Girl From Ethiopia

Just words?

"I'm not going to wake up him!"

"Where I should put this?"

A. is speaking like an ESL student. I don't like it. I want her to take that final leap into perfectly constructed grammar. I hear her friends at pre-school, so I know this isn't just typical 4-year-old language development. This is the result of a child constructing sentences in a new language.

Not that she hasn't pulled off an amazing feat. She has. In less than one year, she has all but mastered English. It's not surprising that she doesn't have perfect language skills.

So why am I always correcting her these days? What's my issue?

I'm thinking about her in kindergarten in September. I don't want her to stand out, to stand apart. It's my ego, I know, but there it is.

Because looking at her, it's obvious to no one that she's adopted; I don't want her way of speaking to tip off the world. I'm not ashamed of her adoptive status, I simply want her to have the freedom of telling or not telling others her story. Because it's her story and she should be able to tell it when and how and to whom she wants.

Right?

Just Another Girl?

Does the story of an adopted child have a shelf life?

By that, I mean once an adoptive family gets past the initial wave of adjustments --  annoying but minor medical issues, language barriers, tantrums & meltdowns, sibling revolts, lots of extra laundry, and the shock of learning her real age -- does life together become just normal family stuff?

In other words, now that A. has been with us for nearly a year, does this blog still have a raison d'etre?

I'm wondering. I certainly don't look at her anymore and think: "Wow, she's from Ethiopia."

And yet, she is. So now that she's blended into our family and all is nearly seamless, does it still matter where she's from? What must I chronicle here and mull over as a result of that singular fact?

I'm surprised myself that at this juncture, I have little interest in maintaining her ties to her culture beyond the most cursory efforts -- special-occasion visits to an Ethiopian restaurant, a map of Ethiopia on her bedroom wall, attendance at the yearly Ethiopian Culture-Day celebration uptown, and a vague promise to return to Ethiopia at some fuzzy point in the future.

I didn't anticipate this laissez-faire attitude, but there it is.

Now for the big question: Do I have the luxury of this lax position because my daughter and I share the same skin color? Would I be more vigilant if I knew that every day when she looks at me she's reminded --subtly or not -- that she's from somewhere else?

I wonder.