I Wish My Baby Would Read

Too busy for sleep

I bought a number of useful and authoritative sounding books on baby care, but Cricket just won’t seem to read them. Nor will he listen to professional advice; after he was born I was sternly entreated to burp him after every feed, but he steadfastly refused to produce a single burp. He was passed from nurse to nurse and patted until I feared bruises would result, but no burp made its way out of his little mouth. It did leave him with the rather adorable habit of patting my back in return whenever I put him on my shoulder though. A few days after we came home the baby’s father commented “he doesn’t seem to know how to baby.” It’s true. He never sleeps. Not naps, not at night, never. “Baby should be napping for several hours a day” I read aloud, pausing to glare pointedly at my not-remotely-sleepy-seeming infant. He replies with a gargle and a spit bubble. I hold Super Nanny’s book open to the “suggested sleeping schedule” and wave it in front of Cricket’s face. He tries to eat the book. “Sleep when your baby sleeps” the books all say. I search the index frantically for “my baby never sleeps” but there are no entries. My baby clearly doesn’t know how to baby. His teeth come in and I am terrified he’ll bite my nipple. “Don’t worry” says every source, book and digital, “babies almost never bite.” He bites me. “If they do, it’s almost always a harmless nip of exploration” says every source the baby has clearly never read. Two little holes in my nipple drip blood onto the page explaining how this will totally not happen. My baby doesn’t know how to baby. He ignores the sippy cup I buy and drinks confidently from a glass at three months. He tries to steal food from my plate, spoon, cup and on one occasion my mouth from three months. I print out articles about “virgin gut” and delayed introduction of solids and leave them pointedly lying around, but he persists, screaming for food. I cave and give him sneaky food at four months, but it isn’t good enough, he wants to sit at the table and eat exactly what I’m eating. Cricket’s father entertains his co-workers with photographs of our six month old eating French toast, a whole banana, and lentil stew. He figures out he can make the dogs go crazy by throwing bits of his food to them, and uses his powers for evil. I wake in the middle of the night to find Cricket, seven months, standing next to a large box experimenting with ways to open and close the lid.  I take him to the city playroom and he immediately climbs onto the roof of the play house. He can’t walk, but he climbs like a cat. At eight months the books say he’ll probably drop one nap. “HA” I laugh, my baby doesn’t have a nap to drop! And then he starts napping twice a day, just when other babies are apparently waking up. My baby hasn’t read the manuals. He doesn’t know how to baby.

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Here Comes the Sun: A Journey to Adoption in 8 Chakras

 

I'm so excited to be able to tell you that Leza Lowitz's memoir is now available for pre-order (the release date is July 1st). I shared some excepts a few years ago and have been waiting to read the rest. There is so little information in English on adoption in Japan that a book like this is a real treat. Here's a link to the book on Amazon: Here Comes the Sun: A Journey to Adoption in 8 Chakras 

And here is the official blurb:

At 30, Californian Leza Lowitz is single and traveling the world, which suits her just fine. Coming of age in Berkeley during the feminist revolution of the 1970s, she learned that marriage and family could wait. Or could they?

When Leza moves to Japan and falls in love with a Japanese man, her heart opens in ways she never thought possible. But she’s still an outsider, and home is far away. Rather than struggle to fit in, she opens a yoga studio and makes a home for others. Then, at 44, Leza and her Japanese husband seek to adopt—in a country where bloodlines are paramount and family ties are almost feudal in their cultural importance. She travels to India to work on herself and back to California to deal with her past. Something is still not complete until she learns that when you give a little love to a child, you get the whole world in return.

The author’s deep connection to yoga shows her that infertile does not mean inconceivable. By adapting and adopting, she transcends her struggles and embraces the joys of motherhood.

Here is the memoir's home page: http://www.cbsdsmarttools.com/sites/m89832/index.html

I've reviewed the book for another publication, so I wont say too much about it here, except that it is well worth reading.

