Buy Nothing Christmas

I recently got an email from one of the local churches regarding "Buy Nothing Christmas." The idea is to de-commercialize the holidays, and so my first
assumption was that this group was saying no one should buy anyone anything for the holidays. This made me sad, because we like to give presents. We like opening presents. We enjoy that part of the holidays. But when I went to the website and read a bit more, I realized that rather than encouraging people not to give any gifts for Christmas, they were promoting something that we already try to do on a regular basis. They're suggesting that you spend your time and dollars thoughtfully. Rather than buying someone a new video game or item of clothing, make something for your friends and family. Donate to a charity in their name. Do something together.

For years, probably more in the late 80s and early 90s than any other time, Christmas was about giving people stuff. The more stuff, the better. Half the time, that stuff was utter crap. Decorative candles and bath stuff and Hallmark holiday ornaments. It was just part of the culture at that time. But at least in my experience, all of this just resulted in cluttered houses and landfills of plastic garbage. Around the time we got together, Alex and I started to rebel against this idea. We've been making gifts for people for years now. Most years, we bake a ton of cookies and mail them to our friends and family. Sometimes we make donations to charities we knew people would like. Or we'll buy consumable items that support local businesses. Or we'll buy items that support artists we care about and look for gifts from places like Flinn Family Pottery, Very Sage, a.Elizabeth, or Skye Tyler Designs. It's not that we never buy anything commercial, but we buy a lot less than we used to. Even for each other, we have a limit of $20 or $30 on new stuff. Everything else has to be found or handmade or used. The idea for us has been to limit the amount of money we spend at giant chain stores and focus more of our spending in places where we think it matters more.

Of course, given the latest unemployment numbers in the US, our spending habits are seeming less like a revelation and more like a necessity. It's hard to blame people for jumping on 99-cent specials at their local Wal-Mart at times like these.

Still, if you're looking for gifts for the holidays, please take a minute to browse over at Molasses. We feature a variety of handmade items from talented crafters and artists, and this year all profits will be donated to Ethiopian Orphan Relief. We would be thrilled--I mean it, THRILLED--to have your support.

Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock

Folks, I just want to say it has been four months. We are in the window.

As an additional happy note, even if we got the call today we would not have the kids here in January or February. This is what some might call a mixed blessing. I call it just a blessing. Have I mentioned how cold it gets here in the winter?

I don't have a title for this post. I just can't think of anything clever enough, and I can barely think of anything to say. Our friend Diane's husband, Brian Nelson, "the man in a kilt," has died. And I feel so heartbroken about it. The funny thing is that 1) I've only ever internet "met" Brian, and 2) if you know Brian's story, this wasn't exactly unexpected. So in some ways my sadness feels unjustified. I'm not sorry that he's no longer suffering, of course, but I am very sorry that Diane has lost what she once said to me was her "best possible husband." As someone who was fortunate enough to meet and marry my own best possible husband, it's not hard for me to imagine the kind of pain it would cause me to find myself without him.

I know a reader or two has occasionally wandered over from Brian's blog, and I want to say to those of you who might still wander this way that I am so deeply sorry for all who have lost some part of themselves in losing this man to cancer. I feel like if his writing taught me anything, it's that there is always a bright side. Somewhere. I'm sure I'll think about Brian the next time I have a soft, furry cat sitting on my lap and some sunlight streaming through the window.

A (Somewhat Wordy) Public Service Announcement

Before I moved to Manhattan, I rushed to get everywhere. I sped and stressed to avoid being late to work or to dinner or to the doctor. I called people and sent text messages from my phone so they'd know exactly where I was on the highway. I worried about traffic jams and slow drivers and making "good time." And then I moved to one of the largest cities in the world, and suddenly I had no control over my commute. I took the subway, which meant depending on a flawed network of trains and people to get me where I needed to go. Sometimes my train would be held underground for half an hour without explanation. Sometimes it would switch to another track and I'd end up in the wrong neighborhood. Sometimes the train would skip my stop. Sometimes my subway line would be temporarily shut down due to "police activity." And on one very special rainy day, my train didn't run at all. I lost a good deal of control of my ability to get places on time. And since cell phones don't work in the subway, there was never any way to call my employer or husband or friend or doctor to tell them I would be running late. Once I realized it was out of my hands, I calmed down. If I were meeting someone, I would call before I left to make sure they knew I was on my way. If I didn't arrive, they assumed I had gotten held up by some aspect of the city's public transportation. It was no big deal. The point is, when you live in a place like New York, you realize how insignificant these little things are. You discover very quickly that things do not shut down if you are late, that your friends will forgive you for missing happy hour, and that having to delay a conversation until you get home is really no big deal.

