On my other blog, I was wondering about how things could have been . Alternative realities can often be a lot more fun than the current one. In an alternative reality, you can work everything out so that it’s perfect.

I was at my cousin’s wedding this week-end and it was beautiful. What started out as a miserable day (cold and wet) turned into a clear blue sky as the church doors opened to introduce a new couple to the world. Wasn’t that nice of Mother Nature to smile her blessing on the day?

I’m not digressing. It was actually my cousin’s wedding that started me thinking of alternative realities again – the way it could have been. It is so easy for an adoptee to create a perfect world that would have been if they weren’t adopted or if they were adopted by someone else. Though a part of me knows that it is perfectly natural, another part of me wishes that my son would never create one of these alternate realities. The selfish part of me wants him to always think that this is the perfect reality.

Truthfully, I personally never dwelled too long on these perfect alternate realities. I created quite a few when I was mad at my parents about something, but they never really stuck. They didn’t become my ideal or something to search for. Because I’ve seen adoptees get caught up in these perfect worlds and then become disappointed because real life doesn’t match their expectations, I worry some about how my son will handle this phase in his life.

Perhaps one of the reasons that I worry is that I know that sometimes reality is painful. My cousins were raised by their biological mother and father – which is often the perceived perfect world for an adoptee. Yet, they both got married this year without their mother by their sides, because their mother never bothered to be a parent. It is her shame that she was not welcome at her children’s wedding, but it was her children that suffered the reality of her neglect. It’s a lesson for us to learn – to take a look at our lives and consider carefully whether the grass is really greener on the other side.

If you’d like to respond, but not on this site, please e-mail me at adoptkoreablog@adoptionmail.com.