Love Is a Contingent Emotion
I would not waste my money on the new movie "Orphan." It has clearly been developed by people with narrow hearts.
These are the same kind of people who ask-- who are her "real" parents? concluding that I, a non-biological, older(well, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay older) parent can not be real, because I did not contribute any DNA to my daughter's mix. That I have contributed homemade pancakes and early risings on cold school mornings,
hours over her homework, endless shopping trips (a boring chore for one who hates shopping, but a delight with my darling), loads and loads of laundry, sleepless nights when a sore throat was in the offing and more and more excludes me as a real parent, burns me--to say the least! Here is an essay I wrote several years ago on the reality of parenting Smitten Essay . I describe how love is a product of all the actions you take on behalf of another; the accountability you undertake, the commitments you make. these are the attributes that make a real parent and a real child and that grow love. Orphan Wrong-headed When It Comes to Love
The trailer for "Orphan" questions love--"It must be hard to love an adopted child like your own." and suggests that DNA is the source of love of a child. No, it is not. Because, what, pray tell does "your own" mean? My child became "my own" the moment the legal papers were signed in Wuhan June 15, 1995. In other words, I and her father became legally responsible for caring for our daughter--feeding her,getting her to school, clothing her, comforting her and yes--LOVING her. She did not agree nor do any children, however they become one's children, to be owned by parents. The ownership part is not the child being possessed by parents, but the parents "owning" and carrying out their responsibilities for their child.
Love, I suggest, is something that grows with commitment and time. Love between parent and child therefore is contingent, not DNA driven.
In fact, we have all seen the statistics on the thousands of children beaten, sexually abused and "loved" to literal death by their biological parents. If this is love, I'm having none of it. I'll take my love in my daughter's washed socks not DNA combos. It is the stereotypes about what makes for reality between parents and children that continue to confuse people, the very stereotypes that cultural productions like "Orphan" promote and exploit. Last year I spoke to a Houston FCC group and was saddened to hear how many parents at the book signing for my book, The Dragon's Daughters Return, had been stabbed in their loving parent hearts by the "who are her real parents?" question.
Their children had been hurt by this same question as well. ( See my essay for more on this stereotype Essay: Moments.) But the very real love that exists between real parents and real children is the love that grows from the true heart such as that expressed by Willa, seven years old at the time, for the "bad people" who set off bombs in the London metro in 2005.
Willa's Prayer About Love
The Folly of Adults by Sharon Salzberg July 13, 2009
After the metro bombing in London, in July 2005, my initial response echoed most of those around me: sorrow for lives lost, some anxiety about getting on a subway in NYC, distress at the state of a degenerating world. This was all natural, but remained strictly within "us versus them" thinking. Willa, my then 7-year-old godchild, had another perspective. On being told what had happened, her eyes filled with tears and she said, "Mom, we should say a prayer."
As she and her mother held hands, Willa asked to go first. Her mother was stunned to hear Willa begin with,
"May the bad people remember the love in their hearts."
Willa's startling wisdom often takes me to another place, and a new perspective. She is now 11, and a fantastic artist, a burgeoning actress, a poet, and an imp. It's pretty hard to imagine life without her. Willa was born in China, adopted and raised in the U.S. by 2 of my closest friends. Their family came instantly to my mind when I heard about the trailer for the upcoming movie, Orphan, about an older adopted child who turns out to be evil and wreaks havoc on her new family. The original trailer featured the unbelievable tagline: "It must be hard to love an adopted child like your own." Really? For all the Willas who might have sat in a movie theater somewhere, seeing that trailer, I apologize for the folly of adults. I apologize for our tendency to be unthinking and insensitive, to create and recreate an "other" over and over again.
Almost by definition, the "other" is an object, not a person, and so anything might be said about them or done to them, and it doesn't count, it doesn't matter.
That kind of objectification lies at the heart of cruelty, heartlessness, and so much casual indifference. Can one just say anything at all about children without it counting? There are millions of children around the globe who are or were once parentless due to circumstances completely beyond their control - do their feelings really not matter? Can one then do anything at all to children without it counting as abusive, or hurtful, or consequential? Really? Can one say anything at all about families, with our own definition of a "real" family counting as absolute truth, and a different construct of a family being deemed inauthentic or unworthy or lesser?
Who gets to decide when and how a child becomes your own? What distant entity owns that right? My heart aches for the pain caused by the attitudes we so often perpetuate, the assigning of "otherness" we so often engage in to exclude someone. As recipients, we all know when we confront the ignorance of others of who we are, and we all know the temptation to dive into that person's or group's definition of us and cloak ourselves in it, to know ourselves as not belonging, and inferior and left out. "Don't do it Willa," I keep thinking. "Don't believe that about yourself and your family!" But then, it is quite possible she wouldn't. We should say a prayer. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-salzberg/the-folly-of-adults_b_230479.html
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