Beyond blood, beyond race, beyond class, beyond nationality, beyond religion, there is a greater force that holds families together. It knows no borders. It knows no limit. And it can be found in these Okanagan faces of adoption

By Tracy Clark

The North American stereotype of a mom and dad with one or more biologically-related children persists in much of our culture. Yet, more than ever, families are formed in a multitude of different ways. Families today come in all sizes, ethnic make-ups and socio-economic classes. Some have more children, fewer parents or even parents of the same sex. Some have children born with gifts, born with challenges or born far away from the people they call mom and dad. For most couples ready to start a family, the first step is deciding on the number of children they want and planning to make it happen. Will it be through natural pregnancy, require special medical help or be by way of adoption? The possibilities are many. And the unknowns can be downright daunting.

Brent and Laura Livingstone, Ken and Laurie Miyasaki and Arnica and Jason Rowan are among thousands of Canadian families who have chosen adoption. But choosing to adopt is just the first of many decisions these couples face. It is followed by some of the biggest questions they will ever have to answer. What are their principles and ethics? What are their responsibilities? Who will their children be? Where will they come from? How old will they be? And ultimately, what will make them all a family? These three Okanagan families and author Ola Zuri—each at different points and perspectives on their journeys with adoption—prove that complex questions can be tackled by using love, compassion and understanding.

The Livingstones
Seven-year-old Kalkidan Livingstone is on her tippy toes in the kitchen of her family’s Glenrosa home. The counter is pretty high but Kalkidan is determined. She reaches up to the family-sized toaster and pushes the first handle down.

“Another one,” she asks. She can barely see the bread that dad Brent has loaded into the toaster.
“Good,” he says as he comes over to help her reach the last handle. The West Kelowna firefighter is working night shift so he gets to enjoy breakfast with the family this morning. The preparation is a group effort, with plates lined up on the counter and everyone old enough to reach them pitching in.

Mekfira Livingstone, helping to prepare the toast, grabs a Costco-sized container of peanut butter. She puts her thin, seven-year-old arm way inside the jar and peaks in after it, bringing out a knife loaded with the thick stuff.

“Daddy is there only one,” she asks, as she smears the peanut butter on a piece of wheat toast.
“Only one what?”

“She always has two breads, you know that,” says Laura to her husband as she puts jam on top of some of the already-buttered toast.

Another slice for Mekfira goes into the toaster.

“Which one are you having?” Laura directs her question to two-year-old Danika who sits in a booster seat at the head of the small wooden table. “Banana or jam? Booboo?…?Danika! Are you having jam on your toast or banana on the side?”

Danika does not really pay attention. Her one-year-old brother, Jaedyn, makes lots of happy baby noises from his high chair, distracting her. In the end, Danika decides she wants both banana and jam with peanut butter.

Finally they are ready to eat. The family of six gathers around the table and holds hands. With her eyes closed and her head on the table, Kalkidan very quietly says grace. She learned how while staying in a Canadian-run home in Ethiopia before coming to Canada. As soon as she is finished, Danika, not to be forgotten, pipes up. She needs to say a prayer too.

“Keep Daddy safe at work,” she says.

“Tonight,” coaches mom.

Danika laughs. She forgot Daddy was home this morning.

“Daddy no work,” she says. “He right here.”

They all laugh.

As the breakfast continues, so too does the laughter with Danika often the catalyst.

“Booboo, do you love me,” Laura asks her two-and-a-half year old.

“Of course,” Danika replies. The whole family roars with laughter.

It’s kind of an inside joke.

Recently, Kalkidan and Mekfira, still learning English, asked Laura, “Mommy, what does ‘of course’ mean?”

“Mekfira, if you say to me, ‘Mommy do you love me?’ I would say, ‘Of course, you silly billy.’”
The very observant Danika likes to listen to and copy everything her older sisters do and say. She really loves them.

Laura says the connection between Danika and her new sisters was instant. Within their first day of meeting, the girls were playing and fighting like only sisters do.

