One of the things about my family is that some of them are adopted. It's only one thing, and I'm thinking more and more lately that dwelling on "adopted-ness" isn't really terribly constructive. I'm reminded, in fact, of the passage from Borges listing categories of animals (taken, as I had completely forgotten until looking it up just now, from a notional ancient Chinese encyclopedia). The question posed by that list is, "Why those qualities? What does 'looking like flies at a distance' have to do with anything important about animals?" It depends on what you think of as important. I suppose in some ways, adopt-ness (or, more specifically, transracial adopted-ness) can be fundamentally important, but in a lot of ways, it's also drawn with a camel's-hair brush or looking like a fly in the distance.

Here's a list of things that I've noticed that may or may not have anything to do with adopted-ness in my family.

1. Temper tantrums. The off-her-head, screaming "I don't want to be alone!" variety. Since writing about these back when, we've discovered that three sips of fruit juice bring Daughter's to a complete halt within 30 seconds. It's got to have something to do with blood sugar, although that's probably not the whole story.
   
   




2. Weeping bitterly over being left in preschool/Not weeping at all. Because both *can* be signs of something peculiar, but they're both contradictory, and both of my children seem to go back and forth with this one. Although I do suspect they're both happy being in crowds of kids because they've both spent their first year in a crowded institution, it's really impossible to tell.
   
   



3. Difficulty sleeping. This is kind of personal classic because I likes my sleep and Daughter, she fights it like the CLOWNS WILL COME TO EAT HER, although she's better now. She does seem to remember something about her sleep being interrupted as an infant, so maybe this is related. But I can't think of a way to tell for sure.
   
   



4. Slow language acquisition. This is a biggie. Since writing about this recently, son (son!) had a mini-explosion in his speaking capabilities, adding about five words in two days. One of those words was "mammoth". I'm not making that up. And I keep running into mom's who talk about their sons not speaking until they almost turn 3. Including, um, my own mom.
   
   

It's tempting to make "adopted" sort of a catch-all category for everything that ever happens, but that seems a little on the dangerous side. Or at least inaccurate. But on the other hand, sometimes.....

On a completely unrelated note - Here, you might get a kick out of this: Sunrise & Sunset in Hong Kong. Move your mouse over the picture. Somewhere in there is a perspective you might see or might have seen or might see again. Gorgeous city.

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