New parents see the world with new eyes. Having a new life bound up with their lives--a life that will likely live beyond them and for whom the world is fresh--inevitably brings parents new perspectives.
When Thuan and I adopted our daughter, Sreymol Marie, our vision was refreshed from the start. When Sreymol and I met, I had no idea how much she would show me. We met in 1990 in a refugee camp on the Thai-Cambodian border. She lived in an orphan center where our Cambodian church in Los Angeles was delivering clothes, medicine, and blankets. I was part of the visiting team. Sreymol and I became friends, and our friendship lasted until the refugees returned to Cambodia in early 1993, after which we lost contact. Through a remarkable chain of events, we found each other again in 1995.
After finding Sreymol, we tried several ways to help provide for her education and future. Because of the distance and the conditions in Cambodia, our efforts were not very successful. So in January, 1998 I made a trip to Phnom Penh to see her in person and look at the situation firsthand. Up to this point, we felt a little like her "benefactors," trying to help someone whose need we imagined was greater than ours.
I arrived in Phnom Penh with one Khmer contact, addresses of two old friends from the camps and two missionaries I'd never met, plus a hotel reservation at a modest place by the river. I had no idea what I would need to do. Whatever it was, I had three weeks to do it. I was so grateful to be able to go to Cambodia. At the same time, I felt I was plunging into cold water.
Almost from the moment of arrival, Sreymol became my guide. She navigated the city for me on motor scooters and cyclo "taxis". She bargained for our food at the local market and showed me how to use Khmer money. She befriended on my behalf almost everyone we met. She introduced me to her world, and gave me the gift of seeing Phnom Penh through her eyes.
I saw a place of ancient grace and beauty. I tasted fresh food, cooked with care in the open air. I met people who had suffered profound loss, were facing an uncertain future, and yet were unfailingly generous to a stranger.
Sreymol's gift of showing me her world through her eyes, of being my guide and caregiver before I became hers, was unplanned. Yet, wonderfully, this experience set a tone of mutuality in our process of becoming family.
It soon became clear that becoming family was what was happening. Conversations at the Embassy and phone calls to Thuan in Los Angeles confirmed it. We were all excited at the prospect. In addition to becoming family, we thought we knew some of the things Sreymol might gain by coming with us to the U.S. Now seeing Phnom Penh from her perspective, we began to understand some of the things she would lose. She would enjoy less mobility and independence. Thirteen year olds can't dart around Los Angeles on motorcycles. In Cambodia, she was accepted as a responsible young adult in the world of adults. In Los Angeles, she'd be something we call an "adolescent", with no clear place in the world of either children or adults. Here she would be exposed to media, but she would leave behind a widely shared artistic tradition with ancient roots. Most of all, in a place like Los Angeles, it would be harder to savor long-term relationships, living her life on a human scale, at a human pace.
But whatever it might mean for Sreymol to leave "home," making a new home as family kept drawing us together. Political volatility added urgency. We had to act quickly. All of the Khmer people we met worked very hard to help Sreymol come to the U.S. with us. When she received her visa, the U.S. Embassy was crowded with Cambodians who had little hope of getting an entry visa. But they all smiled and wished her luck when Sreymol walked out with hers. We felt so glad to have Sreymol come "home" with us, and we also felt a measure of sadness that Khmer people were in the hard position of finding joy in helping someone leave their country.
When we arrived in the U.S., Sreymol began showing us our home through new eyes. She opened our closets and said "A lot." She opened our cupboards, then our refrigerator and said, "A lot." She quickly tired of jumping in and out of our car. She wondered why we can't walk to school. To church. To the homes of our friends. Whenever we talk about doing something, her first question is, "Is it far?" She helps us see how we've exchanged the human pace of walking and the human scale of neighborhood for the techno-mobile scale of whizzing back and forth between a confusing number of unconnected places.
Sreymol's eyes help us see afresh our beauties, too. Coming from a nation the size of Missouri, she is amazed at the size and variety of the California landscape. When we drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco one weekend, she was sure that our trip over the Grapevine had taken us into another country. And so it had. She thought the fields in the Central Valley, the surrounding mountains, and the vast blue ocean were incomparably beautiful.
Sreymol is delighted by the beauty and variety of our "cultural landscape," too. Her best friends are from Bangladesh, China, and Armenia. She is proud of the Spanish words she's learned along with her English, and helps us see that adapting to American culture includes adapting to America's cultures.
Perhaps the most Intense experience we've had of seeing our world with new eyes occurred last weekend. We went to a Cambodian restaurant in the L.A. area because Sreymol was craving a certain kind of rice cake you can get there, and Thuan and I are always up for a Cambodian meal. When we sat down, Sreymol spoke to the waitress in Khmer. The waitress then began speaking with my husband in Khmer, but he is Vietnamese. So she asked Sreymol who we were. When Sreymol told her we were her parents, she wanted to know how long Sreymol had lived with us. We began to realize how we must look, a family obviously having a good time together, yet coming from three nations who are traditional enemies, with memories of wars between us which are recent enough to still be vivid.
The waitress then told Sreymol how lucky she was to be part of a family, to get to go to school. She told us she never got to go to school because she grew up under the Khmer Rouge, when all the schools were closed. She worked in a forced-labor camp. Her brother was executed in front of her eyes when she was nine years old. Her parents and all her siblings were killed. She survived alone. She came to the U.S. alone. She began to cry. Sreymol began to cry. The waitress went outside to compose herself. We stared helplessly into our rice bowls.
After awhile, others stopped at our table to speak with us. We met a waitress who left Phnom Penh after the coup in '97. She was a university professor. For reasons we can't know, she was forced to flee, leaving behind a husband and young child. Now she waits on tables in L.A. and wonders how long before she feeds her own child again.
A man poured our tea and told us he wants to sponsor a relative to join him. He's been here a long time but he can't read or write English because he's never gone to school here. He's worked since he arrived. Because he cannot read or write, he cannot become a citizen and he cannot sponsor his relative. Can we sponsor her? How did we get Sreymol's visa? How much did it cost? He works too much to study, but he has some money saved. If we would help, he would pay us. He told us he works 13 hours a day, 6 days a week for $900/month. He tells
