Adoptions From the Heart

In a well-used conference room, its walls rimmed with dozens of framed photos of a multitude of children, an expectant Frank and Renee Solari have just become parents.

It was a 27-month wait.

As the precious few pictures of their own bundle of joy – a gorgeous baby girl from China with an adorable pucker and a spritz of black hair– are put before them on the table, the adoptive parents are all but breathless.

“This is the best day of my life,” said the new mom and real estate agent on this sunny Friday in April.

Mere minutes later, plans are being made to travel to China to pick up the child they will call Samantha Xuan and bring her back to the United States. And as that trip takes shape, so begins another journey for this soon-to-be trio. They are creating a cross-cultural family—one made up of varied bloodlines but forged strongly in love. And, like so many adoptive families, the Solaris plan to make sure their new daughter understands and appreciates her heritage, whether it’s introduced to her via food and books, dance and language classes, cultural ceremonies, a trip to her homeland – or all of the above.

“If you’re going to raise a child of another race,” Daniel said, “you have to know what you’re doing.”

But as fun as that all may sound, it isn’t always easy work, and it’s certainly not for everyone. And it’s not surprising that both Renee Solari and Caroline F. Daniel, an adoptive mother raising two Asian girls in Colorado, view their roles as both mother and educator.

“If you’re going to raise a child of another race,” Daniel said, “you have to know what you’re doing.”

‘They’re from my heart’

Sonja Wendt is the lucky soul who got to show the Solaris the first glimpse of their baby daughter on that sunny Friday in April. As the China program manager for Hand in Hand International Adoption Agency in Mesa, Ariz., Wendt doesn’t just understand what the Solaris are experiencing, she’s experienced it herself. Along with being the biological mother of 11-year-old son Evan, she’s the adoptive mother of a Chinese daughter as well. She’s adopted the beautiful and lively Wen, which translates as “pleasant,” about seven years ago.

Wen had been categorized by the Chinese government as a special-needs child due to a port wine stain birthmark that partially covers her left cheek and parts of her head. Wendt, who notes that such a birthmark is a stigma in the Chinese culture, paid no heed.

“I saw Wen’s picture, and that was all she wrote,” she says.

To help her daughter honor and celebrate her heritage, Wendt enrolls Wen in traditional Chinese dance classes and makes sure she’s been exposed to other families with children from China. She’s also insisted that the youngster knows how to use chopsticks properly.

“I don’t want her to be the Chinese kid who doesn’t know how to use chopsticks,” said Wendt who plans to one day take Wen to China.

‘You want this mug?’

Margot Matthews has also found ways to incorporate her daughters’ ethnic backgrounds into their daily lives. Matthews – director of Hand in Hand as well as a good friend of colleague Wendt’s – is the adoptive mother of Stephanie, 20, who’s from Haiti, and Michelle, 17, who is from the United States but of Thai, Cambodian, Laotian and Puerto Rican descent.

Stephanie, an ebony-complexioned beauty who’s now the mother of her own two-year-old son, joined Matthews when she was five.

Matthews says Stephanie has since visited Haiti a couple times and has met and visited with her birth mother and other family members. And while things are good today, there have been tough times. Matthews says that when Stephanie was in her mid-teens, she said she hated being black and from Haiti and wished she were white.

“These kids want to look like you, talk like you,” says Matthews, who, like Wendt and the Solaris, is white.

To comfort and assure her daughter that she was extraordinary in both looks and background, Matthews enlisted a bit of her own dry, self-deprecating wit.

“I looked in the mirror with her,” she recalled, “and said, ‘Would you want this mug?’ ”

A therapist encouraged Stephanie to “reframe” her outlook and to appreciate her background and relish the uniqueness of being from Haiti. And Matthews has – like Wendt – tried to take advantage of every opportunity to celebrate her daughter’s culture. That’s meant having the family attend Kwanzaa celebrations and reggae festivals and having Stephanie take classes with the Black Theatre Troupe of Phoenix or partake in regional cuisine.

Matthews says both of her girls have experienced racism, although Stephanie has seen more than Michelle, a stunner with sparkling eyes who has also been able to meet her birth mother and other family members. So Matthews taught them about racism and devised role-playing scenarios in which Stephanie could practice “snappy comebacks” to address inappropriate comments. She’s also been there to support Stephanie when she’s been followed in a mall or other public place just because of the color of her skin.

“When you explain prejudice, it’s hard,” Matthews notes, “because if doesn’t make sense.”

In fact, to increase her daughters’ comfort level, Matthews made the big decision to move her family from a predominantly white neighborhood and school to a more diverse one in Tempe, Ariz., which is home to Arizona State University, a multicultural university. It’s been a good change, she says.

Other ways that Matthews has celebrated her kids’ backgrounds include creating “life books,” which trace their adoption routes and offer as much family history as possible, and each girl’s “gotcha day,” the date they were adopted.

“I think that my kids really like being a ‘rainbow family,’ and we’ve had fun with it, too,” Matthews says.

‘This is the way it is’

Daniel, the mom from Colorado, knows that not every family will be able to take their adopted youngsters back to their native lands. But doing so for her children, Chloe, 13, and Robin, 10, has truly meant the world. Thanks to a successful home sale, the family went on a two-week trip so Chloe could see China firsthand, and the trio also spent the same amount of time in Vietnam so Robin could see Vietnam.

“The entire goal being for them to fall in love with where they were born,” she said.

She succeeded, for sure. Chloe saw the orphanage where she lived for a time and was embraced warmly by the director. Robin got to meet both her birth parents – who love each other and are together to this day - and to learn that that it was a tragic lack of support that led them to make their decision all those years ago. The trips weren’t without a few rough spots.

This is the way it is,” Daniel says. “Adoption begins in pain. Nobody chooses to be adopted.”

Still, Robin is already making plans to return to Vietnam when she’s 15, she adds.

“My ultimate goal is to help them, as Asian women, be comfortable in their own skin,” says Daniel, an adoptee herself. “They’re not ‘nanas’ or ‘Twinkies’ – yellow on the outside and white on the inside.”

‘She’s going to be American’

Days after learning about Samantha Xuan coming into their lives, Renee Solari says she and Frank, a machinist, have gone gangbusters on the nursery, found a German babysitter, told all their friends the good news.

She likes to think she’ll also have a bit of an advantage. Several years ago, she worked as a nanny for a friend who had adopted a Chinese girl, so she’s accustomed to the questions and the looks. But even with the prominent role that China and its culture will play in their home, Renee Solari says one thing’s for sure about her new daughter.

“She’s going to feel herself – I believe – to be American,” she says.