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Loving Libraries (Flashback Friday)

Some time last year I was at the university discussing my upcoming employment. Since I wasn't actually employed at the time, I didn't have a library access card, but a friend snuck me in with a sneaky swipe of his. Unreasonably afraid of being discovered, I climbed the tiny back stairs instead of going through the main entrance. The staircase was so small I doubt my man's shoulders could have squeezed into the narrow space. The staircase opened into an area I'm used to calling the stacks... books so rarely requested that they are stored out of the way in a less accessible part of the library. The room was dark, with motion sensor lights flicking on slowly row by row as I tip-toed, enjoying the silence after an intense few months of stay-at-home parenting a child who needs constant noise to feel safe. The still air was filled with that special musty smell of old books. I may have cried, a little. There are a few places guaranteed to make me feel at ease: mountains, rivers and libraries. Nowhere really compares to a proper university library, though.

When I was ten, my father started his PhD and he, my younger sister and I lived on and off in an ex-ambulance parked near the university library. Dad fitted out the ambulance with bunk beds, and we showered at the university swimming pool. We had movie nights in the AV section of the library, where the selection of films was geared towards screen studies, meaning that although we weren't allowed to watch Sesame Street, we saw Thelma & Louise and Thelma & Louise. In the day time we lived in the library while dad was studying. We took dolls and built multi-story doll-houses on empty book shelves. We found the children's literature section and read all of it. The library was massive and one day we explored too far and got lost. After walking for what felt like hours Verity started crying and refused to go any further. I piggy-backed her, desperately trying to remember the Dewey Decimal codes near our starting point. Eventually we found a water fountain in a study hall and ran to it like desert explorers finding an oasis. I finally remembered the title of a book I'd seem near dad's desk, entered it into the catalog and despite no experience using a computer, we figured out the location. When we got back, triumphant at the trials and tribulations we had over come, dad hadn't even noticed we'd been gone. Universities in general, and libraries in particular, have been under my skin ever since.

These literate little birds have built a nest in the kanji for "tree". Picture thanks to Furiida.

Of all the emails I've had as a result of this blog, my favorite is from Vincent the librarian, who emailed me with a book recommendation. Because that is the magical power of librarians, guardians of the promised land. They reach out and tell you what you were looking for even before you know it yourself. Or, as he said: "I'm a librarian.  It's what I do.  Then walk off into the sunset." Thank you Vincent! One day I'll get around to writing about the book, Yokohama Yankee: My Family's Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan by Leslie Helm. It's a great read.

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If You're Being Bullied, Change [Roll of 28 (9)]

A very long time ago, I was an exchange student in Nagoya. The night before a test, my neighbor had a big party, and through the paper-thin walls there wasn't much I didn't hear. I went over and asked them to keep it down. Then again. Then again with some yelling. The next morning I headed out to take my test and found my front door vandalized, the key-card slot jammed full of coins and generally a mess that I couldn't even close properly. After the test I went to student admin to report the damage and I used the word いじめ,  bullying. "Don't be silly", the staff member said, "you're a nice person. It can't be bullying."

Because bullying only happens to people who have done something to deserve it.

I understood immediately what she meant, because around the same time I had watched a TV show featuring a young man who had been bullied as a child for being fat. He had grown up to be a personal trainer and he was dedicating his life to combating bullying... by running free fitness programs to help overweight kids lose weight.

On setsubun Tiger was home sick, so we watched the pre-school kids' shows. One featured an oni (ogre) who was lonely but couldn't make friends because everyone was scared of him. The solution the show offered? Put a hat on to cover his horns, swap his club for a bunch of flowers and change his name to onii-san (big brother) not oni-san. "But", said the oni, "without horns I'm not an oni at all, and if I change my name I wont feel like myself." The response? "You want to make friends, don't you?"

The theme of Ursula Le Guin's Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea I found most intriguing is the victim-blaming. Therru is horribly disfigured after being gang-raped and thrown into a fire. The book notes that when people see her scarred face the first thing they ask is "what did she do?" and not "what was done to her?" Not surprisingly, this observation is absent from the Studio Ghibli film ゲド戦記, despite Therru being a prominent character (she is also considerably less disfigured in the film than in the novel).

