A window on adoption: Family photos tell the story in storefront display

Daily Hampshire Gazette, November 12, 2008

The camera has caught these families at moments of celebration - at birthdays, at weddings. In other photos, we see kids at play - on the swing set, at the beach, or tearing around the backyard. The pictures invite us to share intimate moments at home - a toddler snuggled into a grown-up's lap for a bedtime story, or reaching out to pat a puppy

The family photos - about 30 of them so far - are going up in the window of Essentials, an eclectic home furnishings and gift store on Main Street in Northampton.

The display is the creation of store owners Sydne Didier, 37, and her husband, John Urschel, 38, and is being done in conjunction with National Adoption Month. November, by presidential proclamation, is set aside to raise public awareness about the thousands of children, whether in this country or elsewhere around the globe, who are waiting permanent, loving homes.

"We wanted to do something as a family that felt authentic, that felt genuine," Didier said the other day, as she sat at a table at the rear of her store against a backdrop of bolts of colorful fabric. She and her husband, who live in Amherst, are the parents of Aidan Jin-Kyoo Urschel, 7, who was born in South Korea. Didier and Urschel traveled there to adopt him when he was just several months old.

A simple message

The idea Didier came up with is both disarming in its simplicity and profound in its message: There are many kinds of families and different paths to creating them. To honor that notion, she invited adoptive families to send in photos that she would display in her storefront window. Didier emailed just about everyone she knew, and asked friends and employees to spread the word to their friends. She mentioned the project to customers, and contacted adoptive parents she knew throughout the area.

"The response has been gratifying," she said. As the photos started coming in, mostly by email, she printed and mounted them on paper. Didier hung up the first ones last week - and she said she will add any more that come in. The photos will stay up until the end of the month.

Asked about the pictures he's in, Aidan pointed to one that was taken in New York's Central Park. His family was visiting an aunt and uncle and Aidan was eating pizza when the picture was taken. In another, he's sitting on the beach at Coney Island with an aunt on what looks like a chilly day. They face the camera, both smiling and windblown. There was no swimming that day, said Aidan. "It was too cold for me!"

Drawn in

The images of affection speak for themselves, with no names or accompanying information. It's not, in fact, even always clear who the adopted person is or whether he or she was born here or thousands of miles away. Perhaps the mother in one family grouping was adopted as a child; maybe one of the preschoolers in the next photo was adopted. It doesn't matter, said Didier.

Even in the photos where there are differences of ethnicity or race, the distinctions don't seem to matter as you take in the image of the father and son, heads together, laughing, their faces dabbed with cake frosting, or the picture of the family and their dog posed out on a deck on a sunny summer afternoon.

"It drew me right in," said Colleen Roach of Springfield, who had been walking by the storefront when she noticed the pictures. She had to stop in, she told Didier, because she and her husband are about to become adoptive parents themselves. They are awaiting final word about when they'll be going to Ethiopia to bring home a son, Kaleb, who is 11 months old. Kaleb will be the couple's second child, Roach said - their son, Trace, is 3. As she spoke, Roach's excitement showed on her face and could be heard in her voice as she and Didier talked for a few minutes about their shared experiences - the agencies they'd used, the plans they'd made, the anticipation of welcoming a new family member.

"I think it's awesome," Roach said of the photo project.

A piece of history

Sydne Didier's own interest in adoption began years before her marriage. In college, she said, she was intrigued by accounts she'd read about Operation Baby Lift, the chaotic, last-minute effort to fly babies out of Vietnam as Saigon fell. Many of whom had been fathered by American GI's during the war there.

As an undergraduate at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and later as a graduate student at Portland State University, Didier took on research projects that allowed her to explore the history of adoption and the ways in which the process - and attitudes about it - have changed over time.