One of the pet peeves that Xander and I share is people talking or texting on their cell phones while driving. Of course this bothers us most when we are the passengers in the car, but we notice other people doing it more often as pedestrians in a city. There have been numerous incidents in which we've been nearly run over by people on cell phones. Normally, I don't care what other people do with their free moments. But when it means someone I love or I might die, then I mind a whole lot.

Now, the argument everyone we know who texts or talks on the cell phone while driving is that he/she is a good driver and is therefore able to talk and drive. It's the other people that should not do it. Yet it turns out that it doesn't matter how pristine your driving record is, numerous studies show that using a cell phone significantly impairs your driving abilities, regardless of whether or not you use a hands-free device. They have also indicated that simply talking to another passenger in the car does not pose the same risk, which is another common argument made. "It's no different than talking to someone in the car with you," people have said. Not true, it turns out.

Whatever your arguments on this subject may have been in the past, it seems obvious to me that it's just not worth the risk. Maybe the studies are flawed. Maybe you really are the one driver in the world who is able to talk or text on your cell phone without having your driving abilities impaired. Maybe your life sucks and you don't care if you're killed in a car accident, but some of us value our lives and would prefer to keep them. If you need to make a call, do it before you leave. If you're on the road, whatever you have to say can wait. If it can't, do yourself and all of us the favor of pulling over.

I think we could all agree that learning to let go of the feeling that all of our desires are immediate, that we need to say what we have to say right now, is a valuable lesson that extends beyond time spent commuting. I do not care who you are or what your job is, what you have to say is not nearly as important as you think it is. The world will not explode if you wait a few minutes or an hour to make that phone call. I promise. If I am wrong and the world does explode because you were driving at death speed down the interstate and therefore did not phone the President to warn him of nuclear missiles having been fired at Earth from an alien spacecraft or some such, you can hold me personally accountable.

There have been numerous articles written in the last few months on this very subject, including one very accessible and interesting one in the New York Times. You can read it here, and from the bottom of that page you can find links to related articles and some of the studies. These are a few of the quotes we found most interesting:

“When we ask people to identify the most dangerous distraction on the highway today, about half — correctly — identify cellphones,” said Bill Windsor, associate vice president for safety at Nationwide. “But they think others are dangerous, not themselves.” [Windsor] and others who favor restrictions say drivers regularly make what amount to ill-informed analyses of cost-benefit tradeoffs, often deciding that the value of constant communication outweighs any risks...

Some scientists say this argument is flawed. “We’ve spent billions on air bags, anti-lock brakes, better steering, safer cars and roads, but the number of fatalities has remained constant,” said David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and a leading researcher in the field of distracted driving. “Our return on investment for those billions is zero,” he added. “And that’s because we’re using devices in our cars.”

The highway safety administration estimates that drivers using a hand-held device are at 1.3 times greater risk of a crash or near crash, and at three times the risk when dialing, compared with others who are simply driving. The agency based its conclusions on research from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, which placed cameras inside cars to monitor drivers for more than a year. The study found cellphones to be the most common cause of driver distraction...

Research also shows that drivers conversing with fellow passengers do not present the same danger, because adult riders help keep drivers alert and point out dangerous conditions and tend to talk less in heavy traffic or hazardous weather...

Scientists are grappling, too, with perhaps the broadest question hanging over the phenomenon of distracted driving: Why do people, knowing the risk, continue to talk while driving? The answer, they say, is partly the intense social pressures to stay in touch and always be available to friends and colleagues. And there also is the neurological response of multitaskers. They show signs of addiction — to their gadgets...

The New York Times has also posted a game to demonstrate the kind of impairment one can experience while texting. Of course it's a game, it's not at all an accurate representation of driving, but the point is a good one.

You'll Pay for the Whole Seat, But You'll Only Need the EDGE!*

Having moved from New York, hockey is not so much a novelty to us. However, there is something a bit different about being in a place where playing hockey is considered a human right. In the winter, our tax dollars help pay for temporary rinks to be installed in neighborhood parks. And throughout fall and winter you can find a hockey game to watch pretty much every day of the week. Us? We've been going to McGill matches with friends. They're cheap and the arena is small, so the seats are practically on the ice. This makes for great viewing when a fight breaks out. But don't worry, all of the players have to make up and high five after the game, just like you did in little league.











