It’s Tuesday. My three youngest kids sit in front of bowls of cereal. This is the slow part of our morning, an unremarkable stretch of time when they eat and I sip coffee and I do not yet need bark about library books or go look for a matching pair of clean socks.     

I pour milk into a blue plastic cup for my youngest child, Viv, who started kindergarten last fall. She turns towards me and smiles, and for a moment, I think she’ll remember to say Thank you. 

Instead, “Mommy, did I grow in your tummy?”

A splash of cold water on my face. I’m awake, I’m awake, I’m awake! 

Hold on, What? I knew she’d ask this question, or some version of it, eventually. But not yet. Not now, not unprompted. Not while I’m wearing old slippers and have a gallon of one-percent in my hand. 

Where did she come up with this question? 

Is it because her siblings were looking at their baby books over the weekend? Or did she find the loose 4x6 that’s been floating around the house lately, the one of me smiling, hugely pregnant with her brother, standing sideways in their dad’s athletic shorts and pulling up my shirt to show off my swollen belly? Or is it because we just saw my pregnant sister and the whole “babies grow in tummies” thing clicked? Or has she noticed I have pregnancy stories for each of her siblings, but not for her?  

Did I naively hope that the adoption poem I framed in her room (“you didn’t grow under my heart, but in it”) would translate into her understanding a basic biological necessity? 

It doesn’t matter. She has asked the question. 

But I don’t know how to answer—or the right way to answer. Of course I’ve thought about this question before, what I’d say, or could say. But I’ve thought of it in the way you think about what you’d say if you won an Oscar, or the Pulitzer—you’re pretending. You’ll really prepare if you ever need to. 

I don’t want to screw this up, and it isn’t an “I’ll get back to you on that” kind of thing. If she’s figured out enough to ask the question, my answer choices are binary. Black or white? Yes or no? I get no five-minute recess to do a quick Google search and pray. 

Your Honor, could you please instruct the witness to answer if I did—or did not —grow in her uterus?  

I guess I just thought I’d be more prepared. 

These conversations, the important ones, the ones we anticipate having as our kids get older, they rarely happen the way we expect. Sometimes we can plan for it, sure. Rehearse the lines, memorize the script. Get our talking points in order. But a lot of times we can’t. Or don’t. 

From topics like strangers to body safety, cancer to death. From sex to drugs or divorce. Santa. 

Sure, we know our kids will ask us all sorts of crazy questions (ex. Have a tarantula and a penguin ever met?) and from all the other stories we’ve heard, we gather they’ll probably ask a few doozies in the slowest grocery line in the world (ex. Why are people fat? and Why does that lady have a moustache?). 

But kids don’t plot their curiosity onto our ideal timelines, the ones that marry wisdom and kindness and—above all—privacy.

At home, we’re very open about Viv’s adoption. We talk about it all the time. And while I thought we mentioned that she grew in someone else’s body, maybe it was long enough ago that she doesn’t remember? Or maybe I, in an effort to hold off until she could understand more, simply didn’t feel the need to mention it. 

Regardless, time’s ticking. She’s gotta finish breakfast and get ready for school and I’m the one holding up the train. 

“No, Viv. You didn’t.” 

Behind perpetually smudged lenses of her pink-framed glasses, her dark brown eyes lock with mine. She blinks. Once. Twice. Then her eager smile fades. 

“You grew in another tummy,” I say.

As a nurse, I have a strong preference for being anatomically correct and as a mother, I want to say the right thing in the right way; but we’re here. Now. So I go on, completely unsure if this is the term I want—or should—use. “You had a tummy mommy.” 

Viv stares at me and I wait for her to declare herself: Is the conversation over? Will she shrug and return to her Cheerios? She doesn’t. She continues to stare at me, as if saying Go on… 

So I do. Hoping to land on not too much, just enough. 

“You grew in your tummy mommy’s tummy but … ” and I pause, because I don’t actually know what comes next. I don’t know the why, the other question we’ll have to work through together one day. And I refuse to romanticize or paint my own beautiful colors in the spaces that were, for whatever reason, left blank. What I do know, I tell her: “She couldn't be your forever mommy.”

And in this moment, my heart breaks.

For my daughter.

And for her tummy mommy. 

Adoption is beautiful, yes. But diamonds are the hardest gem for a reason. 

Later today, I will tell my husband about her question, replay the conversation back in my head, and look up ‘how to talk about birth mothers in adoption.’ I will wish I thought to verbalize my gratitude to the woman who gave my daughter life. But these are conversations which don’t exist as single entities. We can talk about it again. 

So now, because she’s five and a half, and because we need to get to school in twenty minutes and because getting dressed takes (at minimum) eighteen, I bring us back to right now. 

I kiss her head and say, “I love you Viv. You can always ask me questions.” She smiles again and as I turn to put the milk away I say, “Honey, you gotta finish eating or we’re gonna be late.” 

Photo by Lottie Caiella.