Sophia and Memory

Quite out of nowhere Kindergartener Sophia said to me, "You know, the first time I went in my mom's car, I cried." "Why is that?" I asked this child, Zambian by birth and adopted by a Dutch couple at the age of four and a half. "Because," she told me, "I thought I would never see memory again." Taken aback I asked her "What do you mean you won't see memory again?" and she said, "that is my friend in Zambia and I thought I wouldn't see her again." Realizing that memory was in fact Memory, another orphan, I asked her about her old playmate. Sophia told me, "We are still friends but I can't talk to her anymore because I forgot how to speak Nyanja."

This was a pretty heavy conversation we were having on the playground and as I talked with Sophia I tried to wrap my head around it all: the sad beauty of losing a friend named Memory, the just plain sadness of losing a language, and whether the loss of language eventually comes with the cost of losing Memory... and memory (memory begins with acquiring language after all). Adoption, usually thought about in terms of what an orphan child and her new family gains, is also about loss. Sophia had a life in Zambia. I don't argue that it is better than the life she has now with two parents, her own bedroom, medical care and healthy food, but it was a life-her life- all the same.