International Adoption Can Make the Holidays Taste Sweeter

Hi Meltingpot Readers,

Here's a link to a story I wrote for today's Philadelphia Inquirer about how families with internationally adopted children incorporate their children's heritage into the holidays.

It was great fun doing all of the interviews and hearing how different families, like the Braydon-McCormicks, mesh all of the cultures represented in their multi-culti clans during the Christmas season. Of course, because this was a newspaper article, I didn't get to include half the information I wanted to, given the limited space. For one, I would have liked to include more details about just how thoughtful these different families are in their celebrations. It's not like they just hang up some extra ornaments on the tree and call it a day. I also would have liked to include some Jewish families with adopted children in the story as well. Maybe next time.

The main nugget of truth I walked away with after talking to all of these great people, was that an adopted child's heritage isn't just acknowledged on special occasions and holidays. It becomes the family's heritage. As one of the mother's I interviewed, Kate Rupertus, said. "Our family is now Irish, Italian and Ethiopian." And that was evidenced by the beautiful Ethiopian decorations in their home as well as the fact that on St. Patrick's day, all of the kids go green. In other words, the child isn't just adopted into the family, his culture is too.

Makes my heart sing. I love these meltingpot moments.

Peace!

Food for Thought and Music Monday All Together Now!

Hi Meltingpot Readers,

I hope you all enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday as much as I did. You know how we continued the good feelings of our T-day meal? We ate some more. On Saturday night, the night before everyone flew back to their respective homes, we gathered for a Jamaican feast, cooked by my aunt's 'manpanion,' who hails from Kingston. He's almost 80 years old, but the man can throw down in the kitchen. We ate ackee and codfish, jerk neck bones, boiled bananas, fried plantains, callaloo, rice and avocados. For appetizer, there was roti stuffed with curry potatoes. Oh my god, I ate myself silly.

Folks don't believe me when I say I'm from Milwaukee and I have such a diverse family. They think Milwaukee is all White and devoid of color, but that's not exactly true. Milwaukee is incredibly segregated, but diversity there is. Before we sat down to enjoy this island feast, we blessed the food in all of the languages represented in my aunt's home that night. We heard blessings in Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Spanish, and Jamaican English (I made that up, but I'm not sure what the correct term for the distinct Jamaican language/dialect. Please don't crucify me. But feel free to enlighten me.). It made my kinky gazpacho heart sing.

And while I can't give you a taste of that delicious meal, I can leave you with a song to make your hearts sing. Enjoy!

Losing My Spanish

Hola Meltingpot Readers,

I have a confession to make. I'm losing my Spanish. Okay, let's be real, I've gone beyond losing and feel like I'm on the verge of lost. It's been two years since we've been to Spain, el esposo and I speak English together and I don't have any close friends who are Spanish dominant. Ay de mi!

I've always considered myself a lover of languages and imagined I'd be trilingual by now, living abroad, traveling at a moment's notice, but hey, real life got in the way. But still, there's no reason I can't live out my language fantasies. But just like wanting washboard abs, maintaining one's dominance over a foreign language requires constant practice and I've been a little floja these last two years. And what's worse, my boys have been too (every since we took them out of the Spanish immersion school).

So, those of you who know me, know I'm not going to watch the Spanish wash out of me without a fight. My fluency is dormant, not gone, so I'm going on a quest to get it back and I'm bringing my boys with me. Here's what we're doing in the Kinky Gazpacho family these days:

1. All meal times, even when el esposo is not here, are Spanish only. We started this new rule on the first day of school. It's hard to make the change, but I figure it's the only way to have a guaranteed Spanish conversation every day. It forces us to charlar en espanol using everyday language and grammar constructions that are kicking my butt. But it's helpful. And the best part, as babygirl is always in the room with us, she's getting to hear a lot of Spanish. (FYI, el esposo only speaks to the kids in Spanish and they respond in Spanish.)

2. Since I'm now spending a lot of time in the house with a baby in my lap, I end up watching way more television than I have in the past. So, I'm making myself switch over to Univision or Telemundo whenever I can and just listen. One, I get to hear several different accents and two, I'm improving my oral comprehension.

3.And finally, crazy as it sounds. I'm going to read a novel in Spanish. Yes, I'm going to reach back into my stash of Spanish novels from college and see just how bad, er I mean how challenged I really am. I'm a little wary because I know I'll be frustrated reading with a dictionary at my side, but I'm going to do it and el esposo is going to ask me about what I've read. Oh, wait, I just remembered, I have a new collection of the Best Short Stories by Spanish authors. I think I'll read that instead.

So, there you have it people, my new Spanish regimen. We're planning on being in Spain this summer, so there's that motivation to succeed. Do you have any other suggestions for me and my boys? What do you do with your families to maintain the 'other' language? Estoy escuchando.

Peace!

Finding Names in a Flavorful Family

I went to a baby shower recently for my friend who is Japanese and Irish-American. My friend's mother and mother-in-law were both in attendance so I started chatting with them. I was just making small talk and without thinking of the implications, asked if they were going to allow their new grandchild to call them "Grandma" or would they pick some other, less age-defining name...like Nana or Big Mama (just kidding!).

"Actually," my friend's mother replied, "I will be Obaachan, which is Japanese for grandmother. The only problem is since my husband is White we don't know if he should be Grandpa or Ojiisan?"

I understood her dilemma.

Then the mother-in-law piped in. "Well technically I would be Bubbe because I'm Jewish," she said. But since she's not a very observant Jew and her husband is a gentile, she wasn't even sure if Bubbe was right for her, yet "grandmother" felt wrong. It didn't fit.

In my family, my sons refer to their Spanish grandparents as Abuela y Abuelo. My parents are Nana and Grandpa so there's never any confusion. But now I see, when the hubby and I reach that age, will I be an Abuela or a Nana? Will my Spanish husband morph into a granddaddy or will he hang on to Abuelo?

These are the issues that creep into multicultural, multilingual family life. Finding names that respect a person's culture without denying the Other is fraught with challenges and possible unintended hurt feelings. Not to mention, it can just get downright confusing. But on the other hand, it can also be fun to play around with names, to combine and blend languages and cultures to create something new.

How do people in your meltingpot families deal with these issues?

Peace.

(p.s. I'm not sure if I've spelled the Japanese words for grandmother and grandfather correctly. I apologize for any mistakes.)