In between periods, younger kids often play mini-matches of hockey. The goals are usually placed closer together, and more often than not there are multiple pucks in play. We decided the kids looked like newborn kittens learning how to walk, wobbly, lacking direction, tumbling over each other in slow motion. It was absurdly cute.



*Katie recently reminded us of the wonderful days of the monster truck rally commercials, so all hockey discussions are usually preceded by exclamations like, "Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!" And, "BE THERE!"

Belated Halloween Photos

I was in New York for Halloween and spent that evening with friends John and Dana. We went to Inwood park for trick-or-treating. This is one of my favorite parks anywhere and is the only park in the city that contains still-wild native forest.


Parents and their kids gather in one of the fields, and the kids run up to adults and scream, "Trick or treat!" Then the adults give them candy. It's a good idea, I suppose, and keeps parents from having to lug their kids into and out of businesses in the city and means the children don't have to knock on the apartment doors of strangers in their buildings, but it was uncomfortable to me the way everyone just stood around, huddled in a group. We didn't really know how to join in without feeling awkward.


There were a couple of nice homemade costumes...


And one really questionable costume.


John and Dana's daughter says, "Power to the people!" Or pumpkins.


There was a haunted forest and bonfire...


And though the evidence is blurry, you can see Tim Curry even made an appearance.


There were black cats about.


As if to add to the eeriness, something happened to me Halloween afternoon that has never happened to me before in all the years I lived in New York, even when coming back from parties in Brooklyn at 2 o'clock in the morning. Around 3 o'clock that afternoon on the A train, I found myself all alone.


Earlier that day I hung out with Anna and Ben. Their daughter Saida dressed up as Oswald the Octopus, and Hilina went as a ballerina.


And just because, here's a photo of the kids on the tire swing, dressed up as a couple of cute kids from Brooklyn. Tire swings make me so nostalgic.

Somebody Gets It!

As if right on cue, I found this in the New York Times on Saturday:

Going Vegetarian for Thanksgiving

Forget garden salads, steamed broccoli or cooked carrots. The Thanksgiving table is crowded with creative side dishes that include stuffing, vegetable-and-rice combos, green bean or squash casseroles, and fall favorites like pumpkin and sweet potatoes...

Whether or not you have invited a vegetarian to join you this Thanksgiving or you are planning to eat turkey yourself, the holiday is an ideal time to celebrate vegetables. To help you discover a new vegetarian favorite, the Well blog will offer daily vegetarian recipes from now until Thanksgiving as part of our new Eat Well series.

In support of a more veg-friendly holiday season, I just posted one of our favorite vegetarian Thanksgiving recipes over on A Day in the Life of a (Mostly) Vegetarian.

Eat My Grits!

As promised, I posted directions for making grits over on A Day in the Life of a (Mostly) Vegetarian. If you live in the United States and want to try grits, I highly recommend ordering them from Nora Mill in Georgia. Their grits are by far better than anything you will find in the grocery store.

Holiday Priorities

I try not to rant too much on this thing, but with the holidays approaching, a certain pet peeve of mine is showing up more and more:

The meat-centered meal.

Where to begin? Xander and I are vegetarian. We don't eat meat. One day, when the kids are a bit older and we're settled somewhere, we'll probably look into purchasing free-range, organic meat from local farmers that we feel good about, because we don't want our kids to think of it as a forbidden food. But even then, we'll only have it a few times a year for special occasions. We want our kids to have respect for life, to know that when they eat meat or eggs or cheese that this was provided to them by animals. We want them to have some understanding of where their food comes from and how it is made. Our experiences have given us the impression that most people don't think about these things. Food comes from the grocery store or McDonald's. It's wrapped in plastic and cardboard. While we know sometimes we will need the convenience of processed foods, we nonetheless want our kids to understand that real food, good food, requires time and effort and care. This isn't an easy lesson to teach in much of America. It will take some effort on our part. But it's important to us.

Anyway, we're vegetarian. We don't eat steak or bacon or Thanksgiving turkey or Christmas ham. But we're not deprived. We eat really, really well. We eat very indulgent meals most weeks, and I cook almost all of them from scratch. I doubt anyone who came to live with us for a week would complain about the food. But most people have been trained to eat meat at nearly every meal. They've learned to think of it as a necessity rather than an indulgence. And even though this bothers us, even though we find the defensively cynical remarks made by uncomfortable omnivores both ignorant and rude, even though part of us wants to punch the next person who asks us about protein, we don't make a fuss about it. We don't lecture people over their sausage pizzas. We're not offended when we go out for dinner and our friends order hamburgers. We don't mind when someone invites us over for a party or a meal and serves meat. We don't expect people to be overly concerned about our dietary needs. But one thing we do expect is that people will respect our dietary restrictions when we are the ones doing the hosting. This means if you come over to our house for dinner, even Thanksgiving dinner, you need to be prepared for a vegetarian meal. A kick-ass vegetarian meal, mind you, but a vegetarian meal all the same.

