Out of the Mouth of an Adopted Child.....

It's that time!  She brought home the Family Tree Project.  When you're adopted, what do you do?  Well, it's easy if it's a closed up tight adoption.  You do your adopted family tree and you're done with it.  Easy.  If it's an open adoption with an open relationship with one birth parent, and one grand parent, you have a very interesting, very beautiful, very complicated (when you're 8) family tree.  Hope was trying to explain her family tree to a visitor we had, yesterday.  It went something like this.  "This is my friend Rachael" (Hope, that's your cousin).  "This is my stepmother, Jill".  (That's your birthmother).  "This is my Pappy, he died." (She got that one right!  He's Jill's Dad, we miss him something fierce!).  "This is Mammy, my Grandma" (She has no idea that Mammy is her birthfather's Mother, she just knows she's Grandma and she loves her to the moon and back.  :))  "This is my Dad, my brother, my Mom, my sister, she was adopted, my other sister, she was adopted too, and we have her cats" (no, she wasn't adopted, but yes, we have her cats).  The story goes on and on and on.  It's kind of like playing the telephone game.....

Of course then she curls up beside me at night and asks, "Mama, why am I named Hope?"  It's been so long since I read "that letter" that I honestly couldn't remember that exact reason, so I came up with the best reason I could recall, "Because Jill had Hope and that was YOU, our very special HOPE in our hearts.".  It confused me and her but she was ok with it.  Laughs. 

Family trees can get interesting.