Errors in Judgment

I realize that all of the international adoption literature in the world will tell me that what I am about to say is wrong. I realize that what I am about to say will probably make other transracial adoptees (some at least) furious. (Although, I suspect that just about everything I say on this blog, ever, about anything, probably is capable of making someone angry with me.)

So, here goes.

Lana was not ready to attend the Asian Festival.

I thought that taking her to the Asian Festival would be a positive experience for her, exposing her to Vietnamese food and culture and people. I thought (and in fact, still do think) I had a *duty*, and *obligation* to remind her of what it means, for her, to be a Vietnamese person.

And it was a horrible, wretched, traumatizing mistake. For Lana. I'm not saying it was a bad festival, not at all. I'm not saying that it wasn't a positive and fabulous experience for the gazillion other trans-racial families I saw there.

I'm saying that Lana was not ready to go to the Asian festival. As near as I can tell, the experience - the travel, the hotel, the enormous crowd - made Lana believe that we were trying to give her away.

I thought things went well, on Friday night. We met up with several other families who adopted from Vietnam, who had come to the Asian festival from as far away as Texas and Oregon (among other places), and we had really fabulous Vietnamese food at a place called HaLong Bay. And Lana, for the first time in almost 2 months, ate Vietnamese food. (Which is not to say that we haven't offered her Vietnamese foods. We have. She has rejected them outright. And vehemently.)

But, Friday night, her eyes lit up when the waitress set the soft spring rolls and nuoc mam in front of her. She dove into the food. SHE DRANK the dregs of the nuoc mam sauce after she had used up most of it eating her spring rolls. (She did this once in Hanoi, as well, and it made me nauseated just watching her do it. Both times. On other occasions she has attempted to drink salad dressing and honey mustard sauce.) She devoured her chicken pho - slurping the noodles and the savory broth with loud and messy gusto.

And at 2 AM, in our hotel room, she woke up screaming in terror. She ran to the bathroom, she huddled on the bathroom floor, screaming and crying and begging for her Daddy. She fell back to sleep wrapped around Dave, and whimpered on and off through the rest of the night.

So, perhaps we should have known better than to take her to the festival. But, it was the main purpose of our weekend trip. (Well, that, and meeting with the other families on Friday night.)

So, we went. And parking was crazy, and there were TONS of people everywhere, and the food smelled AMAZING. And we got bubble tea and a pineapple and lychee beverage and Malaysian food (my best friend from highschool, Amy, has been living in Malaysia for the past decade, and she raves about the food, and I had never had an opportunity to try it. And I have to agree, what we had at the festival was delicious.) I tried to get more spring rolls and some shrimp chips for Lana. She screamed and rejected them. She rejected EVERYTHING. She demanded to be fed "donald's shicken an fries" (McDonald's Chicken Nuggets and French Fries - which I believe she thinks is at the pinnacle of the cuisine found in her new life. This, despite the fact that I am a decent cook, and regularly offer her much better food.)

She cried, she threw fit after fit, and, in one weird moment, she stopped crying when she saw a police officer on a horse. (There were several Asian law enforcement officers at the festival. One of them let Gabe sit in his squad car. Gabe was thrilled. Lana refused to sit in the car.) Anyway, Husband took Lana up to the horse, and the officer let her pet the horse. As they were walking away from the officer, Lana said, "Bye-bye horsey. Yummy horsey. I eat you up. Yummy horsey. Yum." (No, I'm not making that up.) Husband doesn't think the officer heard anything after "bye-bye horsey."

I sincerely hope he didn't.

I have no idea if Lana has ever eaten horse. I myself (inadvertently) ate horse in France, and considering the French influence in Vietnam, it wouldn't surprise me if they also eat horse there. But, I never saw it on any menus. Maybe she was just being silly. Maybe she was just trying to get a rise out of David. Hell, maybe she knows they eat horses in France (she seems to have been educated about a couple of odd things in her short school life in Vietnam) and was commenting on that. I don't know. I have no idea. I just know that Lana's behavior at the festival ranged from bizarre to wretched.

After two hours, we left. We went back to the hotel. All four of us took a nap. We went and swam in the hotel pool (even though it was not as nice as the pool in our own backyard.) We took the kids to the California Pizza Kitchen for dinner and, back at the hotel, we watched Over the Hedge and tried to get some sleep. Lana cried and whimpered through most of the night. We did not return to the festival on Sunday. The kids wanted to swim again, and then we took them to the Columbus Zoo. We visited the zoo, and with some other Vietnamese adopting families whose agency (VORF) was having an event at the zoo that day.

All the way home in the car, Lana demanded, "go faster, Daddy. GO HOME. GO HOME FASTER, Daddy."

She crawled into her own bed last night and slept for twelve hours. She just wasn't ready. I guess I should recognize that Bich Lan spent over four years being Vietnamese in Vietnam. For just over four months she's been getting her feet underneath her, being a new child, in a new family, a family that doesn't look like her, or eat the things she is used to, or speak the language of her old life. She is trying to make sense of that new life, and it wasn't fair of me, so soon into this new family, to put her in a position that made her uncomfortable.

She is trying her hardest to learn to be Lana, in a whole new world. I don't really know where to go from here, in terms of helping Lana feel comfortable as a trans-racial adoptee. She has positive Asian role models in her life, every day, thanks to the diverse staff at her daycare center. I can take her to visit our Vietnamese friends, and cook and offer her Vietnamese foods that maybe only Husband and I will eat. Beyond that, I'm not sure what to do. Feeling a bit at a loss,

Gretchen