So far we haven't had much trouble with this. Our friends, most of whom eat little meat themselves, are completely understanding of the vegetarian lifestyle. But some people struggle with it. We've heard stories from vegetarian friends and family of people showing up for dinner at their houses with their own meat in tow, because they just couldn't stand the thought of eating a single meal without it. We've heard stories of people refusing to come to Thanksgiving dinner at a person's house because there wouldn't be any turkey. We've heard tales of someone refusing to go out to dinner with friends because the chosen restaurant was vegetarian. I've had someone refuse to eat a meal I'd cooked because it did not include meat. After making a vegetarian meal, I've had someone comment, "This would be really good if it had chicken in it." (Note: In case you were raised by wolves, all of the things just listed are considered poor etiquette.) I often wonder if any of our family members will come to our house for the holidays after the kids come home, because what on earth would they do without their holiday meats?

I understand that many people like to eat meat and do so regularly. But it bothers me that some people view meat as so essential to a meal that it will actually keep them from enjoying the point of the whole thing, which for us is good company. This especially bothers me around the holidays, because isn't the point of Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's Day to get together with people you care about and share stories over a good meal? Is the need to put a very specific type of substance in your mouth, chew it repeatedly, and swallow it at the same time each year so essential that it's more important to you than the people with whom you're enjoying the holiday? It just seems so bizarre to me that, even though holiday propaganda indicates the holidays are supposed to be all about love and fellowship and happy memories, for some people they're really about ham and turkey.

The truth is, it hurts my feelings when people belittle our efforts to make a good meal, or more importantly to create an opportunity for fellowship, simply because the meal does not include meat. It's ridiculous, really, and I should probably tell them to bugger off if they don't like it. I think I'm going to have to get over feeling hurt by it, though, because it's really their weakness, and there's no indication that people will change any time soon. Besides, when should anyone ever feel bad for arranging a gathering for friends and family? I'm telling you, with guilt like this, I should have been born Catholic or Jewish. In fact, sometimes I wish I kept kosher, because people seem to be far more accepting of dietary restrictions based on religion than those based on health and conscience.

Of course, there are always people who will maintain that our version of Thanksgiving is not a real Thanksgiving, like this lady over at the New York Times. But what does she know? We hosted a fantastic vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner last year, no turkey whatsoever, and I doubt anyone left our house disappointed. We had sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, cheese grits, collard greens, several delicious salads, leek and carrot dressing, mashed potatoes with gravy, baked corn, savory pies, pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate maple pecan pie, and a few other things I can't remember right now. With all of that good food, who has room for turkey anyway?

Mix It Up Day

Today is Mix-It-Up Day, sponsored by a favorite organization of mine called Teaching Tolerance. 2878 schools signed up to participate.

Now if only there were similar programs for adults.

This Week in History


I remember one night as a kid hearing my dad say, "Alana, come over here. You need to see this." I sat down in front of the television and watched a mob of people jumping and cheering on top of a tall cement wall. Very soon, they started chipping away at the wall with whatever tools they could find and triumphantly waving small pieces of stone over their heads. I don't know how much I understood of what I was seeing, but I remember thinking it was really sad that these people had been kept separated from each other, that even families were divided. And I remember thinking it didn't make a whole lot of sense. My dad commented that he would give anything for a piece of that wall. (See? I'm not the only one in the family who likes to hoard old things.) I've never been to Berlin, but it's on my list, mostly because I really want to see the remnants of this old wall. I want to confirm that what I saw on television really happened. I want to stand where those people stood and think about what it felt like to tear down that wall, to think about what I would have felt had I been the one standing there holding a piece of it in my hand. I imagine it was a relief, like getting your hair cut...only better.

It's funny. I think the world has changed a lot in the last twenty years, and I think much of it has stayed the same. It seems that while some walls are coming down, others are going up. Nonetheless, I remember this one coming down with a weird mix of happiness and nostalgia.

But mostly I feel really glad the USSR never blew us up. I remember worrying about that occasionally as a kid. That would have been bad.

There's a wonderful interactive feature on the Berlin Wall over at The New York Times. Take a look.

