Scary Totoro

When the movie you're watching gets a little bit scary, this is the best way to protect yourself from getting scared. Abe does this every time Mei meets Totoro in his current favorite film, My Neighbor Totoro.You can watch this terrifying clip by clicking here. The scary part starts around the 3:40 mark.

Rejecting the Single Story

On a yahoo group I'm a member of, the subject this week came up about appropriate attire for your embassy appointment in Addis Ababa. An American posted advice on how to dress, including this statement, "You don't need to go in your best shoes or dress as this would actually not compare to the local peoples best dress."

Anyone else cringe? Well, yes, a brave Ethiopian member of this group responded, politely asking for clarification about what this person meant. A few people came to the defense, saying this person meant no harm and why are we all so sensitive anyway? I so appreciated the Ethiopian woman's response:

"Although I have never claimed to be a "I-Know-Everything-About-Ethiopia-So-Come-Run-And-Ask-Me", I do know first hand
about my life experiences coming from the African Diaspora and how that can lend valuable insight to people who are adopting children who look like me. If my being protective of the culture to which I belong to is offensive to
anyone on this board desiring to parent a child of Africa, I then question
whether you are preparing yourself for the reality of being in a
Transracial/Transcultural/Transethnic relationship and what it will take to build and nurture positive self-concepts within your child(ren) from Africa as they take on life here in America.
For anyone who would "assume" the "locals" are all poor and without, NOPE. Talk (sic) a walk downtown while in Adis Abeba, visit the Malls, yes Malls, watch the business women crossing the streets in their heels with a soulful swagger as they strut with their briefcases in tote. Ask them about Gigi, the designer and they will gladly point you in the direction where you can buy Ethiopian Couture...no, not traditional clothing (there is a difference).
So to set one's mindset into thinking "Starving Ethiopia" that's displayed
over and over without seeing the totality of a nation, one would come to the
conclusion that the "locals" best don't compare to Americans best---but then
again, I don't know what the OP meant and would never put her/him on blast without knowing what was meant."

Today, I had another enlightening conversation with my Ethiopian friend Daniel about this subject. He mentioned something about how this person who made the remark about American dress vs. Ethiopian dress must be only "listening to one story." This afternoon, he sent me a link to this speech given by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie, and I'd love for you to watch it too.

We're still working out details on the time and place for our meeting of the Ethiopian immigrant community with Ethiopian-adoptive families, but one detail is for sure: we're here to reject the single story. Watching this video made me tear up in excitement about what this group could accomplish in terms of peace and understanding, for us and for our children.

Calling All Oregon/Washington Families

At the nonprofit for African immigrant-refugees where I have been volunteering for the last nine or ten months, I have gotten to know an Ethiopian man named Daniel who I have had several in-depth conversations with about adoption, Ethiopian culture, the raising of children, and community. He is a stellar person, simply stellar. His ideas regularly challenge me, and I am so thankful to have met him.

Our friend Daniel, dispenser of parenting advice and other forms of wisdom

He is eager to help in a project to connect the many Ethiopian adoptive families in the Portland area and the Ethiopian immigrant community. We had an informal brainstorming session this week about the many amazing things a project like this could bring to our area. While we were in New York, we attended an event at the historic Riverside Church in Harlem that served as a wonderful example of what can happen when an adoption community blends with the immigrant community of their children's country of origin. The Ethiopian community of Riverside Church has come alongside the Ethiopian adoptive families in the area to provide Amharic lessons, cultural events (including home-made injera!), and general support. What an amazing thing.

an impromptu birthday song at Riverside Church in Harlem

If you live in the Portland/Vancouver area and are interested in seeing what we could develop here in the Pacific Northwest, please leave me a comment with your email address and/or write me so I can get your name onto a list. Daniel and I are hoping to have a meeting with anyone who might be interested in starting a group like this sometime around the end of February. Daniel is looking now for a location, and I am gathering together the families. We are excited about what could come, both for us as parents and for our children. Let's build our village.

If you'd like to join us, here is my email: ourownrooney at gmail dot com.

Abe with one of his several African grandmothers in Portland

"Dr. King, thank you"

We got to spend some time with the author of this piece while in New York, once in Harlem, again in Hell's Kitchen. Sitting together sharing comfort food on a frigid day, her thoughts about race made my brain do all kinds of twisty backflips. Then she made me cry. She has a way of doing that. Her son is remarkable, which you can get an idea of in this post.

Go read it.

Thank you, Dr. King.

