Beth Fantaskey's Guest Blog:


Our parents. We love them. They make us crazy. We (think we) know everything about them. Yet they are also complete mysteries. (Seriously - why do they seem intent embarrassing us? Even those of us in our forties?) There's just something about that relationship - mother/child, father/child - that really intrigues me. This has become especially true since I became a mom, myself, by adopting two girls from China. Along with learning to be a parent in my own right, I am keenly aware that my kids have another mother, too, somewhere on the other side of the globe. Anther mother who maybe loves the, as much as I do, and perhaps misses them more than I can imagine. Sometimes, I even feel guilty for enjoying my kids so much. My happiness means that two women, far away, are missing out, probably because of circumstances beyond their control, which compelled each of them to wrap a baby in a blanket, leave the child on a doorstep, and slip away unnoticed. The other day, my 5-year-old, Paige, wondered alound, "Do you think my tummy mom kissed me goodbye?" Of course, I'd bet my life that she did - but the truth is, we'll never know. Questions and answers like that lodge in your heart and your mind. A lot of people ask me, "What was the inspiration for /Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side/?" Honestly, inspiration came from a lot of places. But the fact that Jessica is adopted and knows nothing about her birth parents definitely springs from that aspect of my personal life. My children are already wondering what their parents were like, and as they grow older, I imagine their curiosity will strengthen. And I wonder, too. I thinks my girls are special - so by extension, I imagine that their birth parents must also be special. I wonder... Does one have Paige's powerful imagination? Does one share Julia's weird addiction to fried eggs? In /Jessica's Guide/, Jess has /super/ special birth parents... but not special in the way that she'd perhaps hoped. Jess has to come to grips with who she is, by nature of her birth. The process is painful, but ultimately rewarding, and Jess forges a strong bond with her birth mom, even beyond the grave. Chances are, my kids' birth parents will never read my book in rural China. And if they do, they won't know that the woman who adopted their babies wrote it. Yet, in a weird way, by allowing Jess to connect so strongly to /her/ birth mom, and by acknowledging the Dragomir's tremendous sacrifice in giving Jess away, I hope that I did something small to honor my own children's biological parents. It's kind of a way of saying, "I'm grateful, and would share them with you, if I could..." I wish I could give my daughters' birth parents more, in exchange for the gift they've given me."