A couple of different events recently have just about broken me down and made me say mean things to others - and I usually don’t even consider doing that. If anything, I swallow my irritation and share my frustrations later to my family. I am pretty non-confrontational but somehow, I need to figure out a comfort level with pushing back to some people.
Let me preface this conversation with the reality being that people that haven’t adopted older kids just don’t understand. I was about to say people that haven’t adopted kids don’t know, but then I thought about it, and I really think I have to discount them as well. If you have adopted an infant, you have for all intents and purposes affected their whole life. Sure, some things you can commiserate with me on, but for the most part, adopting an older child means all of the problems of adoption and all of the problems of having them cared for (or not cared for if you catch my drift) from others. I don’t mean to alienate people that haven’t adopted older kids but I really feel this way sometimes.
Anyway, on with the story. You have heard me complain before about the fact that I daily mourn the fact that I missed so much with Alex. I missed his first 14 birthdays, Christmases, losing his first tooth, etc... There are so many misses, but I am learning that the sting of that goes away as we build up a lot of memories together. We now have a years worth of memories that are starting to fill that void. I know that it will never be enough, but I am getting used to it. But what really gets me is when people judge him on what happened before he was ours. I haven’t done that, G3 and the kids haven’t done that, so what gives anyone else the right to do that? Alex is now OURS, fully and completely, so judge him by the same standards that you judge the rest of us, because those are the standards by which we judge him. He is now held accountable to our life standards and will always be held so. And there is no problem with this. But we recently have had some situations where he has been judged by other parents based upon their conjectures of what might have gone on in his life before he came to us.
This is killing me! Why? Why would people blame him or hold him accountable for things that may or may not have happened several continents away? Why are they judging him any differently from my other two? Why would people invent the worst case scenario of what his behavior was and then warn their kids off? Why is the fact that his skin color is a few shades darker than ours mean that he can go different places or not worry as much about crime or safety?
The reality is that Alex was and is the most caring, kind person I know. He is a kids just like any other 15 year old and a Gardiner child that is educated and treated just like the other two. He was adrift before, without caring people around him and sure, did some things that now he is not proud of - but they were done to survive. Who would blame him now for stealing to eat because he was hungry? But during it all, he cared for the people around him - he cared for his baby sister and was changing her diapers when no one else would answer her cries. When his Grandma needed money for medication, he skipped school and took a bus to pick potatoes to make money. He admits he put his thumb on the scale when the bags were weighed, but he needed the money for her! There are countless other examples that I can give of where he did the best he could in pretty horrific circumstances and now life is finally paying him back with some kindness or is it?
When he is judged as a sociopath with criminal tendencies from other parents, that really isn’t kindness, is it? He isn’t being given the chance to start over, is he? We have offered that chance and within our family, he started with a clean slate - and let me tell you - it is still pretty clean. But when others unfairly place his past back on his shoulders, without context and knowledge, he becomes a victim again. A victim that will always wonder why he can’t seem to rise above his humble beginnings.
Never have I truly been more confronted with a case of guilty until proved innocent. Just because Alex wasn’t mine from the beginning, he is guilty of really any sin that can be imagined. And what really burns me is that just because Amanda and G4 have been raised by us, they are not. Fine, if you want to judge all of us - be my guest, just don’t single out one of us for something they haven’t done and aren’t responsible for.
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