Pic. Having ice cream at the beach, under the Southern Hemisphere's summer sun.

 This topic had been raised between my mother and I a few times. To be honest I had no idea why she wanted me to do that and what’s wrong with the way it is now.

 For those who had dig deep enough on my blog, you would notice I mentioned some time (well, okay then. A wee while back) ago that Steven is adopted.

 Easy-peasy, right? You want a child but for some biologically impossible reasons you can’t, so you gone through some kind of medium (agency or relatives) to get one, then legally applied and claimed he/she is yours. No worries.

 My father in law was the one who could not produce the baby. After some discussion, he and my mother in law decided to adopt one. They went through an Christian adoption agency and found Steven, a baby whose mother was only 13 (English decent) and father was 24 (Dutch decent) when he was borned (Don’t ask me how on Earth his father managed to get away with ‘sex with minor’ charges, I don’t know. The story I told you now is what I learned from Steven’s adoption document). Back in the 70’s when abortion in New Zealand was illegal, his mother couldn’t even look after herself, she had no choice but to given up the newborn baby for adoption. Almost every baby had been given to the adoption agency had some dramatic story like this; this is not really a big deal. Steven had been informed about this when he was 17 and given the choice of pursuit his biological parents. He decided not to as the family of Price was the only family he knew, there wasn’t any point to find another (now this is the difference between the Western culture and Asian culture. A few of my Taiwanese friends’ immediate reaction after hearing this story were: “Ay-ya-ya, why didn’t he find his ‘real mother’? Doesn’t he want to know who his mother was and what she was like? etc, While most Kiwi who known this story simply replied: “I see.” and that’s it. I have no idea which one is better.)

 Steven had told me about this not very long after we were together. It doesn’t really bother me. I had told my mother about it not long after we were engaged. She didn’t worry about it at the time either.

 It was only a few years later, some time after Horatio was born. This thingy suddenly resurfaced one day during our routine phone conversation.

 “Urm…” Mother hesitated after our last topic had drawn to an end: “ Aunty XXX asked me about Steven today.” Aunty XX is another Taiwanese whose broadcasting reputation within Auckland was quite well known. She’s a good friend of my mother. People often said best friend usually looked alike. Well, sometimes I wonder if it is true as this Aunty is nowhere like my mother.

 Actually, now come to think of it, none of my mother’s best friend looks like my mother.

 “Okay.” I half heartily replied. She had some particular interest about Steven and I, which I am still struggling to find out why. According to my mother, almost every single gathering/phone hugging conversation would include at least one recent update about Steven and me.

 “She asked me about Steven’s adoption.” Apparently she missed this information during our engagement dinner (of course she was invited) and heard it from someone else recently and wanted to confirm it from my mother: “I told her Steven was a child of your father in law’s neighbour, because they are going back to UK and could not bring him home, and saw Steven’s father adored him to bits. So they decided to ‘give’ it to them. I am telling you this now just in case Aunty asked you similar question in the future. Don’t tell her the true story aye.”

Aye?

What’s wrong with the true version?

 “Because that means Steven’s background wasn’t ‘clean’.”

 Aye?

 More question bubble floated out from the top of my head. What do you mean his background wasn’t clean? Everything was stated clearly on the document, which part was ‘unclean’?

 Like I said earlier, there are dozen of babies like this on any given day being given up for the adoption. Some have even worst stories. Ever heard of babies being found at the rubbish dump? Mother was raped? Parents died at war/earthquake/tsunami? Steven was actually ‘normal’ compare to other unfortunate ones. Unclean?

 “And will your version be any difference?” I asked after a long silence.

 “…It’s more commonly accepted ‘adopted situation’ in our days…”

 Again, back to my original question, what’s wrong with the documented version?

 My mother could not give me a clear answer, but somehow I had some idea what she meant and I could not believe this is actually coming out of someone who had university qualification..

 She personally had no problem about Steven. It was the ‘greater audience’ that will. Wonder why we can see every now and then such and such celebrity adopted certain babies (Angelina, Meg, Nicole, Sadie, Hugh, Madonna etc) but had never heard of them in Taiwan? There are no children waiting to be adopted there? You must be kidding, right? In 2000’s earthquake alone, there were children whose whole family had died; some of them were still babies. What could we do with those babies? Put them through adoption/orphanage of course, what else were you suppose to do? Would people adopt them? Surely there would. So what was the problem? Why would those babies be ‘unclean’?

 Why would Steven be ‘unclean’? His biological parents, as far as I knew, loved each other once. They had no criminal records whatsoever. Why is there a need for different version of the adoption story?

 My mother mentioned this two more times after this conversation. Of course I wouldn’t go around on blower telling everyone about her version’s adoption story. I just felt sad and confused about the whole thing. My mother was really proud about Steven. Often I got people (my mother’s friends) came to me and told me about this. He has good education, decent job; cares about his father (consider he wasn’t even his real one), no smoking, no taking drug, not even drink much.

 So..

Why is there a need to make up a story to explain to others about his adopted background?