Motherhood - Philosophy for Everyone by Allhoff Fritz Warner Judith Lintott Sheila

Author:Allhoff, Fritz, Warner, Judith, Lintott, Sheila
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2011-03-24T04:00:00+00:00

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As an adoptive parent, I’m very concerned with questions of “realness.” As a philosopher, I know that the question of what is real is intricately bound up with what we as human beings are able to know. I tried so hard to know Kevin through his pictures, but all of my interpretations turned out to be fuzzy and incomplete. He’s very dramatic, and hence was able to embody all of the characteristics I’d perceived in his pictures. As a bonus, although of course I may be biased, he’s extremely intelligent and attractive to boot.

Now that he’s been home for almost two years, I have a montage of memories and experiences of him upon which to draw. I remember the day (before he was even one) when we let him out of his stroller at the museum in Louisville and he began spinning on his knees and doing an improvised crawling moonwalk on the polished wooden floors to impress another little boy who was out of his stroller too. I remember how after that he would choreograph crawling dance routines for us when asked. He also executes a surprisingly large number of yoga poses (his favorite is downward facing dog) with no formal instruction. I’ve observed with delight how in the past several months he’s taken to saying “Slally, Mater” in a sad and sympathetic voice during the poignant part of Cars, his favorite movie. We laughed so hard when the first three words he strung together were “No way, baby!” when I asked if he wanted to stand up in our boat by himself. He used to run around shouting “Blue-lellow!” like it was a battle cry. When I informed him that it was all right if he didn’t know his colors yet, he proved to me he did know them by very deliberately pointing to four different things and correctly identifying them as “white, red, blue, black.”

I know he likes to clean and scrub and put things away, and he has from an extremely young age. I know he loves cars, trucks, trains, and anything with wheels. If it doesn’t have wheels, he can usually find a way to pretend it does. I know he has a half-brother in Indiana who is a year and a half older than him. I’ve watched them interact and have been amazed at their similarities and their recognition of each other, in spite of the fact that they didn’t meet for the first time until last summer.

But, I still don’t feel like I know him. I find myself asking how much I project onto his presence and behavior as I projected thoughts and feelings onto his photos. Beyond that, I find myself wondering how much of his personality (i.e., how he acts, how he talks, etc.) is due to my influence and how much is just who he is. Then there’s the fact that he’s always growing and changing. Is it the case that Kevin appears blurry to me because he hasn’t yet

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