“If you could give one piece of advice to an adoptive parent, what would it be?”
Yesterday I woke up hungry and late. My husband was home, the kids had no interest in going out – it was, literally, freezing, and so I decided to head off to Kripalu – a yoga/meditation center ten minutes from where I live. Why? Because they have a marvelous lunch. I sat down at the only empty table, but within a minute was joined by two women. We started talking. One of the women lived in Illinois and had left corporate America to become a psycologist. The other was a teacher from Connecticut. “Why are you at Kripalu?” the psycologist asks. “I’m a writer. I recently finished the first draft of my new book and am awaiting feedback. It’s an anxious time, so I am treating myself to lunch.” “Have you written anything we might heard of?” “My first book’s called The English American. It’s about an adopted English woman who finds her birth parents in the United States.” I waited one second and – yes – there it was. “Oh,” said the teacher, “I’m about to adopt three siblings.” This happens all the time. Almost everyone I meet knows an adoptee or a birth mother or is thinking about adopting a child – or their sister or their cousin is. “If you could give one piece of advice to an adoptive parents what would it be?” the woman asked.
Kin
You know when you find your kin. Sometimes kin is related to you by blood, sometimes not. Sometimes you recognize your kin in the smile or words of a stranger. I think adopted people know immediately when we brush against our own kind. It’s a bit like feeling the breath of God – for a second – easing things.
The Singing Author – my very first blog – for Powell’s
As I’ve started to blog it occurs to me that I should post all of them. So here it is. My VERY first blog, written a year or so ago, for Powells. The Singing Author When The English American was published in Spring 2008, I was invited to give one of my very first talks at Powell’s, which was the perfect place for me to begin my tour. I felt immediately at home in the wonderful multi-story bookstore that reminded me of Foyles in London, where I used to spend my weekends browsing, long before I ever thought of writing a novel myself.
Who am I? It depends on when you ask.
‘To blog or not to blog?’ That is the question I’m pondering as I head out of Bizen – the best Japanese restaurant outside Tokyo – in my home town of Great Barrington, MA. ‘It might be fun,’ I say to myself, ‘but on the other hand my time is tight.’ With two kids and a husband who can’t take over except at weekends, shouldn’t I devote my writing time to the second draft of my new novel? The small mountain town in which I live is filled with delightful eccentrics so I don’t pay much attention to the woman shouting half a block away.