Global Day of Action...

... for Troy Davis. Please follow the link to sign a petition.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL - USA Online Action Center
Support Clemency for Troy Davis
Take Action On This Issue

Troy Davis faces execution for the murder of Police Officer Mark MacPhail in Georgia, despite a strong claim of innocence. 7 out of 9 witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony, no murder weapon was found and no physical evidence links Davis to the crime. The Georgia Board of Pardon and Paroles has voted to deny clemency, yet Governor Perdue can still exercise leadership to ensure that his death sentence is commuted. Please urge him to demonstrate respect for fairness and justice by supporting clemency for Troy Davis.

Update and Link

We have a lot of stuff going on this week, but I'm too tired to blog it! Sunny's behavior got really bad, then got better again. My health has not been great, either... I have a nasty sore throat right now.

I should mention that I had another guest post on Racialicious called "Geishas and Whores". It's a deeper exploration of an issue I've already touched on in the early days of this blog. The title turned out to be less controversial than the editor and I predicted. I guess I did a good job of explaining my word choices within the body of the piece. Commenters have already added a lot of interesting discussion.

Missing Mothers

I had a very nice day today.

Guy took Sunny out to the country to see his mother (Grandma) and her husband (Pawpaw). By the way, I'm not allowed to use the word "stepfather" because Pawpaw is actually a few years younger than Guy. This is a rule Guy always insists on, although I've never seen an age exclusion clause in any dictionary under the word "stepfather". Pawpaw has a shed in back of Grandma's house with a Harley-Davidson and a four-wheeler/ATV, which he let Sunny ride with him... yikes. Pawpaw isn't very mature and I think he only just barely counts as adult supervision. Sunny definitely had a lot of fun, though.

Meanwhile, I had a quiet day with my own mother. We went to a Korean restaurant on Buford Highway for brunch. I bought her a sewing machine for Mother's Day and we did some sewing together at her house, then I took a long nap, which I really needed. We talked a little bit about her mother, my own Nana, who died of emphysema 15 years ago.

Later on, we came back home, and Sunny spent most of the rest of the day playing outside with his friends. His behavior recently has been great. He hasn't had any violent fits or name-calling for almost two weeks now. He's given me several little presents for Mother's Day... what a sweetheart.

We talked to Sunny's foster mom in the morning. She has two new placements, a newborn baby girl and a 10-year-old girl. BB is doing very well and has been working on his crawling technique. Right now he can only crawl to the right, not the left, so if he crawls around the edge of the playpen and hits an obstacle, he yells until someone comes along and moves him back to the right spot so he can start again.

I did feel a little sad that he's growing up so fast. Even if he's placed with us soon, I won't get to carry him around for very long. Just a little sad though... it's a weird kind of limbo, but I'm used to it and I don't dwell on it much.

I steeled myself for the most difficult part of the day, which is talking to Sunny's bio grandma. It's just that she often says things that I don't feel confident about responding to. For example, every time we talk, she tells me how Sunny's mother's last wish is that we would adopt BB. Since we talk to her every one to two weeks I've heard this a lot, and every time I say a few sympathetic words, but really, it's hard to know what to say.

She told me that her day had been very rough... until she talked to Sunny, and then she felt much better.

Her own mother, Sunny's great-grandmother, has dementia and emphysema, and it looks like she's stopped eating and is going to die soon. I know what that's going to be like because that's how my own grandmother went. It's a hard way. Her brother lives close by, but it's going to be her job to handle the end. That sounds awfully familiar. It's so often that the men in a family don't have the strength when it really counts. I hate to be bitter, I've just seen and heard it happen way too many times.

She told me she made a wreath this morning and went to her daughter's grave and sat and talked to her for a long time.

She hasn't been sleeping well because of the stress. She says she won't take any medication, but when she feels really down, she talks to the parish priest.

We did have some lighter moments during the call. She told me all about the kinds of vegetables Sunny's mom would and wouldn't eat, and we compared them to Sunny's own vegetable ranking. She told me how her children always hated to crawl and how they liked to spend only a few weeks crawling before they started walking and running.

