OK, I know I'm behind the 8-ball with this, as The Today show and the sponsor and all that have apologized...
Why am I not a "mom"? Why am I a "non-mom mom"? Or, post-apology, and "adoptive mom."?! Why is my daughter my "adopted daughter" too? Isn't she just my daughter? Or my "Chinese daughter"...WTF? So she has almond shaped eyes...you know what - she squishes up her nose and closes her eyes when she really laughs, just like her mom...what's more important?
Why does everything have to be catagorized and sliced and diced?
And really, Matt and what's her name on the show....do you really think you are better parents than us because you mixed up your kids on your own? And even the other "moms" in the non-mom category...I've seen step-moms, grandparents etc who are waaaay better parents than the person who birthed the kid.
I could bring up all the hard times we went thru to get H. But you know what, that's no different than you marking me as different because I didn't go thru labor for 14 hours. It DOESN'T MATTER how you became a parent to a kid...get over it, world. I don't want to be a quantified mom - I don't want it to be "Your the best adoptive mom." That somehow means "well, your the best at 2nd best." Somehow it's seperate and not equal.
I've got news for you: "mom" is not a title bestowed upon you...it is not a birthright of odd sorts. Mom is not "Duchess" or "Queen" or "Princess." Mom is like "Doctor", "Officer", "Judge" - it's earned, folks.
I'm mom.
Get over it. Every waitress and store clerk and person also shopping for cereal don't have to tell me "She's soooo cute" - why aren't you commenting to the 3 other white moms with white kids in the aisle? Because I'm different. But guess what? I'm not. Really, I'm not.
I'm mom. Period. My Mother's Day outing was to go out in the crappy weather to Target to get batteries for the Fisher-Price piano, cause it died, and H was not happy. That's what makes me a mom, regardless of what H looks like and where she came from.
I'm just mama.
Rethink your damn competition next year, Today/Teleflora.
3 comments:
New blog post.....
Sorry, nyt, I have to agree and to disagree...
I think it's a disservice to our kiddos to say that how we came to be a family doesn't matter. Yes, I agree with you on that. To say that both P and my journey, and her journey is insignificant is a lie.
But in something as insipid as this, when it comes to a Hallmark holiday like this, we are no different. There is no "adopted mom's day". It's just "mom's day", and at that point, any of the other distinctions don't matter for the purposes of what they were trying to achieve.
It bugs me that by making us a seperate category, it implies that how we mother is different, and as Mothers all over the world are held in the highest regard on this one our of 365 days, by making us a seperate category, we are marked as innately different. And what I want to teach H is that yes, we are different, but the end result is the same. We are a family. I'm mama, he's dada, and she's baby.
I don't want everything in her life to be different because she was adopted. And her having to nominate me in a different category of some lame-ass contest does just that. You have a different perspective than I due to your past. I acknowledge that, and I may be cracked. But I don't want H's adoption to overshadow every aspect of her life.
As to why I wouldn't want to be labelled as the group I'm in...I guess the un-pc way to say it is that it's like all kinds of other groups out there...they can label themselves, but if an outsider does, it's bad. It's the nature of wanting to define ourselves. Certain races use terms with others that are the same race that I would be called a rascist for calling them. Homosexuals too...but it's ok for them. Even some of P's engineer friends will refer to themselves as dorks and nerds, but if I do it, it's a witchhunt!
I just have to disagree that it's ok that we were treated "seperate but supposedly equal." And I have to disagree that it wasn't a subliminal value judgement on their part.
Pics yet?
Pictures are here, translation is delayed (again), and scanning will begin shortly.....
Everyone's perspective is colored by their own experiences. The ironic part is that we will never know if we did it "right" for many years to come. We can only do what we believe is best at the time.
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