"Purpose of Form N-600 This form is an application for a Certificate of Citizenship..."
"Haiti's death toll hits 842 and is expected to rise . . . That number is expected to climb once communication is reestablished."
"Adopted Child An adopted child may also acquire U.S. citizenship through his or her adoptive U.S. citizen parent depending on the law being applied."
"With more than 300,000 homeless, food is limited and it is believed at least seven people have died of cholera."
"USCIS must look at the law that was in effect at the time of your birth."
"A United Nations official said Hurricane Matthew has caused the biggest humanitarian crisis in Haiti since the devastating earthquake of 2010."
"You must submit two identical passport-style color photographs of yourself taken within 30 days of filing . . . your U.S. parent must submit his or her birth certificate or record issued and certified by a civil authority in the country of birth."
" . . . in the mountains on the outskirts of hard-hit Jeremie . . . his team had found 82 bodies that had not been recorded by authorities."
"Avoid highlighting, crossing out, or writing outside the area provided for response."
My mental state has slid quickly into an old set of dirt ruts, deep, familiar, and immobilizing. Government processes, approvals, and a web of red tape juxtaposed with emotional trauma over others' deaths, injuries, yet-unknown whereabouts, and adrenaline-filled, conflicting news. The 2010 earthquake wrought a devastation to our family that we'd not before experienced. Weeks of sleepless nights, hunger-less days, and bated breath were finally eased with news that the first two Haitian children with whom we'd stayed and bonded in Haiti were alive and well, with their family. Our subsequent, slow understanding of the underbelly of international adoption aged us, as we journeyed away from our former naivete.
The year-long process of lobbying our government to release from institutional care two different children for whom we'd taken responsibility as a result of a complicated and confused family match was equally cutting and worrisome. The recovery was as long and slow as was the path to final adoption and citizenship, and the precise attention to dates, forms, and appointments overwhelming. We tried to come up for air while recovering, ourselves, and working to heal two strong, but traumatized, children. And yet, there, in Haiti, people mourned while they, themselves, were physically wounded, displaced, and/or hungry. Cholera ran the streams. Too many maimed could only dream of a doctor's care. Infants cried for the breasts of their deceased mothers. Homes, churches, schools -- crumbled. So many born into a context of little-to-no opportunity, dire poverty completely out of their control, and then slammed with an unimaginable natural disaster. The news cycle eventually moved on except to cover op ed commentary about failed aid and questionable Caribbean elections.
My hope is that we never substitute the historic and political problems of Haiti in place of an appropriate human empathy for our brothers and sisters who've faced tragic misfortune despite their best individual and family efforts to gain access to education, to carve out a living for themselves, and to be politically engaged (frankly more so than we, Americans, are typically). As angered as I may feel at whatever may be the failings of various powers there (permanent or visiting), so much more is the resentment felt by the people who've lived the results of those short-comings and corruption for generations, kept powerless to affect systemic change.
And so, can I blame a Haitian mother who might see adoption of her child by an American manman and papa blanc (adoptive/foreign parents) as preferable to climbing with her little ones into a make-shift boat and pushing off to likely deaths in the Caribbean? Or near-death conditions and a return to Haiti by those patrolling the seas? Can I understand that a particular mama might see in that unhealthy orphanage a route for her young-enough child to get American citizenship and the healthcare and education afforded most middle class American kids and families? Can I reconcile that I can not turn back a clock to make things right for my children in a way that neatly aligns with my ideology of birth family preservation? That I can't erase years of emotional trauma in that orphanage, and come upon the scene earlier, giving aid to have kept the family together when it might have still been possible? Before abandonment, before years apart, before an earthquake and evacuation? And if I could travel time, could I accept that for their particular family it was more complicated than needing a chance, than needing a temporary boost?
Sadly, most children in orphanages have been relinquished by parents capable and wanting to raise them who have hit a stretch of bad luck (like needing medicine or infant formula) and are pressured by a prevailing orphanage mantra to "give them up for a better life." It doesn't take much imagination to see the trauma it wrecks with children, trauma that takes years to start healing and leaves a lifetime of questions.*
I struggle with knowing I will likely never know more than the pieces I've already collected and from which we've had to weave the most complete and messy and raw truth we are able. It's endlessly untidy.
Forever we worry about what happens in Haiti -- to their manman and papas, their many siblings, and the two children we first met right there, in-country and their parents, also. We think and we talk and we send aid when we are able. Luckily, we know Haitian Families First, who does the hard work of investing directly what they are given into the hands of those many mamas and papas, channeling effectively that temporary, targeted hand-up that we, in America, take for granted from our neighbors, churches, and civic organizations.
Mostly we feel very small and overwhelmingly helpless.
