Oversharing a Child's Story
Everyone wants to know the story of how we adopted three children from Ethiopia. I wouldn’t know, though, because Ruby won’t share it with me. She won’t share it with anyone but the closest of friends, she writes, even though complete strangers ask often. But do I have a right not to tell it, existing as I do right out here on the front line, looking as I do, a Caucasian mom with three African kiddos. First up is lie Ruby , the author of The Language of Trees, and the mother of three children whom she and her husband adopted from Ethiopia nearly two years ago. Do I have a right to live in the world, fully and enthusiastically and not announce my history or that of my children. It is her children’s story, she believes, and theirs alone to tell. Taking my children to the grocery store or to the library without announcing where they came from. A recurring theme here on Motherlode is the intersection, overlap and separation of our children’s lives from our own. Theirs is probably a......