Help Wanted

Hey, everybody! So we're having a bit of a sad year over at the Molasses co-op. It seems no one is shopping this year, which isn't a surprise given the state of the economy. As of today, we have not yet broken even, which means we won't be able to make a donation to Ethiopian Orphan Relief. If you are giving holiday gifts this year, please consider buying something handmade from Molasses. The shop features a variety of handmade crafts and art, from photographs to scarves to candles. And if you don't see something you like, let me know. We might be able to make a custom item for you.

Also, please pass our link along to your friends and family. The more people we can get to stop by, the better our chances of selling a few items and making our donation.

Check us out:

Molasses: Sweet Handmade Stuff

You can always reach the co-op by clicking on the link at the right of this page. And thanks in advance for your support!

Waiting

Disclaimer: If you had a really hard time waiting or are in the midst of a really long wait, I'm sorry. This post is not meant to annoy you.

I like waiting. I really do.

For one thing, I feel like I'm walking around with a secret. I'm going to have babies. Two of them. And no one can tell just by looking at me. It feels wonderful. It makes me feel a little bit invincible when people are rude to me. I want to say, "I know something you don't know." But I don't. I just smile to myself and keep walking.

For another thing, I feel like my husband and I are really enjoying our time together right now. It's not like we set out to. But I think we both know that each quiet morning together, each crazy vacation squeezed out of the budget, each easy night out with friends might be our last one for awhile. As a result, I think we are enjoying all of these things just a little more.

Another reason I'm enjoying the wait is that I don't really have to do anything. The paperwork was really grueling for us. We had to do a lot of things twice. It took almost two years from the time we decided to adopt to the finish. We spent two years reading, researching, filling out forms, writing letters. By comparison, waiting is glorious. Maybe I'm just lazy.

I'm enjoying getting ready for the arrival of our two babes...slowly. Right now, I have time to enjoy opening each gift, admiring each outfit handed down to us by our friends, imagining what our kids might look like in them. Right now, I have in my mind two beautiful children who don't fight, don't scream, don't throw things, don't get sick in the middle of the night. They just sit quietly smiling at me, occasionally giggling or offering hugs. I know this is not at all how my real children will be, but I'm enjoying this fantasy.

Most people really hope to have their children by Christmas. We thought for sure we would have brought our children home by now, but our paperwork took longer than we expected. The thought of having new babies at the holidays is wonderful, but I'm actually happy that we have one more Christmas to ourselves. We're spending this Christmas in New York, and I cannot wait. Cannot wait to see the shop windows, to eat at our favorite restaurants, to see a movie at Lincoln Center, to take a late-night stroll down 42nd Street. I'll listen to the traffic and look at the lights and watch the people go by. And I'll know after this last trip I will probably never see my city quite the same again. Nor will I ever see Christmas the same way again. That's not a bad thing. It's just an acknowledgment that everything is about to change.

I don't expect this serenity to hold out forever. I imagine sometime around the middle of January I will start to get antsy, to jump every time the phone rings. That little voice in the back of my head that says, "Maybe today is the day," will get louder and louder and louder. And God help us, if February comes and goes and we've got no referral, I will probably start to panic. But right now I am loving waiting.

This is the most magical time, because every day exciting. Every day is a day that we could become parents.

A Tale of Two Cousins

Several years ago, I was having a really bad day at work. I worked as a collections manager at a museum in New York, and while I can't remember exactly why I was having a bad day, I'm sure it had something to do with someone mishandling museum objects. Anyway, I did what I always did when I was having a bad day. I went to visit my friend Molly. Molly worked in education at the museum (and truth be told had not a small hand in my getting the job in the first place), so visiting her gave me an excuse to get away from my department on the other side of the building.

That same day, another of Molly's friends, Anna, was also having a bad day. She was in the middle of adoption paperwork for starters, and her boss was not being very nice. She had ended up at the museum by what seemed like pure accident, because the somewhat troubled nonprofit organization she worked for was taken over by my museum. Anyway, a tired and frustrated Anna plopped down in the rolling chair across from Molly's desk, and that was the first time I met her. The three of us sat around and talked until I gathered my wits enough to go back to my office. I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember really liking Anna's shoes.

