish baby. Because you are mine.”
Love and leprechauns,
Full Spectrum Mama
