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7. Transition
- Vanderbilt University Press
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165 7 Transition m Ichael and I were euphoric for several weeks after our decision to adopt Cecilia. It was exciting to think about her being a permanent member of our family and emotionally we charged ahead, ignoring the fact that we were not yet her legal parents and would not be for some time. I daydreamed about the day the adoption would go through and the party we wanted to have to celebrate. Michael joked that I had it organized down to the dresses the girls would wear. When I told Sheryl, a friend and the babysitter of a friend’s child, that we were now preadoptive she cried and then went home and called our friend at work and cried again. We got lots of congratulations and hugs and a few surprised looks from people who thought we were preadoptive already. After some discussion, we decided that we wanted to change 166 another mother Cecilia’s name to one that wasn’t shared with any of our pets and that we felt especially connected to. It was a hard decision to make before the parental rights were even terminated. I was relieved when my mother, often my moral compass, said that she thought that it was our right, considering that we had committed to raising Cecilia. We took the train up to Montreal for Thanksgiving with my mother and stepfather and on the sixteen-hour roundtrip we spent hours looking through baby name books and making a “top choices” list. I liked “Katherine” but it sounded too Christian for Michael and we already had a cousin with that name. Eventually, we agreed on “Ella,” with two middle names. We chose “Lynn” for my sister Lynn and we chose “Cecilia” for Cecilia’s birth family. For several months I worried that “Ella” wouldn’t be an appropriate name in the black culture—would it sound too white, the way “Katherine” sounded too Christian to Michael? I was relieved when a black woman with whom I had been able to have an honest discussion about black/white relations said, “What a pretty name!” I was even more excited a few years later when I went to a show at the Whitney Museum of quilts made by an isolated group of African American women in Gee’s Bend, Louisiana, and one of the artist’s names was Ella Mae. Sewing quilts is one of my favorite pastimes and the show was a particularly good one. We sent out our Christmas letter introducing Cecilia as Ella and described our preadoptive status. It took a lot more courage to walk around our neighborhood and tell people in person that we were now preadoptive and changing Cecilia’s name. Some people seemed shocked that we would change a child’s name. This is a controversial subject in the adoption world. However, some experts state that until the age of two, children are called by many pet names and haven’t internalized their name, so a name change isn’t thought of as harmful to the child (Michaels 2002, 48). One day, I ran into an acquaintance at a coffee shop and as she [3.144.31.175] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 00:22 GMT) transition 167 clutched her own baby in her arms, she said with her eyes wide, “How is she adjusting to the name change?” I replied, “She is fine—I don’t think she has really noticed.” I was surprised by the question, partly because this woman was clearly upset by our changing Cecilia’s name—but this seemed like a microdetail of a macrosituation that entailed a child’s whole life changing. Considering the enormity of the situation, the woman seemed focused on an insignificant detail. Some day, Cecilia might be angry and change her name back—but this was not going to ruin her life. However, perhaps the name change was a synecdoche for outsiders; it emphasized the awkwardness of the upheaval to them. One of the reasons it took a lot of courage to change Cecilia’s name was because, while it seemed most likely that we would end up adopting, we knew it would be a long haul. It was still a gamble, albeit a pretty safe one. A relative could suddenly appear and say that they were never informed of Cecilia’s birth or placement in foster care. The family court judge could counter the agency’s recommendation and decide not to terminate the birth...