001 - Writing Prompt
So I'm gonna write about my folks. I know they're two people, but whatever.
I don't know who my biological parents were or why they gave me up. Maybe they already had a kid and didn't want me. Maybe they didn't want a girl? Maybe my biological mother was too young or maybe I was born out of wedlock or maybe they saw me and said DAMN and decided to try again but the point is that when I was a baby, I was in an orphanage in China, ripe for the pickin' of whichever hapless set of hopeful parents managed to stumble across this bundle of weird.
My folks couldn't have any kids of their own biologically, and so they decided to adopt. They tell me that they wanted a girl from a country where girls weren't as valued as boys, and after a few years of searching and working with various organizations, they ended up in China. Mom says that I was the first child they were offered, and they knew from the very second they saw my picture that I was theirs.
Aww.
I've always really admired this about my parents. It takes a lot of heart to take someone else's kid into your life and make them your kid. I've been asked a lot whether I want to find my birth parents or not, and the answer is... Not really. It's often phrased as "real parents", and the truth is, my parents now are my real parents. Blood hasn't got a thing to do with it. They took me in as a baby and raised me and loved me, and that's what matters, not whether we share the same genes.
My folks are Jewish. They were raised Jewish, and their families have been Jewish as far back as anyone knows. I'm Jewish. I don't have the "blood", but I was converted as an infant and became Bat Mitzvah, and that's another gift my parents passed to me, with or without their blood attached. It seems like a complicated issue, like family matters and identity always do, but it really isn't too much.
My folks love me, when some people can't even love the kids they birthed in their own blood. It could so easily have been anyone else, but it wasn't. It was them, and it was me. And I love them, too.
I don't know who my biological parents were or why they gave me up. Maybe they already had a kid and didn't want me. Maybe they didn't want a girl? Maybe my biological mother was too young or maybe I was born out of wedlock or maybe they saw me and said DAMN and decided to try again but the point is that when I was a baby, I was in an orphanage in China, ripe for the pickin' of whichever hapless set of hopeful parents managed to stumble across this bundle of weird.
My folks couldn't have any kids of their own biologically, and so they decided to adopt. They tell me that they wanted a girl from a country where girls weren't as valued as boys, and after a few years of searching and working with various organizations, they ended up in China. Mom says that I was the first child they were offered, and they knew from the very second they saw my picture that I was theirs.
Aww.
I've always really admired this about my parents. It takes a lot of heart to take someone else's kid into your life and make them your kid. I've been asked a lot whether I want to find my birth parents or not, and the answer is... Not really. It's often phrased as "real parents", and the truth is, my parents now are my real parents. Blood hasn't got a thing to do with it. They took me in as a baby and raised me and loved me, and that's what matters, not whether we share the same genes.
My folks are Jewish. They were raised Jewish, and their families have been Jewish as far back as anyone knows. I'm Jewish. I don't have the "blood", but I was converted as an infant and became Bat Mitzvah, and that's another gift my parents passed to me, with or without their blood attached. It seems like a complicated issue, like family matters and identity always do, but it really isn't too much.
My folks love me, when some people can't even love the kids they birthed in their own blood. It could so easily have been anyone else, but it wasn't. It was them, and it was me. And I love them, too.