Here is my most wonderful and beautiful son, in not such a good mood.  In fact he was in a rather difficult, contrary, outright malicious mood.  The target of his angst was his Momma and he pulled out all the stops to make it known that he was not happy.  It is actually odd that I cannot even recall what the issues were at the time but I think it was around Mark not wanting to go to school anymore.  He just wants to stay home with Daddy and become a Daddy himself because he hates being "little".  And then it came...the most feared and dreaded arrow that an adoptive Mother knows will be coming, but I did not expect it coming from my son at the ripe old age of five! Fifteen maybe, but five...yikes!  "You are not my Mommy anymore!  I want to live with my China Mommy and Daddy.  I want to go back to China!"  Dear God...where do you go from there?  How can you take that assault and not be affected and wounded in a place deep in your heart?  How?  You can take it because you are a Mother and you love this child more than your own life!  So you look for the rainbows after the storm!

 And you will find them!
 Mark and Momma have always had an honest relationship and we have openly discussed his life in China.  By pure accident while out thrift shopping, Momma bought a book that caught Mark's interest about the birth of baby animals. This book is called "If You Were Born a Kitten by Marion Dane Bauer, Illustrated by JoEllen McAllister Stammen and published by Simon & Shuster Books for Young Readers, New York 1997.  How was I to know that this book was the key to open the door of discussions around the origin of Mark's life and how our family came about through adoption. 
 As we read the story about all of the different types of baby animals and how they came into the world in different ways, I had no idea that it would end with the human story of conception and birth.  The illustrations were amazing and the story naturally ended with the child being told that "Of course you're not a tadpole...not a snake...not a porcupette or a whale ...etc.  And yet you were born, too.  You rode curled beneath your mother's heart, growing and growing...until you squeezed out, wailing...naked...you."  I do not think that Marion Dane Bauer has any idea how her story has helped a little boy make sense of his adoption history.  I would love to tell her someday.  Mark and I had to have the conversation at the age of three that this Momma did not carry him "floating in a salty sea, beneath your mother's heart".  I explained to Mark that this Momma always carried the dream of having a child in my heart but that his China Mommy carried him in her tummy until he was born.
 Mark was able to identify himself as the baby in the tummy and that these photos were of his "China Mommy" not me.  Not the Mommy from Canada. 
 I let Mark tell the story over and over about how this Canada Mommy came to get him from China and the last photo in the book, in his opinion is of him and I when he was two and we went to get him.  So you see...Mark knows his story.  No secrets, no surprises. 
However, back to the original purpose of the blog post about his worded assault.  As happens with children, the moment of turmoil blew away and Mark went off to play.  Momma was left to shed a few tears and to accept that this was likely the first arrow directed at my heart and that there would be many more to come.  The following day Mark and I had a heart to heart about the power of words.  He was well aware of my tears and the hurt that he had caused.  He is old and astute enough to know that he had been the direct cause of this sadness and made an effort to make amends.  What surprised me was that he was able to tell me he was sorry without being asked to.  Now that Mark has had the opportunity to use his words as weapons, my hope is that he will also understand the responsibility that he has to take for their consequences.  A lesson learned for Mark and an opportunity for Momma to reflect on how to weather these moments.  This journey has only just begun, but my hope is that this honest and open dialogue will help smooth the waters ahead.  This is my hope.  Another hope is that some day I may meet Marion Dane Bauer and thank her personally for helping a little boy make sense of his life story.  Although her book was not intended to help adoptive parents explain adoption to their children, she has helped this Mother immensely...and for this I indebted to her.  Mark and Momma have survived this bump in the road quite nicely.  Momma's big ol' heart will mend and Mark has learned that his words can hurt.  Will he use the same arrows in the future...I suspect there will be times that he will.  Will Momma be ready for it...yes I will...it is my job to comfort him when he feels the weight of everything he has lost in his life story, no matter the cost to myself.