Connecting is important for children and parents involved in adoption. It doesn’t always come easily.

Brent and Laura say the connection with Danika, who was adopted from the United States at just five days old, seemed natural. But Laura says it is partially because they were “so in love” with Danika when they first got her, they were oblivious to any issues their tiny baby might have with attaching to her new mom and dad.

With 16-month-old Jaedyn it was different. Laura knew what to look for this second time around. She was very much aware that Jaedyn wouldn’t immediately look her in the eyes. Even though this small infant would not be aware of adoption, he had been in another woman’s body for nine months getting used to her heartbeat and her voice. Now he would have to get used to Laura’s heartbeat and voice. It took time, but he did.

They knew that with Mekfira and Kalkidan creating this connection would take even more time and come with more issues. These were not babies. Laura could not breast feed them, holding them close to her heart, as she did with the younger two. These girls would understand adoption. They would have personalities and memories. But Brent and Laura were ready for it. Mekfira and Kalkidan are nothing short of a dream come true for the Livingstones.

Their journey begins
When Brent and Laura started dating at 15, they both agreed they’d grow up, get married and adopt two children from Africa.

“I wanted to be different,” says Brent, pointing to their faith and their strong multicultural values as reasons for wanting children from another culture. “I didn’t want to be the average white family.”
It took about six years after making their initial plan to put it into action.

At age 21 they visited a BC adoption agency. But they were too young to adopt from Africa. Every country makes its own rules, and African countries involved in international adoption had strict age restrictions.

But Laura is not patient. So they began searching for a place that would allow them to start the adoption process immediately.

In BC, they discovered that their chances of getting an older child were higher than their chances of getting a young infant. But in the United States they could start the application process immediately and adopt a baby.

After filling out the application and receiving home study visits where everything from their childhoods and religion to their disciplinary style came under scrutiny, the couple was approved.
Two years and three months ago Brent and Laura got the call that they had a baby girl. It was love at first site.

“She completed my need to be a mom,” says Laura.

But they still wanted more children and decided that, like Danika, the new kids would have to be black.

In 2007, Brent and Laura were finally old enough to pursue adoption in Africa, deciding to look for older children. They knew there were many sibling groups there who needed good homes.

Eventually they settled on Ethiopia, which had a shorter timeline, especially for older sibling pairs.
As they started the adoption process, they also began immersing themselves in Ethiopian culture—they wanted to learn as much as they could about where their children would be coming from.

It was during that time that they received an unexpected call. Danika’s birth mother was pregnant again and looking for adoptive parents. Jaedyn was born last year.

Soon after, the Livingstone’s were told their Ethiopian adoption was going to go through. They were sent pictures of two beautiful little girls, cousins that had been raised as siblings. Each night before bed, the family of four would say a prayer for the girls and kiss their pictures good night.

In February, Brent and Laura travelled to Ethiopia. They saw their new daughters, Kalkidan and Mekfira, for the first time standing in a courtyard, surrounded by caregivers, drivers and everyone else who had been watching over the girls at the Canadian-run orphanage for the months leading up to this moment. Brent and Laura immediately took their trembling daughters into their arms as tears streamed down their faces. The crowd of people seemed to disappear as they cried and hugged one another.

Kalkidan describes the moment to her parents by putting her hand over her heart and thumping it on her chest rapidly.

“Meeting them was totally surreal,” says Laura. “How does it get better than this kind of miracle?”
Four months since that moment, the family is still getting settled. The Livingstones are just starting to visit with extended friends and family after spending the first three months alone with just the six of them, giving lots of hugs and kisses and trying hard to create strong family ties. Extended family members are still instructed not to give the girls affection beyond handshakes and high fives until they are more secure in their new surroundings and Brent and Laura feel their bond with their children is solid.

This may seem strange to an outsider, especially since the girls are often seen hugging and cuddling with their mom and dad, but there are still tears and bad memories. And the girls are still insecure, wondering if, when daddy goes to work or when mommy goes to a meeting, they will come back.

