A Tale of Two Cultures

Yesterday, we had a clash of the cultures so to speak. It wasn't intentional, but in reflection last night, the things we did yesterday demonstrated the struggle that Becky will have her entire life. The bower Museum in Santa Ana is hosting an exhibit on the Terra Cotta Warriors & my friend from San Diego, Gace, wanted to see it. We got tickets for the morning & met there. It is amazing 8th wonder - we saw actual warriors that have been painstakingly pieced together and preserved. The history surrounding the Terra Cotta Warriors is one filled with brutality and hostility, yet they are stunningly and hauntingly beautiful. This is Becky's birth culture - her history of her DNA. It is where she was born and where she comes from - it is the part of her ,that she will be reminded of every time she looks in a mirror or sees a picture of herself. She will face it when she does her "family tree" project in grade school or her genetics assignment in high school biology. She does not "come" from her forever family, but from a land in the east filled with a vast history of beauty and pain. Yet, it is her forever familythat give her history.


I realized this after we spent the afternoon yesterday with my dad's cousin Paul - who was visiting from Minnesota. Paul told me stories of he & my dad as young boys growing up on Long Island, of my mom's father's (who I barely remember) and of an extended family that is my heritage - and now Becky's. This will be her story that she will tell her grandhcildren of playing with her cousins, of my dad and his love of music and of her (!) and her extended family in St. Louis.


Adopted kids live in two worlds - the genetic world that they come from (and in Becky's case, know nothing about) and the world that they are raised in. My prayer for my daughter is that the love her Heavenly Father and His knowledge of her since before she was born, will help her reconcile these two worlds. I pray that she will know that this plan of the two worlds was His divine plan for her and that she will feel peace with being a part of two worlds.

We weren't able to take pictures in the exhibit, but they did have a "live" warrior......

Cousin Paul, Becky, me & Grandma