Later, Molly told me Anna was adopting from Ethiopia. Molly knew I had wanted to adopt for years, but Xander and I just assumed we were too young and too broke. Molly suggested I talk to Anna about their adoption, and eventually I got up the courage to ask her about it. Anna was really understanding, and when Xander and I eventually decided we'd like to adopt two children from Ethiopia, she recommended her agency. We have loved this agency more than we ever expected to love an adoption agency, and we would be fools if we didn't realize that both the wonderful people at our agency and Anna have helped shape our views on international adoption. While we were preparing to begin the adoption process, we got to watch Anna and her husband Ben as they concluded their adoption and brought their girls home. I still think they adopted the two cutest kids in all of Ethiopia, so at this point Xander and I can only hope for the third and fourth cutest.

Last week, I went down to New York to spend a few days with Anna and her kids, to ask them questions about their trip to Ethiopia, and to just generally enjoy some time in New York with friends. We were hanging out one afternoon while the kids were napping, chatting about where we grew up and where we were born. You see, even though Anna and I have known each other for awhile, she left the museum and I moved to Montreal, so we never had a lot of those basic conversations you have when you make a new friend. If not for the fact that we are both adoptive parents, it's entirely possible we would have gone our separate ways and never spoken again. But the internet is an amazing thing, and we've kept in touch despite the distance. Anyway, I mentioned I was born in South Carolina, and Anna said, "My family are also Coles from South Carolina. Wouldn't it be funny if we were related?" She's said this before, and there was that split second in my brain when I almost dismissed it and thought, "Yeah, but what are the chances of that?" I would have probably just moved on in conversation, but Anna remembered she had some genealogy information about her family, so she pulled it out. She said that from what she knew, her ancestors had been fairly poor. This wasn't that unique, but I commented that mine were also poor and that they had been mill workers. "Mine were, too," Anna exclaimed. Then she mentioned a few names of her ancestors, and I'll be damned if the names she mentioned weren't my ancestors as well. I sketched out my family tree, expecting that we'd discover our great great great great grandfather was the same or something. But it's much closer than that. To put it simply, we're cousins! Her mom knew my grandfather and has letters from him. I have emails from one of her uncles in my inbox. Her family attended those very same Cole reunions I attended as a child. They probably ate my grandfather's fried chicken and my grandmother's pound cake. We're cousins! Cousins. I just keep repeating it so it will sink in. We are cousins whose lives led us to the same city on the other end of the country from where I grew up. Cousins who were having a bad day and ended up standing in the same cubicle venting to the same friend at the same time. Cousins who both felt inexplicably compelled to adopt from Ethiopia.

So maybe you're like, "Big freakin' deal. You're related. You're from the South. This shit happens all the time." But the part that makes this pretty much the most wonderful bit of news this decade is that our kids will be cousins. Meaning our little Ethiopian babies will have Ethiopian cousins from--Are you ready for this?--the same orphanage. Now, maybe they won't care. Maybe they'll get sooooo tired of hearing me and Anna tell this story over and over and over again. I can already see their teenage eyes rolling. But even if it doesn't mean anything to them, it means something wonderful to me. You see, it's really easy to feel alone as an adoptive parent. Despite what news outlets might have you think, adoption is not all that common. Sure, we'll take our kids to events where they will have the chance to meet other Ethiopian adoptees, but we know those experiences will probably feel a little forced and won't necessarily result in lasting friendships. And even though Anna and I would have kept in touch anyway, even though I'm sure we would have gotten our children together from time to time to play, there's something that feels even more special about being able to say, "We're going to see your cousins." There will be something extra memorable about getting together in the summer and watching our kids swim and chase each other and get into fights over toys. Cousins. There will be people in their family who look like them, who come from the same place, who have been through what they've been through, and that is so wonderful to me that I can't fully absorb it all just yet.

This news has completely disarmed me. For days now, I'll just stop in the middle of whatever it is I'm doing and think, "Anna is my cousin." The way she put it, the only thing that could be cooler would be if we'd found out we were long-lost sisters. I've never been much for concepts like fate or God's plan, but this feels somehow meant-to-be. Two people who share DNA with a man who fought for the Confederate Army have grown up to live in the biggest city in the north and become adoptive parents to Ethiopian children. How many ridiculous decisions did we and others make in our lives that landed us on that very same piece of grey commercial carpet at the very same time? Thank God I'd had that really awful day at work, you know? My mind is blown, people. And every time I think about it for too long, I get a little bit teary that the universe can work this way, because I couldn't think of anyone I'd rather find out I'm related to than Anna and her family.


After we found out we were related, we spent the rest of the afternoon calling and emailing people and looking at photographs of our ancestors. The really old woman in the middle of that picture, the one who was born before photography even existed, is our great great great (plus one more "great" for Anna) grandmother.


Looks just like us, doesn't she?