On Children Of Our Own

Shortly after I'd returned to work after Luk Chaai's adoption, someone pulled me aside. "Can I ask you something?" she asked. "Sure," I said. In a hushed and slightly embarrassed tone she asked me, "Do you love him like he's your own?"

"No," I told her. "Not like he is my own. He is my own."

It wasn’t a nosy question, but a vulnerable one, and I’m glad she asked it. But as I told her, I'm wasn’t sure I could fully answer it. Because somehow the children with whom I share no biology are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bones. The strands of our DNA reveal no genetic similarities. Blood doesn’t bind us, yet spirit connects us. 

I remember waiting for Luk Chaai and feeling as if those signs in the Babies R' Us parking lot mocked me. You know the ones that say Expectant Mother and are feet from the entrance to accommodate swollen bellies and equally swollen feet. Occasionally, I'd walk past those signs and feel illegitimate somehow.

There was no listening to the beating of a heart, no humming to a baby in utero, no forsaking of caffeine, no abstaining from wine. Aren't these the things that make a mother?

I had a handful of pictures, a medical report with as many missing blanks as filled in ones and measurements of head size that showed my child had one truly big noggin. Yet I was a momma. 

My heart lurched long before I met my babies; it flip flopped and flop flipped. I prayed over their pictures, hit refresh endlessly on my inbox waiting for updates, yearned to meet them, dreamt of what was to come. But the day that I felt like their mother was the day I tasted their grief, the day I watched the salt dry from their tears.

Each time, we drank from a bitter cup that day, both me and them. My husband clutched my hand, our eyes transfixed on the little person before us. Ying and Luk Chaai had very different reactions upon meeting us. Both clearly recognized us from our photographs, both uncertain and afraid, each in their own way.

I remember a friend telling me that a man wants children, he wants something of "his." My friend was right. A man does want something of his. The sorrow, the joy, the worry, the fears, the sleepless nights, the blindingly beautiful days, they are his. They are mine.

They are this and so are we.

We are theirs and they are ours.