OmegaMom

The Chinese name request lasted two days, tops.  She’s still interested; there was an interesting discussion about how she figured she would still be her even if she had a different name (Shakespeare, anyone?), but the question of having friends call her OmegaDotter and others call her ChineseName bothered her.  I suggested that when she starts school we could talk with her teacher, and maybe her teacher could call her by her Chinese name.  She’s dubious at this point, but she realizes that we can do this any time she wants.

Maybe that’s all she was after—that reassurance?

Chinese camp was a blast for her.  There was a performance on Saturday that included a demonstration of Chinese yo-yoing by a one-time Taiwanese yo-yo champion (who had been teaching the kids), a variety of dances that were quite well done and very long for 7-10 year olds, and a potluck. 

Here’s the “Happy Farmer” dance the kids performed.  It’s –>six<— minutes long, so only watch if you’re really interested!

I was overjoyed at the prospect of no longer driving an hour to Big City, an hour back, working, then driving another hour to Big City and an hour back.

So now that Chinese camp was over and done with, the next big project began.  OmegaDotter has been agitating for redecoration of her bedroom.  Sunday, she and I went to the local bedroom furniture shop and purchased a new bed and mattress for her, and then went off to Target and bought a zebra-stripe comforter and bright pink sheets…the original plan was to do her bedroom in orcas, but she decided she loved the zebra-stripe and that her stuffed orca collection would go well with it.

Every day since then we have been going through the (HUGE.  MONSTROUS.  APPALLING.) mess conglomeration of stuff in her room, sorting it into “keep”, “donate”, and “throw out” bags, a couple of hours a day.

It has been emotionally wrenching for me.

She put her Polly Pockets into the donate bag.

She said, “None of my friends my age plays with My Little Ponies any more,” and *poof* went the MLP collection into the donation pile.

She went through her collection of horsies with ruthlessness, culling her herd to half its size.

Tonight, we went through a box of her old schoolwork and artwork.  All I can say is: “WAAAAAAH!!!!”

There were kindergarten projects.  Pictures.  Old notes to and from friends.  A sign she had designed for the TV cooking show she and OmegaDad were going to do.  An illustrated “mennyoo” with idiosyncratic spellings.  Various stories.  She was ruthless there, too—keeping much less of it than I had expected.  Some things I grabbed for myself, many she “gave” to me to avoid saying she didn’t want to keep them but sort of did want to keep them at the same time.

The old bed gets listed on Craigslist for this weekend; the new bed gets delivered soon.

Folks, it’s the end of an era…

Early this summer, I signed OmegaDotter up for Chinese Camp in Big City.  When she heard, she pouted—seriously.  She did not want to go, no, no, no!  This came with associated stomping of feet and whining.  This Monday, as we were driving in to Big City early in the morning on the way to her week’s worth of Chinese Camp, she whimpered some more, and I laid down the law:  She was going to Chinese Camp, she was going every year we could do it, and we’d make her do it when she was a teenager, too.

Why?  She whined.

Well, because we want you to get at least a smidgen (I gestured with my fingers less than an inch apart) of an idea of Chinese culture and her heritage.  Oh, and, by the way, adults who were adopted from other Asian countries who didn’t get to go to culture camps as youngsters felt more deprived than those who did.  (Not to say those who did go felt “not deprived”, just a little “less deprived”.)

She flounced in the front seat of the car and “hmphed” and made various unhappy sounds as we pulled into the parking lot.

When I picked her up that afternoon, she was much happier about the whole thing.

Tuesday, she did a performance of the dance she was learning for OmegaDad and me after dinner.

Today, she showed us a (really cool!) “magic” trick with Chinese yo-yos that she has practiced.

And tonight, at dinner, she asked us if she could use her “real name” rather than the name we gave her when we adopted her.

Well.  What a difference a few days makes!

Now, first off, I remember very distinctly being about nine years old and telling my parents—also at dinner time—that I wanted to be called “Elizabeth”.  No real reason—I just liked the name much better than my given name, Katharine.  I also remember my mom and dad acquiescing, and calling me Elizabeth for a week, at which point I begged them to puh-leeze call me Kate again.

