How Adoption Changed Me - A Story About Toes

  As Megan at Millions of Miles says, it's great when nothing is much going on at home but it also means there's nothing to blog about (if you haven't been to her blog, you should.  Read it all.  She's great.).  Since we're just living our lives here, I don't have much to share right now.  D went to Roi last weekend and I had the kids on my own for 3.5 days, which was a challenge but with playdates, meal planning, and a lot of deep breaths, I made it through.  Sky is doing fine, Fire cutting molars and being crabby about it (who wouldn't be?), and both kids have colds.  It's the same-old, same-old at our house. 

  But this post is about toes.  I've been mulling over whether or not to share this because I've been worried that I will be judged harshly for it.  But I know we've all had these kinds of thoughts, especially adoptive parents- it's the essential question that we all ask:  how much will this child be MY child.  And as we get to know and grow to love our children, we feel foolish (at least I did) for even thinking such a thing.  Sky is more my daughter than any I could have imagined.  She and I are so similar in so many ways, including it seems, in our toes.

  On to the story:  It was October-ish of 2010.  D and I had had our first interview with  the Central Adoption Authority and were waiting to be assigned a house.  We knew that we were starting a family but almost nothing else.  At the time, we didn't know anything about life on Kwaj (we were still living on Roi and didn't know many families), and assumed that our daughter would stay home with a nanny.  We knew we wanted the nanny to speak to Sky in Marshallese and to have a cultural influence on her.  My secret fear stemmed from not knowing how Marshallese our daughter would become and it manifested itself in worrying about how her toes would look. 

  Many Marshallese here on Kwaj and on Ebeye wear shoes only for work and otherwise wear flip-flops, and many Marshallese children grow up only wearing those when they go to school.  Have you ever seen someones feet that haven't been confined to shoes for the better part of their lives?  Their toes don't get curled in the same way, they're longer, and more spread out.  Take your shoes off and look at your toes- are they the same shape as the shoes you wear?  If you're like me, they are, and I wanted my daughter to have feet that looked like mine.  My internal conditioning said that feet are supposed to look like mine and I was worried that Sky's (yes, we already knew what we wanted to call her) feet wouldn't, especially if she was going to be surrounded by a Marshallese influence all day. 

  I knew I was being silly and never said anything to anyone about it, and of course, that insignificant fear faded as I fell in love with Sky after her adoption.  I was painting my toenails a few weeks ago and the memory of that fear came back to me.  I looked at my toes and realized something, something so important I've been processing through it ever since.  Back before we brought Sky home, I was worried she wouldn't "be like me", that she would be more influenced by her birth culture than by her adoptive family's culture.  What I didn't realize is that I would be influenced by her birth culture and that influence would change our family's culture and the visible display of it. 
   I rarely wear shoes and because they haven't been regularly confined for over three years, my toes are losing their "shoe" conditioning.  Sky has worn shoes enough to have her toes curl a little bit but she primarily wears flip-flops. While I was painting my nails I realized that my own toes have changed, they're longer and more spread out- my feet are beginning to look like the "Marshallese feet" I was worried my daughter would have. Our feet are the same because mine have changed. 
  What I didn't know back then was how much bringing our children into our lives would change us.  Before becoming a parent (and especially an adoptive parent in our unique bi-cultural situation)  I thought that it would be all about molding the child to our patterns and I don't think I could have been more wrong.  Right now, I can't think of a single thing about D and myself  that hasn't changed because of how our children have molded us.  I can't believe that it's taken me this long to really see that and I love that it took toes to make it so clear.

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