Are You My Mother?

In a car full of rowdy kids on our way to a swimming party last night, Araceli asked me, "Mom, why didn't Xanthe's mom in China want to keep her?"

Xanthe knows Scott and I loved her so much that we went all the way to China to pick her up. She knows that before we got there, a nanny took care of her in the orphanage, and her nanny loved her very much. We have never taken little Xanthe in our arms and told her that somebody left her at the gate of the orphanage in a t-shirt and a hat with a bottle of sugar water when she was four days old. That information, let alone the reason why, is way beyond a three-year-old's comprehension. None of the other kids in our family got left outside on an April morning, all alone. Xanthe's brother and sisters have been safe and warm and fed every day since the very beginning. They never had their legs tied to their crib, and they never had to drink a bottle while it was scalding hot, for fear of it being taken away too soon. And you know what? It's not fair.

And then there is the fact that somebody left her. We will never know why. We can blame the government, or poverty or ignorance, and we can feel tremendous compassion for Xanthe's birth mother. But I wonder if there will ever be an explanation that will make it OK that Xanthe's mother didn't keep her. And does it make her wonder if my love will ever change? One has to wonder when one has been abandoned.

I never wanted to hide the truth from Xanthe. At the same time, I never pictured myself answering these questions in a car full of kids in parkas and swimsuits, crazy to get to the pool. There are all kinds of platitudes and soothing words, but is there a good, solid explanation for a question that we just don't know the answer to? The hardest part right now, at this age, is Xanthe imagining that she has a mom in China who didn't want her. My belief is that Xanthe's mother did want her, and desperately. Her father, too. In the space of time between now and when Xanthe is old enough to understand that, how do we explain such a primal loss while still engendering love for China and her past in Xanthe's psyche? You never want to see your kids suffer, and the thought that Xanthe will have to open and reexamine this wound throughout her life is painful to me. I think that only through the spirit can we express to Xanthe that we felt her presence in our family long before she got here, that Heavenly Father's plans seem convoluted at times, and that everything she has been through brought her to her forever family. Is is enough?