A lot of time is spent reassuring their daughters that this is forever. “We are a family and we love you,” Brent and Laura tell the girls. And they truly mean it.

Ola Zuri
“Why can’t you look like me?”

It’s a question Ola Zuri has asked herself a million times. On this day, she is holding a brightly coloured book in her hands, with this question scrolled across the front. Under the title is the picture of a little girl standing very obviously alone. She has dark skin. Around her children are playing, seemingly oblivious of her.

It’s a children’s book. The characters have big cartoon eyes and pencil line mouths. But for Ola it is much more than that. Her eight-year-old daughter thinks the book is about her life. Ola expects that other kids will feel the same way when they read it. But the inspiration for Why Can’t You Look Like Me? really comes from Ola’s life. Her childhood.

Ola is black. Her ancestors came to Nova Scotia on the Underground Railroad. Ola and her twin sister were born in Montreal, where they spent the first two years of their life in an orphanage before being adopted.

That was more than just a few years ago. Ola is now a mom with children of her own—four are biological and one is her stepson. They live in Kelowna where Ola runs True Colours mentoring and offers workshops for families who have adopted black children or other “children of colour,” as she puts it. She started True Colours as a way for these children to meet with other kids like themselves, kids who may not look like their parents and whose friends may look different from them. It’s a place where they can learn about and celebrate their own history and culture with children and families that look exactly like them.

It’s an outlet that Ola wishes she’d had as a child. Ola and her sister grew up in a white family, in a white neighbourhood and went to a white school in Calgary.

Ola’s childhood wasn’t easy. She and her sister were sent to separate schools where they were teased for being black and adopted.

“It was a big issue for the kids in my school that I was dirty and why didn’t my (birth) family want me? When you are a kid, you don’t really want to hear that. You just want to get along and fit in with everybody else,” says Ola.

Because her sister was at a different school, she didn’t feel like she had anyone to turn to. Her parents would try to comfort her by telling her that black is beautiful and adoption is wonderful. But those weren’t the words she needed to hear.

Ola felt alone.

“It was sad. I felt a lot of sadness.”

Today she believes many children of interracial adoption have similar feelings. And with more and more families adopting children from places like Africa, she sees a need for more resources to be available for those families. Why Can’t You Look Like Me? is just the first of a series of books addressing issues of adoption that Ola plans to write. Among the issues she intends to tackle are adoptive children looking for their birth parents and older siblings coming from Africa who may remember their life there.

“The books I am writing are very geared toward helping the children come to terms with issues that they haven’t (been able to),” she says.

Most of all Ola hopes her books give children some of the confidence and understanding that she so wished for as a child.

The Miyasakis
More than 25 years later it still makes Laurie Miyasaki shake. It was nearly winter in 1983 and Laurie was emptying and refilling her three-year-old daughter Jessica’s waterbed in the basement of her rural Kelowna home. She had just put her four-and-a half-month-old baby Holly down for her nap. With no ceiling on the partially finished basement, Laurie could stand in a certain spot to listen for Holly. Holly was quiet. That was good. She must be asleep. But suddenly Laurie got a feeling that she should check on her daughter.

As she rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and began down the hallway, she could see Holly’s little baby arm sticking straight up out of the crib. Laurie walked into the nursery and looked down at her daughter.

“Her eyes were (vacant)?…. There was nobody there,” she says. She didn’t even need to check her pulse.

“I just knew her lungs needed clearing. The thought that was in my mind immediately was that she had aspirated. To this day I don’t know why I knew that. I just remember wiping a little piece of vomit material out of her ear.”

She hoisted Holly out of the crib. Resting her stomach on the palm of her hand, she pushed her hand up Holly’s spine. Vomit came out of Holly’s mouth. She flipped her over and did the same motion on her tummy.

“(Suddenly) she was breathing, but not efficiently,” Laurie says.

The paramedics arrived in what felt like hours, but was probably just minutes.