However, OmegaDotter has a reason:  SiSi is the name she had before we adopted her.  It’s a connection to China and her past and her heritage.  So we’re going to do our best to remember to call her that all the time, rather than OmegaDotter.  She’s asked to do it for a week to see if she can get used to it.  She wants to be registered at school using that name—I’m not sure we’ll be able to do that, alas, but maybe we can ask her teacher to call her SiSi instead of OmegaDotter.  We did tell her that she would have to get used to telling people how to pronounce it, since any American seeing it will call her “Sissy” instead of “Siih-Siih”.  In fact, OmegaDad and I, who have used her Chinese Name on a semi-regular basis anyway, pronounce it incorrectly, calling her “Ss-Suh”.  (There’s a very small schwa in there after the first S, but I don’t know how to put in a schwa, so just imagine it, please.)

We did, however, tell her that we wouldn’t change it legally for a while, because that requires going before a judge, and we wanted her to be sure.

We’ll see how this goes.

(For those wondering:  I am using her Chinese name in this one post, but will continue to refer to her as OmegaDotter.  Since her legal name is not SiSi, and none of her friends know her as that—so far—I figure one post with her Chinese name is okay.)

Instant negotiation mode:  Anyone who has been a parent can recognize that.  It’s when the child asks for something, and you give an answer that isn’t what that child wants, and the child immediately starts pushing the boundary back.  It’s how “maybe” or “I’ll think about it” gets magically re-arranged into “yes” in a child’s mind.  It’s how “next Saturday” becomes “tomorrow” when there’s talk of a friend coming over, or “one piece of candy after dinner” turns into “three!  now!”

So we have told the dotter that we will be visiting China when she’s 10 or 11.  This immediately gets turned into “why not when I’m 9?  Or 8?” whenever it comes up.

Why not?  Well, there are finances.  A trip to China is spendy:  there are the flights, the hotels, the meals, the tours, the museums, the tour guides, more.  This means saving up money.  (Sigh.  Really.  I actually looked just now at real, current prices for heritage tours, plus prices for air fare.  So, yeah, 10…that would give us enough time to save up the dough.)  In addition, there’s the question of maturity.  A trip when she’s 8 is likely to become a blur when she’s an adult, whereas a trip when she’s 10 is more likely to leave specifics in the memory.

A trip to China when she’s young is not an “if”, though it may have seemed like it to some readers.  A series of trips to China is an “if”.  In a perfect world, we would have enough money to traipse across the continents whenever the whim took us, but this is not a perfect world.  (Actually, in a perfect world, she would have been raised by her birthparents, and this would all be moot.)  We are able to say “Yes, we will take you to China” once; we cannot guarantee more than that.

My international adoptee readers may not like that, but that’s the way it goes:  We can schedule one trip, we may schedule two, and it would be really nice but very unlikely to do more than that before the dotter hits college age and starts wanting to make her own travel itineraries, probably including such parent-pleasing destinations as Ft. Lauderdale or Baja California during spring break.

(Excuse me while I start hyperventilating and practically faint at the very thought of my darlin’ innocent dotter in the midst of the heathen sun-loving, fun-loving, drinking & debauching freshmen and sophomores who crowd into the resorts during spring break.  Specifically male freshmen and sophomores who might be eyeing her with lustful intent.  ACK!  La-la-la, I’m not thinking about it!!!!)

Ahem.  Back now.

My non-adoption-related blog readers may think we shouldn’t do it at all.  That’s what’s interesting being the parent of an internationally adopted child in these days of Ye Olde Interwebz:  one can read all the mutterings, meanderings, thoughts and rants and dispassionately logical layouts of adult adoptees, and become assimilated into the Adoption Borg–but not quite enough, at which point the non-adoption people in one’s life think that you have become totally and absolutely obsessive about adoption and you’re going to turn the child into a neurotic wanker as a result. 

The upshot of all this:  none of your audience is completely satisfied.  Well, phooey on that:  We’re doing what we can, the best we think we can, and anyone who doesn’t like it can go suck lemons.  Or something like that.  Mainly, we’re tootling along in life doing what we think is best, and trying to keep adoption issues and Chinese culture an open item to integrate into the family dynamic without turning it into the be-all, end-all, and still doing the normal school- and summer-camp- and gymnastics- and holiday-gatherings- and family-visits-balance in life.

