I am a bibliophile; I read anything
and everything I can get my hands on. My husband, Nick, says I'm
tightly wound. I beg to differ, telling him that I'm "research
oriented" or "organized". So, it was no surprise to anyone when
I bought every book at the local bookstore on transracial
parenting. Frankly,
I
spent the year between deciding to adopt from Ethiopia and
picking our daughter up reading. I was up on all the literature
from peer-reviewed and referred journals on attachment in
adoption. I had read all the ethnographies and qualitative
research I could find on transracial parenting.
But those books, I found, on the
night of April 15, 2008, were powerless to prepare me for my
daughter. No amount of literature memorized on bonding could
have prepared me for the bond I felt for this perfect little
person. My breath caught with each of her smiles; my heart
spilled love for the gift of her tiny fingers and long
eyelashes.
During the long years that I waited
to become a mother, the month after month of disappointment and
the years of fertility treatments before the paperwork and
waiting of adoption, I had imagined that the word mother, the
noun, referred to the corresponding verb, mothering. I assumed
that you defined a mother by the act of her mothering a child.
What I didn't realize was that being a mother is an endowment, a
gift of identity – that the word mother would embody all that I
was in word, deed, and goal. I couldn’t have known that no part
of speech could encompass the two syllables that told the world
that I belonged to my daughter and she belonged to me.
There will still be times that I
turn to a book for guidance. I will always love to read, even if
as a new mother there is precious little time to do so. However,
I now know that the answers to some questions are too big to
publish.
~ Erinn Moriarty Ferris
Erinn brought home Mikaleigh from
Ethiopia in April 2008.
Click here to learn more about Ethiopia adoption.
2008 Children's Hope International.
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