Are You a Real Mother?

All of our children are adopted. In some cases this leads to some pretty strange behaviour on the part of some people. For example, no two examples. When our son David was about a year old, we were at some function and a guy sees me holding David. While David, at age 27 looks as dark as his East Indian heritage would suggest, at one-year-old his hair was actually fairly light brown. At any rate, some guy I'd never met before says, "Well he sure looks like you." I replied, "Really? That's odd because he's adopted." To which the man fumble, "Oh, I'm sorry. Well I don't need to be sorry. I mean, that's fine right? Of course it is."

The best story though, has to do with Mother's Day. Shortly after we adopted our first child who is now 30-years-old we were sitting in Church on Mothers Day. We had been attending that congregation for awhile so most people knew our situation. If they didn't, two Caucasian parents with a clearly aboriginal child indicated that ours was a bit of a different situation. Anyhow, as they do in many congregations on Mother's Day, a number of people began handing out flowers to all the mothers in attendance that day. When one young woman came to where Wendy was sitting, she began to hand the flower to Wendy, then took it back, and you could just see on her face the puzzled look and tilt of the head indicating the dilemma Is she a real mother who should get a flower? And then with a blink of the eyes and a shake of her head she handed the flowers to Wendy in a purposeful manner indicating that Of course she should get some flowers. After all,adoption is almost normal - although I sure hope that I don't have to do something like that someday.