As I often tell my children or students when they feel like life is too much, I try to remember, "All that exists right now is right now. What is right in front of you is what you can do." And so, I do the best I am able to be a good mom to Beatha and Jameson, to tend to the structure and nurture children need in the present, to make them laugh, to model by way of my own apologies, to invite open conversation on anything at any time, and to listen. I don't have a time machine nor the magic wand that would have been additionally needed. For all sorts of complicated reasons we are the lucky parents of these kids, and parenting them is what they now need us to do, right now. Honoring their narratives, nourishing their beings, however, requires that we keep our heads up, out of the sand, and help them navigate their identities as Haitian-Americans with two families and help them walk the roads of their dreams and worries .
It's personally pause-giving that as I start digging back into the USCIS bureaucracy to complete the final step of official processes that angst about Haiti is pushed into our daily reality in an undeniable way. An historic-scale hurricane has blown through and over and around, moving us from the distractions of Beatha's color guard competitions, J's football games and struggles with Advanced Math, and taking stock of which kids will need new clothes for this cooler weather. Laborious technicalities on paper pair, again, in my little world with large scale devastation in the world of millions of Haitians and their loved ones in the diaspora. A sense of being useful swells as I fill in boxes and copy supporting documents, ink my signature, and flag the spots on which I have questions. With B now a junior in high school, we need to cross the final "t" by submitting the 9-page form and $550 to secure a certificate that provides tangible, in-hand proof that she is a citizen -- a necessary item for the college and financial aid application processes. After a book's worth of pages and thousands already spent, she and J have become citizens, but this step is necessary to have the certificate that says so.
And then when I look up from my paperwork, my stomach lurches. Mama Bonithe, the kids' first mom, who lives in Jeremie, on the southwest peninsula, has yet to contact their oldest brother, Rony, (in Port-au-Prince). He's replied on Facebook that he is okay and that things in Haiti are very bad; communications are down, generally. And I think and reflect and try to see something in my mind to tell me what we will do when she is heard from? If her home is okay, but most of the town and the drinking water are not? If her home is gone? And . . . pause . . . if she is not found? There aren't any forms with spaces provided and instructions for this.
At 9:54 last night a Facebook message pinged through my phone, and it was Rony. "Hi. Manman Bonithe is oke."
Exhale.
But now what?
*Check out haitianfamiliesfirst.org
"Haiti's death toll hits 842 and is expected to rise . . . That number is expected to climb once communication is reestablished."
"Adopted Child An adopted child may also acquire U.S. citizenship through his or her adoptive U.S. citizen parent depending on the law being applied."
"With more than 300,000 homeless, food is limited and it is believed at least seven people have died of cholera."
"USCIS must look at the law that was in effect at the time of your birth."
"A United Nations official said Hurricane Matthew has caused the biggest humanitarian crisis in Haiti since the devastating earthquake of 2010."
"You must submit two identical passport-style color photographs of yourself taken within 30 days of filing . . . your U.S. parent must submit his or her birth certificate or record issued and certified by a civil authority in the country of birth."
" . . . in the mountains on the outskirts of hard-hit Jeremie . . . his team had found 82 bodies that had not been recorded by authorities."
My mental state has slid quickly into an old set of dirt ruts, deep, familiar, and immobilizing. Government processes, approvals, and a web of red tape juxtaposed with emotional trauma over others' deaths, injuries, yet-unknown whereabouts, and adrenaline-filled, conflicting news. The 2010 earthquake wrought a devastation to our family that we'd not before experienced. Weeks of sleepless nights, hunger-less days, and bated breath were finally eased with news that the first two Haitian children with whom we'd stayed and bonded in Haiti were alive and well, with their family. Our subsequent, slow understanding of the underbelly of international adoption aged us, as we journeyed away from our former naivete.
The year-long process of lobbying our government to release from institutional care two different children for whom we'd taken responsibility as a result of a complicated and confused family match was equally cutting and worrisome. The recovery was as long and slow as was the path to final adoption and citizenship, and the precise attention to dates, forms, and appointments overwhelming. We tried to come up for air while recovering, ourselves, and working to heal two strong, but traumatized, children. And yet, there, in Haiti, people mourned while they, themselves, were physically wounded, displaced, and/or hungry. Cholera ran the streams. Too many maimed could only dream of a doctor's care. Infants cried for the breasts of their deceased mothers. Homes, churches, schools -- crumbled. So many born into a context of little-to-no opportunity, dire poverty completely out of their control, and then slammed with an unimaginable natural disaster. The news cycle eventually moved on except to cover op ed commentary about failed aid and questionable Caribbean elections.
