Ancestors

Last weekend we went down to visit Ethan’s grandmother in South Carolina, the one who lost her husband in December. Ethan had never met her before, and it was very sweet to see them bonding. She had bought him a big carton of chocolate ice cream, and she watched cartoons with him. She may be moving up here soon, so hopefully that relationship can continue to grow. While we were down there, we went to the zoo and to a wonderful children’s museum in town. Ethan now loves traveling because we let him have more screen time when we’re away from home.

A couple of weeks ago, I took Ethan to have his teeth checked out for braces (poor kid – despite his good job at quitting sucking his thumb, the tooth extraction a year and a half ago has resulted in his two front teeth growing in with a hug gap between them). Early in the conversation the orthodontist looked at me and asked if I had worn braces. I wish I had made a bigger point of alerting them in advance that he was adopted – I hate when these questions come up (even though the other part of me is glad that they don’t assume he’s adopted).

In the few weeks before MLK day, Ethan seemed to have had race on his mind. Since we had never really talked to him about race, I finally pulled out a map one day and sat him down in front of it. We found Kazakhstan, and then I pointed out the countries around it, including Russia, China, and Mongolia. I explained that his ancestors were from those countries. He then repeated proudly many times, “My ancestors are from Kazakhstan, China, and Russia.”

It felt a little weird talking about ‘his’ ancestors, and not ‘our’ ancestors, but I wasn’t sure how else to talk about it. I also felt a little bad we hadn’t talked with him about it before, but who knows when the right time to bring things up?