Melissa Fay Greene: On newly adopted older children, including her own.

Within days of the arrival of our ten-year-old son, Fisseha, from Ethiopia in May 2004, our kids discovered he could aim and throw a spear through a plastic frisbee. "Mom!" screamed the other kids. "You've got to see this!" Fisseha had found a thin, white, metal bicycle flagpole on the driveway and was piercing the flying frisbee with it. If Lee, fifteen, threw the Frisbee near a tree, Fisseha could spear the disk with the bike flagpole and nail it to the tree. That night at dinner, our non-English-speaking child shook his head to decline the nice cheese lasagna I offered.

"Hmmm, no," observed our oldest son, Seth, then nineteen. "I definitely have the impression he prefers to spear live game."

Later Fisseha would carve his own spears and hurl them, and he would peel bark from the trees and weave it into twine with which he wove slings and bullwhips. He had been a goatherd on the central plains of Ethiopia his whole life before landing in the American orphanage in Addis. . . .

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Marta Little, who thanked God for her cute mother, made up a song. She sang it in a sweet, high voice and her mother, Chris, wrote it down:

My one mommy die, my one mommy die.
My one daddy die, my one daddy die.
I sad, I sad.
Now Mama no die, now Mama no die,
Now Daddy no die, now Daddy no die,
I happy, so happy.

I clothes to wear, I fooding,
I good house, thank you Lord.
Ticklish, my daddy,
Good food, my mommy,
Thank you, Lord.

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Frew, age eight, was adopted to Alaska. The sunny, barefoot little boy of Addis Ababa now appeared in photos in a hooded parka, mittens, and snow boots, grinning broadly between two red-headed sisters. "I heard him praying in English the other night," his mother said. "He said, 'Thank you, family me.'"

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Our daughter Helen, who arrived at five in February 2002, made lots of friends quickly in America. But I always heard her ask a child, soon after making her acquaintance or near the start of a playdate, "Do you have a mother?" If she was feeling shy, she would whisper to me, "Does she have a mother?" Most children and adults were surprised by the question---"Of course I have a mother!" the children replied. "Of course she has a mother!" said the grownups.

Only our African friends were not surprised by the question. Helen had a mother again now, too, as she was eager to tell, but she didn't take it as a given about anyone.


---from There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene