It's starting to become eerie

How I keep choosing adoption stories without knowing it. Okay, I knew Misfortune was going to be one, from reading the back cover and stuff, but The Kite Runner I didn't. I'm so extremely glad I read it.

This turned out to be one of the most moving books I have ever read. Elements of guilt, sacrifice and redemption gave this story gut-wrenching power, amplified by disturbing violence. The adoption story broke my heart and inspired me. I can't think of when else I have had to put a book down and cry into my pillow. But this morning I did, lying in my bed with my sore throat, sniffly cold and box of tissues, mourning for the children who are hurt in this world and cheering on those who try to help them.

I sort of saw the adoption thing coming once Amir headed back to Pakistan. I was disappointed at first in what it took to make him decide to go ahead with it. I was hoping that he would overcome his mistaken ideas about the importance of blood ties in creating a family. That's the American adoptive mom in me. But once I started thinking about it in a larger and more symbolic way, learning about "brotherhood" is really what it takes for anyone to open up to help someone else, through adoption or any other means. Right? I know it's applying a Christian structure to an explicitly Muslim story. But in this book, there's a father. There's a brother who sacrifices so another brother can enter into their father's good graces. And in order to merit that sacrifice, the brother who received it must take care of another member of his father's family, one he had previously not seen as "his own." That's a very large story and a very large truth.

I don't want to ruin it for you. But it reminded me, too, of reading Huckleberry Finn in Eugene England's American Lit class at BYU, talking about why Huck reverts to playing an exaggerated romantic hero and seems to forget everything he has learned about Jim in their journey together. In that class we talked about what that meant in the context of American race relations. After reading The Kite Runner, I also see it to be true in being a parent of children. There's backsliding going on. It's so hard for all of us to learn from our experiences. We keep slipping. We think we are doing our best, but we mess up and we break our promises, sometimes with horrific consequences.

Still, we are not irredeemable. We can keep trying -- trying to teach these delicate little people to soar.