I want my son to know he belongs.
As an adoptee, I understand that may not come automatically to him. I want to be ready to help him wrestle with complex emotions, be curious about his biological family, and be secure in our love for him. I found help from an unexpected source—Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book.” Mowgli’s journey becomes a hopeful tale of belonging.
Let me guess for a moment what you must be thinking: “You mean the movie with Baloo, the bear, singing about ‘Bare Necessities,’ and Kaa, the snake that sounds like a sinister Winnie-the-Pooh?” Not exactly. The Disney version of the story, while entertaining, is hardly a faithful rendering of Kipling’s masterpiece about the boy adopted by wolves. Here is one important detail Mickey Mouse left out: Mowgli frequently interacts with his birthparents. (I use the term, because it is the best way to describe the dynamic separating his blood family from the wolves whom he calls “Father Wolf,” “Mother Wolf,” and “Grey Brothers.”) This creates for the young hero a tension about where he belongs, in the jungle or among men.
At one point, Mowgli feels he belongs nowhere. Though the wolves who reared him are faithful and his birth parents are kind, the jungle drives him away because he is a “man’s cub,” and the village drives him away because he is a “wolf’s cub.” Incredulous, Mowgli exclaims, “Again? Last time it was because I was a man. This time it is because I am a wolf.” In his darkest moment, Mowgli sings, “I am two Mowglis… Ahae! My heart is heavy with the things that I do not understand.”
Today, “dada” and “mama” are the only firm words in my son’s vocabulary. He is my son, but one day he will learn he is not only my son. One day he will learn the last name on his original birth certificate. He may even feel like there are “two Mowglis” and wonder, “Who am I, really?”
If the Jungle Book stopped there, I would find it helpful, but not hopeful. As Kipling continues to write about Mowgli in The Second Jungle Book, Mowgli returns to become the master of the jungle. He is wise, strong and brave. He is equally at home in the jungle and in the village. He has ascended from the boy who belonged nowhere to the man who belongs everywhere.
That’s what I want for my son. If ever the day comes in which he questions who he is and how he fits into the world, I want him to know that being adopted doesn’t make him belong less, but more.
Kipling may not have intended his book to be read in this way, and I would not overextend the allegory, but I hope to read this story with him to give us both the vocabulary to navigate this complicated terrain together.