As soon as they got an oxygen mask on the baby her breathing began to return to normal. Colour returned to her tiny face. Laurie knew then that her daughter would survive.

It’s a story of motherhood that most parents can relate to. It’s that unexplainable instinct that just takes over. But it’s not just between biological parents and their children. It’s an instinct that comes with parenthood, regardless of how you get there.

Holly was adopted by Ken and Laurie Miyasaki at less than one month old. She was the second of their two children. Jessica, her older sister, was adopted at just 10 days old.

Ken and Laurie, married in 1975. Both wanted kids, but they soon discovered that Laurie was unable to get pregnant. At the time, she says, in vitro fertilization was still experimental.
As international adoption was also quite rare, the Miyasakis decided to pursue domestic adoption. They put in their application and after three thorough home study visits, they were approved. The couple just had to wait to be chosen by an expecting woman. The entire process took three “interminable” years.

To make the time go faster, Laurie set up a nursery for her new baby. “People always say don’t do that because you will look in there and it will make you feel sad,” she says. “But you feel better knowing that somebody will be in there someday.”

Finally, the call came. They could pick Jessica up from Victoria right away.

Before leaving the house, however, Ken had something in mind. He took a big piece of white cardboard and in tall pink letters wrote, “It’s a Girl.” The sign was placed in the front window for all the neighbours to see. Almost 30 years later, the Miyasakis still have that sign. It acts as a great symbol of the pride and love they have for their girls.

The bond between this tight knit family is enduring. Even now when they are spread far across the region, they find as much time as possible to spend together. Whether it’s to go to a movie or meet at their childhood home for a whole weekend (each bringing her brood of pets), they all agree that family is number one in their lives.

Laurie says her especially close bond with the girls is in part because of how she was raised. “I came from?…?such a close family, it was normal,“ she says.

For Ken it came from a sense of responsibility to their birth parents. “I think you always understand that it is one of the most difficult decisions anyone could make, to give their child up,” he says. “You have to be grateful for that and do right by them.”

That sense of responsibility was made even more real for Ken and Laurie when they adopted Holly and received a note from her birth mother expressing her own dreams and expectations for her baby.

As Holly grew up and read the note, it created questions about where she came from. “I wanted to know what my birth mother looked like. I wanted to see if any of my quirks were from her,” she says.

So, as she went off to college in the Lower Mainland, she told her parents she was going to pursue finding the woman. Ken was excited. But it was hard for Laurie.

After some serious digging, Holly was able to locate her birth mother and set up a meeting. “It was really exciting and nerve wracking at the same time,” she says. It brought a sense of closure. But it also made her realize that, regardless of her genetic connection to her birth mother, she is a Miyasaki through and through.

Jessica feels the same way. Although she doesn’t have the same Japanese heritage as her sister or her dad, and doesn’t look like them, she doesn’t feel a strong need to find out who she does look like.

“I feel pretty complete with the family I have,” she says. Instead Jessica has focussed her interest on her parents’ roots. Holly often jokes that her Caucasian sister is more Japanese than she is.

The Rowans
It started with a book. In early 2006, Arnica Rowan began talking to her husband, Jason, about the possibility of adoption. Though they had discussed options of where they might adopt from, Jason was unsure.

He is the type of person who needs time to really consider something before making a decision. Christmas was coming up and Jason had yet to give his wife a definitive answer. He decided Christmas Day would be his big chance.

He bought a children’s book called Where are You Going, Manyoni? The book chronicles a little girl from Africa who goes to school and encounters different animals and landscapes along the way.

Christmas Day, surrounded by family, he handed this mysteriously wrapped present to his wife. As soon as Arnica had the paper off, she knew exactly what it meant.

“That was his way of saying, yes,” she says. “It was a big moment for us and a big moment for our family?…?I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room.”

But over the past two-and-a-half years the excitement of that day has been dampened and put on hold. While the childrens’ room is prepared with two single beds and beautiful murals, painted by Arnica’s sister, the young couple still doesn’t know when they will be getting their twin Ethiopian daughters. And the wait has been excruciating.

