Daniel, without hesitating, takes in the baby and raises her. In Beyond the Bright Sea, a newborn baby washes upon the shore on the Elizabeth Islands and is taken in by a single man who goes by the name of Daniel. So, I struggle through this issue every day, and let me tell you, it's a real thing, but I had never encountered this being addressed in a book before.Īnd, here it is, the issue of real playing out in a book (hey, this is about a book after all!). biological or birth or blood, but they rarely say that.Īnd, because I'm a little bit snarky, when they ask, “Will your girls ever know their real mother?” I sometimes answer, “Oh, yeah, and today they're thinking I'm a real bitch.”Īnd when they ask, “Are your girls real sisters? I typically answer, “Oh, they're really sisters, and they hate each other, but I think you're asking if they're biologically related?”Īnd once, just once, when a nasty woman at Costco looked down at my daughter and then said to me, “But, she's not your real daughter, is she?” I looked up at the woman's hair and asked, “Is that your real hair color?” What people mean, when they ask these questions, is. Were we not real? Were we surreal? Were we fake? Impostors? My family really started struggling with this.
She's not your real sister, right?”Īnd, then, four years ago when we brought home another beautiful daughter, people would stop our girls out in public places and ask, “Is she your real sister?” My son, who was 12 at the time, started reporting back to me that whenever he told people he had a new sister, they would correct him by saying, “Well, you mean an adopted sister. But, nine years ago, we came home with a new baby daughter from China, and though we received hugs and smiles and many well-wishes, it wasn't long before strangers would come up to us, wherever we were, and ask me, in front of my new daughter, “Will she ever know her real mother?”
Prior to nine years ago, I had no attachment to the word real, nor was it a button pusher to me. I knew of The Velveteen Rabbit's famous line: What is real?Īnd I've known women throughout my life who have had nose jobs or breast implants and have been offended by people asking them if their alterations were “real.” For the majority of my life, I never paid much attention to the word real.
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