My hope is that we never substitute the historic and political problems of Haiti in place of an appropriate human empathy for our brothers and sisters who've faced tragic misfortune despite their best individual and family efforts to gain access to education, to carve out a living for themselves, and to be politically engaged (frankly more so than we, Americans, are typically). As angered as I may feel at whatever may be the failings of various powers there (permanent or visiting), so much more is the resentment felt by the people who've lived the results of those short-comings and corruption for generations, kept powerless to affect systemic change.
And so, can I blame a Haitian mother who might see adoption of her child by an American manman and papa blanc (adoptive/foreign parents) as preferable to climbing with her little ones into a make-shift boat and pushing off to likely deaths in the Caribbean? Or near-death conditions and a return to Haiti by those patrolling the seas? Can I understand that a particular mama might see in that unhealthy orphanage a route for her young-enough child to get American citizenship and the healthcare and education afforded most middle class American kids and families? Can I reconcile that I can not turn back a clock to make things right for my children in a way that neatly aligns with my ideology of birth family preservation? That I can't erase years of emotional trauma in that orphanage, and come upon the scene earlier, giving aid to have kept the family together when it might have still been possible? Before abandonment, before years apart, before an earthquake and evacuation? And if I could travel time, could I accept that for their particular family it was more complicated than needing a chance, than needing a temporary boost?
Sadly, most children in orphanages have been relinquished by parents capable and wanting to raise them who have hit a stretch of bad luck (like needing medicine or infant formula) and are pressured by a prevailing orphanage mantra to "give them up for a better life." It doesn't take much imagination to see the trauma it wrecks with children, trauma that takes years to start healing and leaves a lifetime of questions.*
I struggle with knowing I will likely never know more than the pieces I've already collected and from which we've had to weave the most complete and messy and raw truth we are able. It's endlessly untidy.
Forever we worry about what happens in Haiti -- to their manman and papas, their many siblings, and the two children we first met right there, in-country and their parents, also. We think and we talk and we send aid when we are able. Luckily, we know Haitian Families First, who does the hard work of investing directly what they are given into the hands of those many mamas and papas, channeling effectively that temporary, targeted hand-up that we, in America, take for granted from our neighbors, churches, and civic organizations.
Mostly we feel very small and overwhelmingly helpless.
As I often tell my children or students when they feel like life is too much, I try to remember, "All that exists right now is right now. What is right in front of you is what you can do." And so, I do the best I am able to be a good mom to Beatha and Jameson, to tend to the structure and nurture children need in the present, to make them laugh, to model by way of my own apologies, to invite open conversation on anything at any time, and to listen. I don't have a time machine nor the magic wand that would have been additionally needed. For all sorts of complicated reasons we are the lucky parents of these kids, and parenting them is what they now need us to do, right now. Honoring their narratives, nourishing their beings, however, requires that we keep our heads up, out of the sand, and help them navigate their identities as Haitian-Americans with two families and help them walk the roads of their dreams and worries .
It's personally pause-giving that as I start digging back into the USCIS bureaucracy to complete the final step of official processes that angst about Haiti is pushed into our daily reality in an undeniable way. An historic-scale hurricane has blown through and over and around, moving us from the distractions of Beatha's color guard competitions, J's football games and struggles with Advanced Math, and taking stock of which kids will need new clothes for this cooler weather. Laborious technicalities on paper pair, again, in my little world with large scale devastation in the world of millions of Haitians and their loved ones in the diaspora. A sense of being useful swells as I fill in boxes and copy supporting documents, ink my signature, and flag the spots on which I have questions. With B now a junior in high school, we need to cross the final "t" by submitting the 9-page form and $550 to secure a certificate that provides tangible, in-hand proof that she is a citizen -- a necessary item for the college and financial aid application processes. After a book's worth of pages and thousands already spent, she and J have become citizens, but this step is necessary to have the certificate that says so.
And then when I look up from my paperwork, my stomach lurches. Mama Bonithe, the kids' first mom, who lives in Jeremie, on the southwest peninsula, has yet to contact their oldest brother, Rony, (in Port-au-Prince). He's replied on Facebook that he is okay and that things in Haiti are very bad; communications are down, generally. And I think and reflect and try to see something in my mind to tell me what we will do when she is heard from? If her home is okay, but most of the town and the drinking water are not? If her home is gone? And . . . pause . . . if she is not found? There aren't any forms with spaces provided and instructions for this.
At 9:54 last night a Facebook message pinged through my phone, and it was Rony. "Hi. Manman Bonithe is oke."
Exhale.
But now what?
*Check out haitianfamiliesfirst.org
Excerpted sources: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Instructions for Form N-600, Application for Certificate of Citizenship; DAILYMAIL.CO.UK (online news)