University of Alaska-Big City recently opened a branch of Major Chinese Philosopher Institute, whose mission is to foster Amurrikan-Chinese relations and promote Chinese language learning for K-12 schools.  This means that we have more Chinese events to go to, put on by MCP Institute, if we’re willing to drive an hour each way.  (It also seems that we may end up having Chinese lessons here! in Suburban Alaska! coming up after January 1!  This is majorly exciting; the classes in Big City run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday nights, which doesn’t work very well for kids that have bedtime at, say, 8:30 p.m., and also doesn’t work well when you have parents who are unnerved at the thought of driving on icy, snowy highways, in the dark, both ways, for months on end.)

MCP Institute’s latest event-with-a-capital-E was a performance of snippets of Chinese opera.  For free.

Well!  That certainly piqued my interest.  So I ran it by the dotter, whose response was an enthusiastic “Yes!”

Since OmegaDad is out of town for a few days (bummer), it was the two of us, motoring into Big City, dining on exotic food at the student union, and figuring out how to get into the parking lot at the theatre.

I had figured, with the six snippets, it would be about an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half.

No.  It included the director of the opera company introducing each vignette, explaining what was going to happen, instructing the crowd on how to indicate approval and when (”Hao!” shouted out–enthusiastically–when the performers held a strategic pose now and then, or whenever you felt like the performers warranted it), all translated by a nice young Chinese lady who did a fairly good job of keeping up with him.

And!  There was audience participation!  After each segment, the director invited anyone who wanted to try something from the vignette.

One of the great things about getting older is that you lose a great deal of self-consciousness.  It seems to start around the age of 35, and increase to the point where you’re willing to do just about anything if it sounds fun, and not even notice that there’s an audience fer Gawd’s sake!  Staring at you!

At least, that has been my experience.  Last year, I danced with Native Alaskans at the Native Alaskan Center; this year, I happily scooched up onto the stage to pretend to be a dainty Chinese nun trembling in fear at getting into a boat.  I didn’t care that my hair was smashed down from wearing my winter hat, or that my jeans were lopsided from not being pulled down over one of my boots.

Anyway, with all the intros and the audience participation, we made it to two and a quarter hours–leaving while the last come-and-join-us portion was running.  The dotter was pretty game throughout; there was a certain amount of snuggling down into (my) jacket (not hers), an “I’m booored” or two, but every time I asked if she wanted to go, she would reply that she wanted to see the last performance, which was supposed to be very acrobatic and very funny.  So we stayed through the entire performance.

The first scene was the aforementioned dainty Chinese nun asking a boatman to help her chase after her One and Only True Love.  It was very funny; they did a splendid job of miming climbing into the boat and the movement of the boat; the old boatman was a flirtatious goat who tried to get the nun to give up on her OAOTL and run away with him…The Chinese nun:

The boatman:

The next scene was a young maiden feeding her chickens and then sewing.  Having had chickens for a year and a half now, I have to say you could almost see the chickens.  And her sewing was very delicate!

Then we had a face-painted general proclaiming his studliness to all and sundry.  Alas, he was moving so much that I couldn’t get a good picture of him–suffice it to say that he was quite grand.

Next up was some true opera drama:  Yet another general was on the losing side; he escaped and hid away, changing his name, marrying, settling down, and living a quiet life for 12 years…only to discover that his mother was leading an army against his new family.  He was full of lyrical Chinese misery.  He was also quite grandly costumed–get a load of those pheasant feathers in his headdress!

Next was another lyrical piece, wherein a young princess, who has been locked away for years as she grew up, is lured out into the palace garden by her maidservant, and discovers the wonders of nature:

And then, the piece de resistance, the reason the dotter wanted to stay:  a soldier is following his general–incognito–to protect him.  They stay the night at an inn.  The innkeeper notices the soldier, and fears that the soldier is an assassin out to get the general.  The innkeeper sneaks into his room in the darkness, and tries to kill him, but fails–and then there is a comic and very acrobatic fight, where they keep missing each other, then finding each other, then fighting, then losing their opponent in the darkness.  It was hilarious–and spectcular.  The soldier is resting for a moment, after–he thinks–chasing away the bandit; the innkeeper is hiding under his bed, waiting for his chance to get the assassin:

It was amazingly grand fun.  They had subtitles projected above the stage, which made following the stories much easier–though much of the physical action was stylized and very recognizable.

If you get a chance like this, by all means, take it!  It was a really worthwhile evening.

(And, of course, the audience was sprinkled with many families like ours…)

Oh, and all these pictures were taken with my new camera.  The old one would have been worse than useless!