The Portal to Boomeranger World

Is Love Only Biological? Why "Orphan" Is off the Mark

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 
http://www.thimbleberrypress.com/Smitten.pdf.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 
http://www.thimbleberrypress.com/Moments.htm.) 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 

It's Friendship Friendship: Just a Perfect Blendship

Nourishing a New Life: Yours

What does it take to sustain a life and enable the big changes--the ups and downs that are a  necessary part of life?  And what does it take to reFire--to remake oneself, to reach into those inner places of longing--if I had only, could I still, I wish I had, maybe it's not too late, I will, I must, I am going to, I am doing  it. I am recreating myself.

Painting:  "Tea Friends"    Artist:  Karen Sumati Bates

I think friendship is one of the necessities that makes such transformations possible.

The sustained care of another person. The bond that survives through thick and thin. The link that nourishes and understands.

 Lyrics of Friendship from the Broadway show "Anything Goes" are tooteling through my head.

When other Friendships are soon forgot, ours will still be hot
When other friendships are soon forgeet, ours will still be great
When other friendships are soon forgit, ours will still be it
When other friendships are up the crick ours will still be slick.

Grateful for Friendship

I've such a friendship and I am grateful for it. From our early days in college, we have seen each other through the thicks and thins of our separate lives and through the thicks and thins of our friendship. I've a screen saver photo of us on the rim of Crater Lake, a place I fell in love with in the 5th grade after doing a school project, but never had the chance to visit until some 30+ years later with my friend. We visited a truck stop in a town near Crater Lake, bought the most delicious pies--whole ones: blueberry, apple, peach, marionberry and ate pie only for the days of our trip to the Lake. Pie and palship, what could be better?

Perfect Blendship, but Not Perfect Friendship

We are a perfect blendship. We were never in the popular crowd. We were always political and brainy. We searched out the smart kids and still do. We were a striking duo: light and dark. We love to cook together and we both love to garden.

We've got wanderlust. Mine is nailed down while my kid is growing up, hers is restrained by work constraints and slaked by early wanderings. She can't carry a tune and I love to sing, but we are most of the time in tune with each other. We are godparents to each others kids and that is another layer of our blendship.

When ours is not a perfect friendship--when we argue or dissappoint each other, go through the thins, the perfect blendship of our long bond now some 40+ years, sustains us.

We don't understand each other from time to time. We have baggage that has never been discussed, and perhaps should be, but may never be...sigh... We hurt each other unknowingly--and deeply--from time to time: the blessing of our deep bond and long term understanding sustains us.

So Tend and Befriend

For Boomers who are reinventing themselves, who are refiring their long held dreams, the bonds of friendship and especially long term friendship is a source of sustenance and support. A  UCLA Study documented that women tend and befriend strategy especially in times of stress. In other words, women tend to befriend when they are stressed.

Men tend to hole up alone. And as you are venturing into new inner worlds and bringing those worlds out into the larger arena, you need to be tended, so befriend and refriend If you have not been in touch...what is stopping you?

There is the phone. There is facebook. There is google. And if you feel you must make amends--say "sorry", even if you don't know what you've done wrong. So sorry, to all my friends who I might have wronged...whatever it was, I didn't mean it.

Now can we still be friends?  I'm counting on you.

Here are some friendship links:

Women Friendship

Friendship Among Women

45 Life Lessons by Regina Brett

I'm not too big in the god thing as most people who have read this blog already know, but I do go with the spirit of celebrating life and the life you have now. So setting that little quibble aside, I say I concur with Ms Brett's 45 whole heartedly.

Regina Brett's Life Lessons

Written By Regina Brett, of The Plain Dealer,  Cleveland, Ohio.  "To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me...  It is the most-requested column I've ever written.
My odometer rolled over to 53 in May.  Here is the column once more:

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone...
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and parents will. Stay in touch
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
18. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"
27. Always choose life.
28. Forgive everyone everything.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.
35. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now..
36. Growing old beats the alternative -- dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's,we'd grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
42. The best is yet to come.
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift."

Its estimated 93% won't forward this. If you are one of the 7% who will, forward this with the title '7%'.
I'm in the 7%.
Remember that I will always share my spoon with you !
Friends are the family that we choose for ourselves!