So I bought the movie Despicable Me for our kids for Christmas…unseen. I heard it was super funny and a couple of our kids actually saw it in the theater with a family member. I didn’t do the whole look it up online and see what the content is, that honestly did not even occur to me. After Christmas we all sat down to watch it and there’s this whole adoption storyline. How did I not know this??? And it’s not exactly a good adoption storyline, at least not in my opinion. Papa and I are looking at each other and finally pause the movie and say, “Ok, you guys know this is not an accurate picture of what adoption is, right?” And Spiderman says…”What’s adoption?”
AND. THEN. I. SCREAM! (not on the outside, but totally on the inside!) I will tell you it just doesn’t matter how often you talk about stuff ~ you have to keep talking about it! I ask the kids if they know how they came to be in our family and Meeta says, “I think maybe you are babysitting us for a long time?” AND. THEN. I. CRY!
So can I pause for a minute and tell you that we talk ALL THE TIME about how much we love them, how glad we are that we are all a family. How they came to be with us. The story of their birth parents. Why Birth Mom died, why Birth Dad is dying. How Spidey got HIV. We talk about it a lot. And yet had you been a fly on our wall, you would have thought this was conversation #1. The same questions we’ve answered a hundred times before. I just want to be really really clear here ~ I wasn’t annoyed or frustrated in any way, shape or form. I was shocked. I was sad.
And so we sat, with the movie paused on the tv, and we talked. and talked. and talked. Bookworm laid his head on his brother’s shoulder and said, “I love you bro.” Spidey laid on mama’s chest and wept again in the truth of a horrible disease that robs and steals from those we love. He asked again and was reassured again, that he is healthy and well and strong, and that his medicine works to keep him that way. And we cried because we can’t take medicine to Birth Dad. We cried because Spidey’s disease won’t ever go away. {Mama prays for a cure during our lifetime. I’ll let that be a super big surprise if it happens. We live in the current reality} And we cried because we are family and we love each other the same, no one is loved more or less than anyone else. And we reassured ~ that the medicine will keep working, that we are NOT babysitters, that we love you.
I wanted to be annoyed with myself for not knowing about the adoption storyline in Despicable Me, but in the end, it was a good thing.
