This is not about My Lil’ Guatling, but something like it. It’s my own lil’ Guatling. Like your own lil’ Waterloo.
Last week, it got me kicked off an adoptive-parent list.
Admittedly, ignoring all Internet etiquette I shot my mouth off in another forum and someone learned my take on things. My comment was harsh, uncompromising, and personal. Also, maybe, I was hypocritical. By remaining on the list, I appeared to embrace a pejorative. Why stay? Because like any parent who adopted internationally and is now searching I welcomed any information about my daughter’s origins, though the list often made me angry. There was a full-blown discussion of Gotcha Day that was notable for peeling back not one micro-layer of advantage or entitlement.
I will not state the name of the group, the pejorative, or the phrase that reminds me of talking about your new Pomeranian.
(However, somebody pointed out to me that this post is hard to understand without some background. With that in mind, the issue is about China, an orphanage-assigned surname, and a word created out of the surname.)
I will only say this:
Appropriation of cultural expressions is never acceptable by adoptive parents. Taking the name of something that is filled with history, meaning, and loss and turning it into a jamboree is wrong. That name does not belong to us. We don’t own these girls, and we don’t own their history. As has been pointed out to me so often before, our children might one day revert to their original names. Though the idea basically stops my heart, what I accept is that our children only come to us because they were supposed to be in some other place, with some other people, and it all went south. Especially in the case of children named by orphanage staff, that surname represents no less than that total bitter truth.
It will be argued by some that the name doesn’t matter because the work of the group is to put girls from the same region in touch with each other. No one can challenge the goodness of that. But names do matter. In my twenties I attended a party full of wealthy couples where the hostess announced to her husband after inquiring about my background, “Get this little Greek girl a drink.” Across a lifetime that incident has remained my one-and-only encounter with ethnic prejudice, yet to this day I can still remember the room we were standing in and what I was wearing and how those words made me want to crawl under a rock. Imagining myself an adopted child in, say, Sweden, treking to “Our Little Athenas” every year and wearing a chiton would probably make me as mad as Tobias Hubinette. Seriously, you wonder?
Undoubtedly, the people in this group will swear that there is nothing nefarious about the name they have chosen to celebrate their daughters’ heritage. And there are girls in the group who are old enough to have an opinion and would think my position insults the good work of their parents. To them, I apoligize. And I accept that I handled it all wrong. I should have joined the group and objected to the name immediately and openly and let the chips fall where they may instead of venting on another forum and making it personal. That part wasn’t so nice.
About three months ago, something happened that brought things home for me. For years, my daughter’s health card carried her original Chinese name because of a glitch on her landing paper. When her permanent resident card was updated we took the opportunity to change her health card. Announcing the change to hospital staff at her most recent asthma appointment, I blurted out, “Yup, F- B—– ’s gone. It says Pegis,” and turned to see my daughter looking at me with absolute and COMPLETE horror and dismay. When we talked about it later I apologized, saying that this was an example of how it’s almost impossible for a non-adopted person to put herself in the place of an adopted person. And I promised never to do it again.
Because that name belongs to her and no one else and only she will decide how it is used.