“I think we were unprepared for how difficult the wait is,” says Arnica. “It’s very difficult because you are waiting for things like court process and immigration. In the meantime your children are growing up.”

The girls, whom Arnica and Jason learned about last October, are now two-and-a-half. It took 13 months from when the couple first made their application to find out who their children would be. Since then they have been receiving photos of the girls and have already fallen in love with them, which makes the wait that much harder.

Before the Rowans decided to adopt from Ethiopia, they considered both domestic and international programs. The process can be rife with ethical dilemma and outside judgement about not taking care of children in your own country first before looking farther afield. But for the Rowans the answer to these complex questions was simply perspective.

“Some people define their backyard differently than others,” says Arnica, adding that she and Jason have a global sense of community responsibility. “When talking about domestic adoption you are always talking within your own province. For us, our backyard is not just our province.”
The Rowans were moved by factors like the care of the children in Ethiopia, their health, and the millions of orphaned children, especially sibling pairs, in that country. “There is a need for parents like we can’t possibly imagine,” says Arnica.

With a desire to have children that share the same heritage, the Rowans decided rather than adopting one child now and another later, they would adopt two young children immediately.
Once the decision was made and the paperwork complete, they began preparing for the arrival of two children. “It’s like a very prolonged pregnancy. You talk about your approach to parenting. You buy clothes. Your family gets involved and you have baby showers. You do all the things that you do when you are expecting,” she explains.

Because they already felt a strong connection to Ethiopia Arnica began incorporating that culture into their home. She learned how to cook Ethiopian food, and the couple is currently learning phrases of Amharic, the language their daughters will speak when they arrive.

Through the Internet, they also connected with other families and formed the Okanagan Families With Children From Africa community. The group has not only given them great first-hand resources, but created a strong support system as they wait for the phone call that they can finally pick up their daughters.

Until then, all Arnica and Jason can do is prepare and anticipate the day when they can hold the two girls in their welcoming arms.

Love Defines Family
If there is one thing that ties these families to all other nurturing families in the world, it’s the strong desire to share their love with their children, regardless of who they are or where they came from.
As Arnica Rowan says, just like with biological children, adoptive parents don’t know before they meet their kids who they will be. “When giving birth, it is the same leap of faith. You don’t know if your child is going to be a rock star or an electrician or a community worker.”

And like most parents, the moment they see their children, adoptive parents know that they would lay down their lives for them. It’s unconditional love.

Brent Livingstone stands against the counter in his kitchen, his daughter Mekfira cuddled against his leg, her arms around his waist. He looks down at the beautiful little girl and says, “There is no possible way anyone could love anyone more than I love my children.”

Adoption Resources

The Adoption Centre
If you are looking to adopt in the Okanagan, this is the place to go. It is the only licensed adoption centre in the Interior of BC. Located in the offices of Kelowna Community Resources, The Adoption Centre is not only chalk full of great information booklets and pamphlets, but its administrator, Jennifer Wall, is a fount of information about how adoption works. She will help you weigh your options, tell you what to expect and guide you through every step.
1.800.935.4237 or 250.763.8002 www.adoption-bc.com

Adoptive Families Association of BC
Another great source of information, including event and workshop listings throughout the province. Keep checking for upcoming dates in the Okanagan.
1.877.236.7807 www.bcadoption.com

Okanagan Adoption Support and Info blog
Run by Summerland resident Dianna Mortensen, this blog has first hand information and is constantly updated with new activities, events and resources for adoptive parents. www.okanaganadoption.blogspot.com

Families with Children from Africa – Okanagan Chapter
Information, workshop and event listings for families who already have or are considering adoption from an African country. okanaganfamilieswithchildrenfromafrica.wordpress.com
Email: okanaganfca@gmail.com

Canadian Advocate for the Adoption of Children
A non-profit agency that assists Canadian families with the adoption process. www.cafac.ca