When she and her husband decided to become adoptive parents, she said, they focused on South Korea in part because Didier had studied the story of Bertha and Harry Holt, the couple who led the effort to adopt children orphaned by the Korean War. The deeply religious Holts, who already had six children of their own, were spurred to action after seeing a TV documentary about babies in Korea who were left without parents or homes. At that time - it was 1955 - the Holts were told it would take an act of Congress to pave the way for the orphans to be adopted by American families. So the Holts launched a drive to have a law enacted to do just that. They succeeded, went on to adopt eight children and pioneered what has become a continuing practice today. Their work goes on through Holt International Children's Services, based in Eugene, Ore.

Unforgettable birthday

Didier and Urschel applied to adopt through Wide Horizons, an agency with an office in Hartford, Conn. By chance, it was Didier's 30th birthday when she and her husband got word that a baby boy would soon be waiting for them in South Korea. "It was the best birthday present I'd ever had," she said.

Six weeks later, the couple was in South Korea. They stayed eight days, spending one of them in the home of the foster parents who had been caring for Aidan. They were wonderful people, Didier said, who had two teenagers who spoke a smattering of English slang. With the help of dictionaries, she said, they all managed to communicate while the new parents got acquainted with their son. The bond forged that day between the two families has continued, said Didier, with the exchange of emails, photos and gifts.

When Aidan is a bit older, said Didier, she, her husband and son will no doubt visit South Korea. They did already talk about it once, said Didier, but Aidan's priority then was Legoland - and so the family went to California instead.

Susan and Rich Cairn of Amherst made a trip back to South Korea last year with their daughter, Kira, 10, and son, James, who's 7. Both children were born there and a picture from the family's journey is among those in the window at Essentials. It shows the four of them, all dressed in the traditional hanbok - jackets worn with long skirts or pants - often made in vibrant colors from embroidered fabrics.

"It was a wonderful trip," said Susan Cairn, "to an amazing country." Besides visiting with the foster mothers who had cared for Kira and James, the Cairn family visited Seoul, toured cultural sites, visited temples and hiked in the mountains.

In adding her family portrait to the Essentials display, Cairn says, she hoped to underscore the idea that adoption isn't a second choice, but "a way to become a family." Adoptive parents don't want to be put on a pedestal for having saved a child, she says, any more than they want their children to be regarded as deserving sympathy. "They're not these poor kids," she said, "they're just kids."

Words matter

Though understanding and awareness about adoption have increased in recent years, Cairn says, there are still vestiges of stigma or outmoded assumptions attached to it. She remembers, for example, a woman who remarked how well the Cairn children speak English. Of course they speak English, Cairn replied - they're Americans. Children adopted from Asia are used to being asked whether they're Chinese or Japanese, she says, as if those would be the only two options. Parents who have two adopted children are sometimes asked if their children are "really" siblings.

Words do matter, said Sydne Didier. Though it makes sense to identify someone as adopted in some circumstances, she said she still finds too many gratuitous references in the media. Why, for instance, are actress Nicole Kidman's two older children so often identified as the ones Kidman and Tom Cruise adopted? Why is radio talk show host Michael Reagan still spoken of as "the adopted son" of former president Ronald Reagan? Why do obituaries sometimes refer to a decedent's children - and then, separately, to an adopted child? And why do people sometimes ask adoptive parents about their child's "real" parents?

On the plus side of the ledger, Didier said, there are many resources for today's adoptive families that simply didn't exist not so long ago. Certainly the Internet helps families connect, she said, and there are dozens of books about adoption. One she particularly liked was Adam Pertman's "Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America," which explores current trends and the cultural ramifications of adoption. Didier said she and her family have also benefited from going to conferences such as one that is sponsored every year by the Adoption Community of New England Inc., a nonprofit organization based in Westborough. The conference offers discussions and workshops on all aspects of adoption, both domestic and international, Didier said, ranging from costs to dealing with multicultural issues. There's information for everyone, she said, whether they've just started thinking about adoption or have already adopted. "We've gone several times."

It was time for the interview to be over, time to move on to other pressing concerns. It was Friday afternoon. Aidan had willingly - and literally - climbed into the Essentials window to pose with his parents for the photo that accompanies this story. Didier said she'd promised him a trip to the movies. As soon as they got things wrapped up at the store, they were going to head off to see "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa."