29 April 2006
rock hearted lady
Once upon a time, there was an old lady with a rock for a heart.
A tiny, shriveled up, nasty little rock for a heart.
She wants to have her walk around the neighborhood without having her eyes assaulted by any signs of life. The toys in the front yard offend her. "Don't you ever pick up that trash?" The sounds of jubilant playing outrage her. She's even chastised me for the barking of the across-the-street neighbor's dog.
She insists, insists, that we must be a "foster home," and an illegal one at that. She will not hear polite responses, neutral contradiction, or barely controlled outraged refusals to engage. She did get offended when the answer to her repeated question "How many of them are really yours--how many are in your family?" was "How many are in your family?" Shocked when the tables were turned, she spat, "Well! That's just rude!"
Transnational, transracial, adoptive parenting means that you make many decisions, daily, about how to manage the great unwashed. (Okay, she probably washes--but her mouth could use a little soap too, frankly.) Most of the time the intrusive or ugly questions or comments are at least partly grounded in ignorance. We in the adoption community forget that everybody else may not know the "proper" lingo--e.g., we don't call the children we birthed ourselves our "real" children and the children we adopt our "adopted" children. We call them all "our children," because that's what they are. Heck, I'm sometimes surprised when someone asks me where one or some of 'em were adopted from--I'm thinking, "Heyyyyy, wait a minute.....how did she know that they were adopted?" and then I remember that the different races might be a tiny clue. I just plain forget--I don't see their differences without focusing on it. So sometimes I answer awkwardly phrased questions with an assumption of good intentions.
Ahhhhh, but not the little rock-hearted lady. She's annoyed that this neighborhood of three and four bedroom homes has been invaded by--gasp!--actual messy noisy non-rock children (I can only assume she's not going around confronting the owners of lawn statuary, but I wouldn't put it past her). She wants the neighborhood to look like a retirement home, or a resort, or a graveyard when she totters along on her morning walk. She is going to complain about what she assumes is our "unlicensed foster home" (which is, of course, not terribly veiled code for--"Horrors! There are black children in my field of vision!") to the Homeowner's Association.
Bring it on. Mama's pissed.
A tiny, shriveled up, nasty little rock for a heart.
She wants to have her walk around the neighborhood without having her eyes assaulted by any signs of life. The toys in the front yard offend her. "Don't you ever pick up that trash?" The sounds of jubilant playing outrage her. She's even chastised me for the barking of the across-the-street neighbor's dog.
She insists, insists, that we must be a "foster home," and an illegal one at that. She will not hear polite responses, neutral contradiction, or barely controlled outraged refusals to engage. She did get offended when the answer to her repeated question "How many of them are really yours--how many are in your family?" was "How many are in your family?" Shocked when the tables were turned, she spat, "Well! That's just rude!"
Transnational, transracial, adoptive parenting means that you make many decisions, daily, about how to manage the great unwashed. (Okay, she probably washes--but her mouth could use a little soap too, frankly.) Most of the time the intrusive or ugly questions or comments are at least partly grounded in ignorance. We in the adoption community forget that everybody else may not know the "proper" lingo--e.g., we don't call the children we birthed ourselves our "real" children and the children we adopt our "adopted" children. We call them all "our children," because that's what they are. Heck, I'm sometimes surprised when someone asks me where one or some of 'em were adopted from--I'm thinking, "Heyyyyy, wait a minute.....how did she know that they were adopted?" and then I remember that the different races might be a tiny clue. I just plain forget--I don't see their differences without focusing on it. So sometimes I answer awkwardly phrased questions with an assumption of good intentions.
Ahhhhh, but not the little rock-hearted lady. She's annoyed that this neighborhood of three and four bedroom homes has been invaded by--gasp!--actual messy noisy non-rock children (I can only assume she's not going around confronting the owners of lawn statuary, but I wouldn't put it past her). She wants the neighborhood to look like a retirement home, or a resort, or a graveyard when she totters along on her morning walk. She is going to complain about what she assumes is our "unlicensed foster home" (which is, of course, not terribly veiled code for--"Horrors! There are black children in my field of vision!") to the Homeowner's Association.
Bring it on. Mama's pissed.