Choco and Owen

Since getting back home from New York, I've been nesting. There is nothing like being back in your own digs after a time away. Abe and I went yesterday afternoon to our library to restock the top of his bookshelf, the place reserved for library books (when I manage to pick them up off the kitchen floor). As I've mentioned here before, sitting in the children's section of our library is one of my favorite things to do. Yesterday, without looking for it, I came across a copy of A Mother for Choco, a book that has been on my mental "get this book" list for well over a year. I'd never read it, just knew it was about adoption.

I'm sure most adoptive families have a copy of this at home already; I'm just slow on the take. If you're like me and haven't gotten around to reading this book, go get it. I sat down with Abe and read it through, finding it difficult to get through the last few pages, especially when I got to the unexpected twist at the end.

Since we read it yesterday, he's asked to read it at least five more times. I'm not sure how much of it he "gets" right now. He may just like the story and the illustrations. But he does ask for this one over any of the other ten or so books we came home with last night. And he also has been calling himself "Choco," and me "Mama Bear."

He's been assigning us new names for a couple of weeks now. Most recently, he has been "Ponyo" and I have been "Totoro." For the last week we were in New York, I was pretty much exclusively Totoro. One day as I sat Ponyo on the toilet, he said, "Totoro, I like Japanese cartoons." He also told me last night that he is Japanese. Oh, and the name he's assigned to Ted? Chicken. No idea why. Abe=Ponyo. Mom=Totoro. Dad=Chicken.

This is Totoro, the fat guy with big teeth

We also got a book called A Mama for Owen, which is the retelling of a true story about an orphaned African hippo who found a new "mother" with a tortoise after the 2004 tsunami. I liked it, especially since the tortoise was actually a male. The book was criticized for being either too flippant in the face of tragedy or too traumatizing for little ones. Like Autumn, I don't believe in completely shielding our children from suffering. How else will they learn compassion?

Also like Autumn, my heart can't help drifting towards those children in Haiti who were almost home with their adoptive families when the earthquake hit. I also can't help feeling overwhelmed at the number of newly orphaned children now in Haiti. What will happen to them? All I know to do is give, to read, to pray, and give more. There are so many Chocos and Owens. So many.

Give to the Red Cross

Compassion International

Doctors Without Borders

Mercy Corps

Leaving New York

This evening we walked home through Hell's Kitchen. Ted used to live here. We found his old apartment, walked inside the still broken front door and found that his name is on his old buzzer. He used to have mold growing on the walls. It wasn't the nicest of places.

As we walked down "Restaurant Row," I found myself continuing to look upward, still entranced by these majestic buildings. At every turn, I find something unusual, something that piques my interest, something I want to photograph. How long would I have to live here for this wonder to go away?

When I was 23, I left the United States borders for the first time by flying to Budapest. I couldn't believe I was there. I had this sense of amazement that Hungarians also ate french fries and that their trees looked the same as ours. Looking back, I don't know what I was expecting. These were the days before high-speed internet, so I didn't have city photo blogs to look at (at least that's my excuse for being so naive and stupid). I just spent the first few days there in nonstop amazement, excitement, giddiness even, to be in a new and foreign place.

For years after that, I would sometimes lament how this wonder was probably lost forever. I was no longer a travel virgin. I did feel a little bit of that wonder when we first landed in Addis Ababa, but that was different because it was late at night and I was distracted by more important things. I think I had figured that my wide-eyed wonder was gone for good.

Not so. I've spent this last month wide-eyed, sometimes mouth-agape. I can't stop looking. I look up at the tops of buildings, down to the interesting garbage on the street (no kidding), inside shop windows, and my favorite: through the subway window into the subway train that is traveling along side me. I so love when this happens. We clip along, clip along, clip along, together, two trains full of people, on separate tracks, no one minding the other, and then whoooosh! one of us speeds away. Just once, I want a passenger on my parallel train, my brief subway travel buddy, to look up at me, wave, maybe blow a kiss. That might make my whole year if it happened.

I love this city. I really do. Today while wrapping up a leisurely lunch with this lady, that wonderful Alicia Keyes song started playing, "Empire State of Mind." How perfect was that? I had to stop myself from tearing up.

I have loved being here. I don't want to stay, mind you. I miss big majestic trees in the Pacific Northwest. I want the comforts of my own home, and I really miss my friends and neighbors at home. I'm ready to go back to some form of normal life. But the best gift I've gotten from being in New York City for a month was that I was able to experience that "23-year-old in Budapest" feeling all over again. I thought it was gone forever. New York brought it back to me.

Dear city, thank you: for a month, you made me naive and stupid again. That was an amazing gift.

In NYC, we like to eat.

(this blog is suffering for lack of photos)