What is Real?

Every time I visit with my daughter's biological family I am struck again by the question, "what is real?" This time I may have come back with the answer that satisfies my need to know.

When I hear her yell, "Mommy!" across the park, I know now to look. Sometimes she is talking to me and sometimes to Kim and maybe it is Krista's own little test of which one of us will really answer her. Kim and John always greet us nicely and I am always struck by how much they thank us throughout the visit. For all the crap they have been through (not to mention put their children through) they do get it. They do know the half of what we do. They do love us for it....and it seems so odd...and yet in another way totally amazing to have this connection.

I remember watching them stand in front of a judge to actually surrender their own rights so that I could legally adopt Krista. The first time they didn't show up and I couldn't see past my own anger. I wondered how any people could be so selfish. Perhaps I could not see past my own selfishness to recognize how completely hard it would be to stand in front of a judge and say yes when he asks, "You understand that by being here today you are admitting that you cannot parent these children?" Not the exact words, but close enough as well as a whole litany of other questions where they must admit over and over they are done parenting. I remember watching them (they actually did show up) and crying non stop. How could what was going to make everything right in my life depend on their lives falling apart?

And yet...that is not what happened. It wasn't about their lives "falling apart" It was about them making a solid choice that their children deserved better. What "real" parent doesn't face that decision in the course of their child's life?

Kim and John don't have the daily responsibilities of a "real" parent. They don't have to deal with Krista at her worst and they never get those secret moments of bliss when I look at her and am sure there is a God that brought us together. But...they made a true parenting decision that they needed to do what was best for their three children. They show up faithfully to visits although I am sure this is no easy task physically or emotionally for them. In my moments of anger I remember that we share a child. And the only way I get to share her is because they recognized their own limitations. Making the hardest decision of your life for your children...I daresay that makes you, "real."

Today, on what would have been my mom's birthday, I am reminded of her favorite children's story, "The Velveteen Rabbit" and this conversation between the skin horse and the rabbit.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I finally realize that Kim, John and myself can all be "real" parents. Every parent has a different relationship with their child even within the same household. One does not trump the other and Krista has enough love for all of us. I do not need to make Kim and John my partners in parenting, but I can stop feeling threatened by Krista's love for them and they do not need to feel threatened by her love for me. Their being "real" cant make me any less "real" and so it is with love and relationships. All that matters in this one is we all want what is best for one amazing human.