Like I posted yesterday, I feel very privileged today. I also feel aware of all the missing mothers and all those missing their mothers.

Sentimental about Mother's Day

Sunny has a secret plan for Mother's Day. Plan formulation has been ongoing for several days now. He'll go over to Guy, whisper in Guy's ear, then turn to me and say "DID YOU HEAR THAT, MOM?" "No." "GOOD, IT'S A SECRET!"

Guy let me in on it. Sunny wants to get me a caramel apple for Mother's Day.

I feel really privileged and really sentimental to have someone who loves me like that.

Just this morning we were talking about one of the neighborhood kids. His family situation is a bit fuzzy, but he's not living with his mother. Sunny got confused about the details and said "He must have been really shy when he met his parents, like I was shy when I met you." I explained that his friend wasn't adopted, so he never had a time when he met totally new parents.

It reminded me of the day we first met.

Outside his foster mom's house, I took a deep breath. Guy seemed to be doing a lot better than I was. It took me about half a minute to pull myself together after I got out of the car.

Then the social worker led us in. We met his foster mom. We moved deeper into the house, toward a sofa in the den. Perched anxiously on the sofa was a little boy with huge brown eyes. He looked so fragile, so vulnerable, almost like a fawn. As soon as he saw us, he said "Hi Mom! Hi Dad!"

It's impossible for me to imagine just how important that moment was for him, how much courage it took...

The Power of Triracial Mystification

Guy says he can't wait for me to blog about this, so here it goes.

The other day we had someone in the house trying to repair our washing machine. He was an elderly white man with one of those verra verra gentle Jawja accents. As usual, Sunny was in and out of the house playing with his friends.

At one point, his friends burst in and collected him to go outside and ride scooters.

As he was walking out, the repairman looked at Guy, and then looked at me, increasingly more mystified.

"Excuse me, but I'm wondering... those kids... they're black... and you're Chinese... and you're Caucasian..."

Me: "I'm not Chinese, I'm half-Japanese and half-white."

"I thought you were Chinese."

Me: "I'm not."

Guy, in a cheery voice: "Well I'm 100% white!"

"Your kids... they're black... and you're... and he's..."

I finally soothed his mental anguish by communicating that two of the three kids were neighbors, and that Sunny was adopted. He was quite relieved, and immediately launched into a rambling anecdote about a couple from his church who were both white but their kids they had adopted were both black. Then he made his awkward exit.

I'm used to being called Chinese. As long as people accept my correction gracefully, I don't get angry. I reserve getting angry for those occasions when people actually ARGUE WITH ME after I correct them.

Surprisingly enough, this is the first time I have had to answer awkward questions about race when it comes to Sunny. I think a lot of people assume he's my biological son, or else they're just way too polite to ask questions like "Is he adopted or did you cheat on your husband with Tiger Woods or something?" Guy also doesn't really get a lot of questions. A Japanese-American woman he met in a doctor's lobby ended up quizzing him once, but that was understandable, since Sunny had been telling her about his ojiichan.

Sunny is going to get a lot of questions as he grows up, but I'm not that worried about him. He seems less vulnerable than most kids because of his unique combination of self-confidence, extroversion and stubbornness. He's the kind of kid that's always telling jokes and bossing other kids around too much and in general taking things too far... but who is still incredibly popular because he's so dynamic and fun to be around. Kids are always knocking at our door asking to play with Sunny, even though all of them are actually older than he is.

It reminds me of an anecdote an adoptive parent couple told us during training. The father was black, the mother was white and they had adopted two black sons. Their very different personalities led to very different responses when classmates asked them, "why is your momma white?" One would say, "Because God made her that way" and the other would say, "Because she IS!" I'm more of the introverted type who wants to communicate the reason. Sunny is the type who doesn't have that priority, it just is what it is, and if you have a problem with that, well then... hey look over there, it's something shiny! Watch me do a backflip!

I think we'll all have it pretty easy until Sunny hits the teenage years and starts having a racial identity crisis, but I've got a good therapist on speed dial for then.