The highlight of our Thanksgiving Day 2013 was the chance for these five kiddos to meet each other for the first time, make fast friends, and have a blast together for Thanksgiving with the McCormick side of our family! I have absolutely no expectation that family members will necessarily like each other, let alone be friends, but it sure is nice when it happens! And it happened with Josephine and Rebecca, who are Braydon’s cousin Aimee’s two darling girls (i.e., K, O, and M’s second cousins). We spent Thanksgiving with them, their parents (Braydon’s cousin and her husband), and with Braydon’s aunt and uncle, parents, and sister, in Washington, D.C.
The day before Thanksgiving the bambinos had their school Thanksgiving Assembly. I was blown away by it. Kyle and Owen are in the school chorus. They sang a few pieces in the assembly. As I watched my boys up there on the stage, I was overcome with emotion.
The Thanksgiving nine years ago, my heart was breaking in our adoption waiting — Kyle and Owen were in an orphanage in Haiti, and I was an emotional wreck laying awake each night crying with fear that they would die before we could get them (several babies/kids did die during the time that we waited, and I lived in fear of it happening to us; Kyle and Owen were so young and fragile as infants in an orphanage unequipped for young babies). I couldn’t help but have all of that come back to me as I stood in the audience watching my sons sing on stage, nine short years later, in their beautiful dress uniforms, confident, and proud, as Haitian-American boys thriving in their lives, with all of the world laid out before them just theirs for the taking.
It is an incredible thing to witness— the transformation of lives, from the deepest desperation and most dire destitution, deprived of everything, devastated… to virtually limitless possibility and almost unconstrained capacity. It is hard to fathom. The emotion took over and I began crying, there in the audience, unable to keep the tears from streaming down my face. I was thinking of their birthmother, who gave them all of this by having the strength and courage to do what she did for them; I was thinking of how amazed and proud she’d be of who they are; I was thinking of how proud I am of who they are. I just stood there watching them, crying with joy and pride and the realization of what we’ve been given and what we’ve done with it. I’m sure everyone around me thought I was a crazy person. But the depth of my gratitude and thankfulness — to everyone who has played, and is playing, a role in these boys’ lives — was the deepest possible in that moment. It is indescribable. I leaned into Braydon, and he squeezed my arm with a knowing that only a couple who has done this kind of adoption together can know. And for that — our togetherness in this — I was, and am, so thankful.
And then it was time for the kindergarten’s performance of “Thanksgiving Tableaux.” There were no tears for that one. I was just smiling ear-to-ear watching Meera up there on the stage in all her glory, looking for us in the audience, and sneaking waves to us multiple times during the show. All three of our kids had spent the past month in school studying Native American history and culture, and the way this was threaded into the kindergarten’s production was ingenious.
Meera was adorable. As were her cute little friends. I hope someday Meera sees this picture (below) and can see what a happy, adorable little 5-year-old kid she was:
Our three kids are currently thriving — just blossoming beyond belief. And that is for what I was most thankful during Thanksgiving 2013. As for the bambinos… they filled out these cards at school a couple of days before Thanksgiving. When they came home in their backpacks I saw them for the first time and was pretty much awe-struck:
{“My brothers / Mom Dad Dog / Teachers / Friends / Swain School”}
{“All the knowledge I can get, my friends, for my school, my home, and most importantly my life”}
{“I am thankful for getting adopted instead of living on the streets”}
Love it all. Especially the notes of thanks. XO
Wow- the children’s capturing their gratitude is a wonderful match to your heartfelt thoughts on what it means to be their parents.
Happy belated Thanksgiving! I am blown away by their notes of thankfulness – so heartfelt, and so them.
Have a wonderful holiday season!
There is something very unsettling about a child believing that he would be on the streets if he had not been adopted. There’s a lot that falls between these extremes. Has he been told this because he was born in Haiti?
It is very unsettling. I’m sure it made some people at his school very unsettled to read what he had written. I knew it would make some people really uncomfortable to face Kyle’s words in this post. And I thought long and hard about whether to do it (whether to open ourselves up to criticism for it). Trust me, we are not one of ‘those’ adoptive families who constantly remind the adoptee of how grateful they should be for us having adopted them. In fact, we probably go too far to the opposite extreme: constantly telling them how lucky WE are that we have them as kids, and how WE are the lucky ones that we get to be their parents. But the reality of Kyle and Owen’s life history is what it is. And, to a large extent, those extremes are the reality for many babies who are born into desperately impoverished situations in Haiti. Poverty that is as extreme as it gets. And we are not willing to shield them from Haitian people who tell them the truth, or to keep them away from scholars who study Haiti, or to hold them back from interacting with folks who have spent time living and serving in Haiti. We are not willing to put them in a bubble and shield them from the truth. So, for better or for worse, they learn truth. They hear stories, they learn reality. Some of it from people who were on the ground, in Haiti, at the orphanage that Kyle and Owen were in, when they were born. And it hasn’t taken Kyle long to put the pieces together in his own mind. He’s incredibly smart that way. And, as unsettling and uncomfortable as it is— he is right: he’d be on the streets (if he was even alive) if he had not been adopted. This we know with about 100% certainty. I am not willing to go into detail here (we do, after-all, keep much of our story and our boys’ history private), so you’ll have to just trust us on this one. And I hope that readers will trust that we’re doing the best we can to raise our sons as educated, adored, beloved Haitian-American young men who know their histories, know their roots, and can speak truth to their experience. Thanks for reading, ~Heather
Kyle has a real knack for figuring things out, he gets books out of the library about Haiti, he talks to Haitians and asks them very direct questions, he talks to everyone he can who knows anything about Haiti.
And is also very very expressive about everything he thinks about. So, as moved as I am, I am not surprised he wrote that is what he’s thankful for.
It is now unsettling to think that you may have interpreted my comment as a criticism, which it was not. You veer toward that interpretation when the comment had to do with how hard it was to read what he had written, indeed, it was unsettling. My question had to do with whether he was told that in the context of Haiti. Between being on the streets and being adopted are orphanages, foster care, group facilities, etc. He is fortunate to having been adopted. He is even more fortunate to receive a 1st class education. He is fortunate to always have healthy food to it. And, of course it goes without saying that he is fortunate/lucky to be with you. Nevertheless I always want kids to know that not all kids who are not adopted end up on the streets.
In Haiti there really are no group facilities and definitely no foster care system, and far too few orphanages to handle the numbers. Thus mass numbers of kids (many as young as 5, or even younger) live on the streets. Many others work as restaveks (child slaves). I’d highly recommend this book written by an anthropologist friend of ours: http://upf.com/book.asp?id=KOVATF06
Happy belated Thanksgiving J-Ms! Such a beautiful post and thank you for taking the chance to post this heartfelt post, I get it.
– Kate