Nature vs Nurture

Lunch time at Camp Tanuga is an especially crazy part of the day. The mess hall is packed with hungry campers in need of hydrates and carbohydrates. Announcements are made and cheers are called. Banging, snapping, yelling, clapping, singing, eating, stomping, cheering. It's a cacophony of sound that would normally be deemed anything but appropriate, but at camp it just makes sense.

Frankie loves it.

We bring her in early so she can get a jump start on her meal because when the yelling and stomping starts, she can hardly contain herself. Food and appetite are both forfeited as she chooses instead to bounce up and down in her chair lost in the madness that is lunch time in the mess hall. She loves it.

Yesterday, as we were watching Frankie repeatedly attempt to eject herself from her chair (full smile painted on her face and ours) a close friend made a comment that can only be described as the very essence of why I am such a firm believer in adoption:

"I wonder what Frankie would be like if someone else adopted her."

Ever since my 12th grade World Literature class, I have been intriqued with how genetics and environment shape who we are. Nature vs. Nuture is a common theme in many of the canon classics we are made to read in school. For most, the ageless debate was chucked at the classroom door, but for me--for some inexplicable reason--it followed me out of the classroom and inexorably weaved itself into my life.

It followed me to rescue Barney and Floyd, two neglected Golden Retrievers, with hopes of giving them them a fresh start and a new life. (It worked). It followed me to work with at-risk youth and foster kids to prove to them, and myself, that with a little love, attention and respect, they could be stripped of their defensive armor ultimately exposing inherently good kids struggling to survive in mostly undesirable and, very often, violent living conditions. It also, without a doubt, followed me to Frankie.

How much of who we are is determined by the innate qualities we are born with, and how much is because of personal influence and experiences?

I have never felt a need to be pregnant. (Though you know if I was, I would surely be the girl eating cake at 4:00 a.m.). For me, the need is much more about changing a life instead of making one. Will Frankie have Cody's hair or my eyes? Uh...definitely NO to both, but I care about that stuff not at all. Frankie has unquestionably gotten her hair and eyes from her biological parents, but that happy kid doing the watermelon dance, the sassy shoulder shrug and the mess hall table bang...that is ALL us, baby.

All us.