All-of-a-kind families

We spent the weekend on Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), at a wonderful site called Karei Deshe- a youth hostel right at the steps of the lake with lush gardens and a wide common outdoor area where you can sit around and chat.

MM (MyMan), MG (MyGirl) and I went for the weekend. MB(MyBoy) stayed in Tel Aviv. He had a friend's overnight birthday party and was planning to come home on Saturday and recover some lost hours of sleep.

The reason for our trip was our twice yearly meeting with parents who have adopted children of Ethiopian origin. The group was formed some 20 years ago, with the first adopted children. Today the mailing list of the group numbers around 73 families. Not everyone comes to these meetings of course,  but there are always a significant representative number and the meetings are always fun. We generally have a Friday night meal at the hotel/hostel we are staying in and on Saturday we have a joint picnic. Each family brings something from home. We put it all together and have a feast.

This time, in Karei Deshe, the turnout was higher than usual and the weather and the locality provided a perfect setting for us and our children. My family has been attending these meetings, twice a year, for the past six to seven years.

Families come from all over the country - the north, the center and the south. They are high or lower income families. They come in all compositions: with just one adopted child or with three adopted children; with one adopted child and two biological children, or with three biological children and two adopted children- there are no set rules.

The parents come from very varied backgrounds: economists, journalists, marble workers, gym trainers, social workers, rabbis, graphic designers, dancers, consultants, psychologists, tour guides, and teachers. They all live in Israel but their origins are varied as well: some are Yemenite, Dutch or Scottish; Americans and British, Danish and of course Israeli born too.

However varied, these parents have one thing in common: all of them have at least one brown or black child; many of them bear the loss of infertility; all of them are full of love and awe at the fact that they are blessed with children.

They come to share experiences. They come so their children can see that they are not the only ones in Israel in a situation like theirs. They come so their children can play, run, scream, jump and eat watermelon with other children who, for once, look just like them. They come so their children can can see that there are other children who, like them, have parents who don't resemble them at all.

The children’s ages vary: the tiniest are perhaps a year old, the oldest around 26. They bunch up in groups: the smaller children race around on their tricycles; the older ones play football; go rollerblading or swimming; the even older girls whisper to each other about boys or plait each others' hair, while the boys strut in front of the girls and play it cool. All of these children also have something in common: their color (even if the tones vary - some are very light, others very dark) and the weight of loss: the knowledge that however much loved today, somewhere, out there, their birth parents were unable to care for them.

The meetings are happy, raising sometimes hilarious situations: "What, you don't know you are adopted?", asks one child, carefully plaiting the hair of a younger girl. "Yes," answers the wide-eyed tot. "But are you adopted too?"

The children talk about adoption in the most natural way. Hopefully, as they grow older, they will confide in one another about feelings of bewilderedness or loss that may occur. The parents wring their hands about how to cope with unruly locks, how to deal with adolescent behavior, how to talk about adoption or color issues with their children, with their friends, with their schools.

At this our latest meeting there were new families with young children (aged two to 6 perhaps): there were three new families from the US who immigrated a few months ago to Israel: one of them has adopted children from Ethiopia (unlike us, not Israeli Ethiopians), another from Ghana and a third from India (they came, because their child is also brown- so we adopted them into our group too!). There was a lady from Scotland with her child; and another woman who adopted two Nigerian children, the offspring of foreign workers, in Israel.

Then there was this 26-year-old pretty Ethiopian young woman who came with her white husband: they were married late last year. She was one of the first adopted Ethiopian children in Israel. She now works as a social worker; her husband, who is more or less her age, is training to be an accountant in one of the country's bigger firms. She came to see and show. To see our children and perhaps re-live some of her childhood. And at the same time to show us to her husband, to make him perhaps partake a little bit in what it means to grow up as a brown child with white parents.

All in all we had a lovely time, with MG coming home once again on a high. We, her parents, came away, as usual, full of wondrous questions: Will MG's first boyfriend be one of these children or someone (not Ethiopian) from our neighborhood? Will MG marry a white boy or an Ethiopian boy? Should we expose her more to Ethiopian culture and food, or should we raise her just as any other kid?

After all, the children we are raising are actually hybrids: they are black children being raised as whites. They are actually white kids who to the world will always be black. They don't belong to the white world, but they don't belong to their Ethiopian society either. Navigating between the boundaries is not easy for our children. It cannot be easy. All we can do as parents, I guess, is what I always tell my children they should do: our best. And hope we do not make too many mistakes along the slippery way.


Photo of Karei Deshe by: Hostel World. http://images.hostelworld.com/images/hostels/30655_1.jpg