When I told my co-workers about our intention to adopt, and began telling them how high the numbers of kids in orphanages are, one teacher chimed in with "and some of them are probably good kids, too."  During our interviews we were asked if we would agree to parent a child born out of wedlock, the child of someone with a criminal record, or a child resulting from rape. I assume those are the not-good kids. They should have chosen better parents.

My thoughts are with Michael Morones and his family.

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Rjukan and 半日村

A feel-good story to kick off your weekend!

The Norwegian town of Rjukan is situated in the bottom of a valley and from September to March not a ray of sunlight reaches them, until now.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-30/giant-mirrors-capture-illusive-sun-for-norwegian-town/5057182

The story reminded me of the Japanese picture book 半日村‎ about a town with the same problem (but a different solution). The village in the story is shaded by a high mountain, much like Rjukan, and only gets a few hours of sunlight a day. Consequently few crops grow and the village is plagued by listlessness. The adults believe they were simply born unlucky and accept their fate. One day a boy, Ippei, starts climbing the mountain and digging. He carries the dirt back down to the village and throws it into the lake (the source of perpetual cold winds). Everyone laughs at him but soon other kids begin to join in. The adults scold them, saying what they are doing is useless and goes against common sense. Things have always been the way they are, and there's no use struggling against them. You can probably guess the ending, especially since I included an image that is a big spoiler ;)

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Picture Books About Adoption That Don't Focus on Parents' Desires

(This is the last post for a while, we're about to become a family of three and that's going to need all of my attention! I'll be back, just not for a few weeks. Be good while I'm gone.)

I wanted to buy our son, who will henceforth be referred to  as Tiger*, some picture books about adoption. He is a little too old for most of the picture books on the market, but he doesn't have the language skills for books aimed at his age group. I want him to have something visual not to "help him understand" (he is old enough to know exactly what is happening) but to show him that families like ours are common enough to feature in multiple books. I want him to know that he isn't the only child who looks different from his parents, and if he brings friends home I hope they will flip open the books and see the same thing.

When I began looking for books, I was surprised and honestly a bit upset to see how many titles of books purportedly for adopted children take the adoptive parents' perspective. I haven't read these books, but the titles alone ensure that I'm not buying them. My son isn't a present, he is a person. God didn't give him to me and his loss of his first family and everything he has suffered subsequently was NOT in response to my wish. My wish is that no child is ever in the situation of needing to be adopted by strangers. I wanted books that focus on the child's feelings and experiences, not the parents' loneliness or wishes for a child. One book, "A Blessing From Above", features a bird who gives her chick to a kangaroo because she "knew her nest was not big enough for all her chicks", perpetuating the deeply vile idea that those irresponsibly fertile poor people really ought to hand their babies over to wealthier families, because money = love. Just no. I'm one of five children who grew up in an intermittently welfare dependent household. Quite glad my parents didn't "choose a better life" for me thank you very much.

So what did I end up getting? Unfortunately I couldn't find any books I liked that featured people not animals (I think there are some issues with the way animal adoption stories are often inter-species,
but as an academic I am prone to over analysis I guess), but I did find some child-focused stories.

Here's what we bought:

My favourite is "All Bears Need Love". In the story a polar bear takes care of a brown bear who arrives at the zoo. The other animals raise objections and the polar bear responds to each:

The anteater sniffed. "No one will believe he's yours."
"He will know," said Mama Polar Bear. "That's what's important."

I love picture books where the illustrations contain additional story elements that aren't in the text. In "All Bears Need Love", the background shows the baby bear happily playing with the other baby animals while their parents are in the foreground talking and worrying about 'difference'.

"Rosie's Family" is actually a close contender for favourite and in terms of content the detail makes it the most age-appropriate for an elementary school aged child. The only reason I'm putting it second is that there isn't any kind of story. It's just Rosie talking about her family and her experiences, so I can't see us reading it for fun more than once. It's the only book I found that uses animals of the same species but different breeds (Rosie is a beagle adopted by schnauzers). It also shows a family with both adopted and biological children. The content is fantastic and obviously intended to prompt conversations between parents and children. Rosie talks about feeling angry with her adoptive parents sometimes, and wondering about her birth parents, and missing the place she was "before". These are important and normal feelings that are denied by gratitude-enforcing meta-narratives like "God gave you to us". 

