My mother related this darling little anecdote to me yesterday. Seems she was out to lunch with her bowling lady friends on Friday, and when she took her wallet out to pay for her $3.99 Chinese rice plate, it fell open to a photograph of my daughter. “Who’s that?” said one of her nosy BLFs. “My granddaughter,” she said. Pause. They squinted more closely at the picture. Wheels turning in their brains. “Hmm,” said one of them. “She doesn’t look anything like you!” (translation: she doesn’t look Asian) My mother said, “Well. Susan was adopted.”
Response: “Really! We didn’t know Susan wasn’t your daughter!”
My mother said, “She is my daughter. But she was adopted.”
Wow. They didn’t even say I wasn’t her “REAL” daughter. They actually implied that I wasn’t her daughter at ALL.
She’s 84. I’m 47. It never ends.
March 11, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Sad, sad, sad. Good for your mom for having a good answer, although I’m sure she’s had a lot of practice.
That “real”/”adopted” differentiation drives me so crazy and makes me angry too. Do people who make these remarks really have such narrow life experiences that they can’t get the bond of families through adoption?
March 12, 2007 at 4:55 am
I have to confess that I once said to a friend, who is black, upon meeting her mother, who is white, “I didn’t know you were adopted.” She wasn’t. I still squirm about this…but, honestly, sometimes it is just a stupid mistake; and the person instantly regrets what came out of their mouths, knowing full well how utterly, well, at best ignorant it was. I am not saying that is what happened here, but sometimes….
March 12, 2007 at 8:28 am
It doesn’t end because people are generally clueless. It’s not that they don’t get adoption, or disability, or skin color, it’s that they don’t get the entire concept of other people’s lives or experiences.
My daughter traveled on planes extensively through her childhood, and especially when she was an infant. Every time we got off a plane, someone (and often lots of people) always told me what a “good baby” she was.
She was a superb traveler, and yes, I’ll even allow that I did everything I could to make our trips work well. But what could these people possibly be thinking? That my eighteen-month-old-kid was deliberately being “good”?
It used to make steam come out of my ears. But a certain peace comes with expecting these kinds of idiotic responses. Developing the mental trick of filing them under ‘clueless’ worked for me, and can be liberating — freeing you to appreciate the more intelligent and gracious behaviour you run into less frequently.
March 12, 2007 at 8:53 am
totally f*cked up, but you know you’re really her daughter, and she knows you’re really hers.
March 12, 2007 at 9:29 am
No, it never does end, does it? Comments like these are much more than “stupid mistakes” — they’re reflections of fundamental, gut level, widely accepted “rules” about what makes a family. I run into this “adoptive families aren’t real” stuff regularly — and I’ve yet to hear it from someone who is being malicious. They are always “innocent” comments. By now “they didn’t mean anything by it” helps me not one bit. And I’m coming into it from the adoptive parent side. When I think about how my children are forced to confront and somehow process it all the f’ing time — ARRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
March 12, 2007 at 10:43 am
oreneta- I think that yours was truly an honest mistake. You made an assumption, or a guess, that turned out not to be true. When families don’t fit our expectations, our minds whirl to try and “figure it out.” I was adopted, but many people assumed, when I was with only one parent, that my parents had an interracial marriage.
Julie – you said it. And it reminds me of something we once discussed writing about: the difference between Intent and Impact. No, none of these people intentionally mean to be malicious or hurtful – but then there is the impact of how these comments make people feel.
March 12, 2007 at 11:45 am
Oh. My. That’s ridiculous. And rude. And yes, ignorant, but really!
I get asked a lot when Nate is with me, “Is he yours?,” and I simply smile and say, “Yes, he is.” After all, he is my son; is they want to know if he’s adopted, they can use those words. Then again, I’m just mean that way
.
March 15, 2007 at 11:23 am
Susan,
Ignorant and careless comments frustrate. But every time I get disgusted with people’s stupidity or carelessness, God has reminded me of some of the dumb things I have said. That humbles me and helps me extend mercy to those who have offended me with careless words. Thanks for blogging about this — it might help a reader put a guard on his/her mouth the next time an ignorant/careless thought pops into his/her head.
March 16, 2007 at 4:30 am
It is amazing that people can still be so obtuse, especially when everywhere you look you see parents and kids that don’t “match.” But are your mother’s friends also 84? Maybe they haven’t caught up.
In my family, we have a little constellation that often puzzles people– although pleasantly, I think. My 40-year-old nephews are identical twins. Brown hair, brown eyes, pale skin–just basic American white mutts. One of them married an Asian woman and the other married a very blonde Nordic woman. Each of the couples had two boys, and the two boys each got their mothers’ genes for physical features. So when we go out with all the little boys–two of them Nordic-like with white-blonde hair and blue eyes, two of them Asian-like with black hair and eyes and golden skin– people are amazed that they’re cousins. But genetically, they’re really more than cousins– because their fathers are identical twins, the boys are actually half-brothers (genetically speaking). Yet they look as if they hail from opposite ends of the earth.
It’s a wonderful constellation.
March 26, 2007 at 10:25 am
April 30, 2007 at 8:12 pm
I was told this as a good reply to unwanted questions – “why do you ask?”
1. It gives you time to consider what you really should say.
2. It gives the person a chance to explain in case there is a good reason for asking.
3. It is not confrontational but it puts the onus on them to justify the question and defend themselves if there is no good reason.