"A Mother for Choco" is another sweet story that starts with a baby bird trying to find his mother by searching for animals with the same physical characteristics (the giraffe is yellow like him but doesn't have wings, the penguin has wings but doesn't have his cheeks etc) but eventually decides that what Mrs. Bear does makes her his mother, even if she doesn't look the same.

"Zachary's New Home" have my favourite illustrations (line drawings, but beautiful and subtly expressive rather than big bold block colours and cartoonish styling). It details Zachary's removal from his first family by a social worker and time in a foster home before his adoption. It's the only book I found where the protagonist has a clear memory of his biological parents and of losing them. The story is sensitive to Zachary having both happy and unhappy memories about life in his first home and a desire to return there. It also covers testing behaviours that strain the relationship between Zachary and his adoptive parents, and Zachary's feelings of rejection and self-blame about losing his first parents. There's a lot of emotional work tucked into a short story. Although not all the specifics are a good match for us, I like the matter-of-fact approach to difficult feelings and events in the book and the focus on Zachary not the adults in the story.

If you have any books to recommend, do please leave a comment! But I won't be replying to comments for a while.

*大翔 (Taiga, pronounced Tiger) is a commonish name around here and we thought it would be a funny 'bilingual' name so while we were waiting we called our son Tiger~ you can't spend a year (or longer) talking about "the child" and statistically he was probably going to be a boy, so Tiger he was until we got a match and a real name. I think it's pretty common for adoptive parents to have a pre-placement name. My eldest niece was Noodles. Anyway, I'm obviously not going to use my son's real name here so he is going to remain Tiger.

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Kids and Reading

Reading is cool, this bear says so

I buy a lot of stickers from places like FBC to give to my students. In one variety pack I got a set of “reading celebration” stickers. I absolutely will never use them. They just don’t make any sense here. Kids here love to read. Japan has always had an exceptionally high literacy rate, much higher than any European country in the nineteenth century and still very high today. The fact that kids enjoy poetry-based games should indicate the central role of literature in culture. Of course, manga play a big part in promoting literacy. Once looked down on as a distraction from “real reading”, school libraries in Australia are increasingly looking to manga and comics to help facilitate an interest in reading and literacy skills. In a Japanese classroom, the difficulty can be getting the kids to put their books away and stop reading long enough to pay attention to the class. I don’t even know how I would explain that in Australia and America we need incentive cards and stickers to get some kids to open a book.

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A Bird, a Bell and Me: Custody disputes are not a new issue

私が両手をひろげても、Even if I spread open my arms
お空はちっとも飛べないが、I cannot soar into the sky at all,
飛べる小鳥は私のように、 but the little bird who can fly
地面を速く走れない。 cannot run fast along the ground like I can.
私が体をゆすっても、 Even if I shake my body
きれいな音はでないけど、 no beautiful sound will come out,
あの鳴る鈴は私のように、 but the ringing bell does not
たくさんな唄は知らないよ。 know lots of songs like I do.
鈴と、小鳥と、それから私、 The bell, the little bird and also me:
みんなちがって、みんないい。 We are all different; we are all good.

I apologise to my translator friends for the poetic license employed in my translation m(__)m

It remains normal in Japanese divorces for one parent to retain sole custody, leaving the other parent with no visitation rights. This is one of about a thousand and one social problems caused by the family register system. A child can only be listed in one family’s register, so only one parent can keep them.  Even in cases where shared custody is awarded, there are no penalties for the primary custodian (the one with the child in their register) if s/he refuses the other parent access. A friend of mine has not seen his children since his ex-wife began demanding cash payments in return for allowing him to see them. These problems are becoming more widespread as the divorce rate increases, but they aren’t new. Kaneko Misuzu, the author of the poem above and a popular children’s writer, committed suicide in 1930. Her husband had contracted a venereal disease from frequenting brothels, so she divorced him. He responded by claiming sole custody of their daughter. Kaneko was twenty-seven when she ended her life.

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