Labor Day Weekend and Nosy Problems

It finally happened, one of those annoying encounters with a person who actually was so out of touch with the social norms of this world that she asked how much my children cost - and did so right in front of my children and my mother. This is a rather long-winded post, so cut to the bottom if you want to know exactly how I feel about the above.

Thea, Micah and I joined the rather limited throngs of Labor Day travelers on Friday, driving down to Southern Maryland to see Oma. We hadn't been to visit since the end of June/beginning of July, giving Oma almost seven weeks to recover from babysitting both kids while I attended the AANP conference. Oma called and warned us off of our usual back roads route that brings us over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge so we came down I-95 onto the Baltimore Beltway and over the Key Bridge to I-97. Other than the usual glitch where the Delaware Memorial Bridge route merges with I-95, it was smooth sailing. Thea slept most of the way and Micah chattered on about how his balloon blew away (three weeks ago).

Saturday we went with my brother, sister-in-law and nephew to an Amish Market in Upper Marlboro, followed by a trip to Watkins Regional Park which has a train, a carousel and a miniature golf course. I managed to snap the cutest picture of all three kids (youngest to oldest, Micah, Willi, Thea) hanging on the gate waiting and watching for the train to pull in. Micah and Willi were just about beside themselves over the train. Thea actually screwed up her courage and went for a carousel ride, though both of them rode on the benches and not on the up-and-down or even the stationary animals. (This earned us the comment from the carousel operator, "You did not pay $1.25 each just to sit on some benches. . . ")

Thea and I played a round of miniature golf while my brother folded himself back into the train with the two boys for a third trip around the track. Thea and I played by four-year old rules: no scoring, do-overs allowed, no worrying about stance, etc. - so we were done in about the same time it took for the boys to ride the train. Eighteen holes. (When Thea and Steve played this course on Fathers' Day, it took them forever because Steve actually felt compelled to teach Thea how to stand, line up her shot, and all that nonsense. For that, he deserved to roast in the hot sun.)

While Micah napped, all the train-riding and carousel-riding having taken a toll on him, Thea and I went to Target for school supplies. Yes, Kindergartners have school supply lists. It was a short list: one box of 24 crayons, one box of colored pencils, two erasers, one pencil sharpener with cover, a package of #2 pencils, three glue sticks and a box to put it in, 5"x 8" x 2". Charles County schools were back in session last week, so we had a major search for Pink Pearl erasers.

Later that evening Aunt Shannon and Willi came over and we went to Rita's for ice cream. Willi and Micah were just too cute, chasing each other around on the patio at the ice cream place. They both love to laugh and run, and it's just so neat to see how a like two-year olds are despite being born two months and thousands of miles apart.

Sunday we decided to "go and see the goats" - which means a trip to Westmoreland Berry Farm in the Northern Neck of Virginia. It's a farm store, berry-picking place that happens to have goats and has built a long ramp so that the goats can ascend, cross over the road that leads down to the berry fields and arrive at a platform where they wait in joyous anticipation (as joyous as a goat gets) of fools who put a quarter in a gumball machine that now cranks out feed corn. The corn is placed in a little cup and a pulley system is used to raise it up to the goat. All of this is endlessly fascinating if you are five and under. If you are forty and over, you just spend time praying that goats do not move their bowels while they are 25 feet in the air. The farm store has a large open-air pavilion with a snack shop, so we had ice cream and snacks (my mother was appalled that I followed my dish of butter pecan with a side of sauerkraut - I just love sauerkraut; she always has to make extra on holidays because I'll start eating it from the pot at breakfast._ The kids got to run around on the playground equipment and we made a trip through the petting zoo section. Thea was brave and got into having the goats eat from her hand, though she thought that the goat spit was nasty; Micah was right there watching but he kept saying "NO GOAT, NO GOAT, Mommeeeeee" so something about them, the smell, the vacuous eyes with those weird slit-like irises, skeeved him.

So on the way home, we decided to go to Mom's local Chinese restaurant. It's straight out of the 1960s and its decor is only slightly different from the Sampan, which was the Chinese place in Hyattsville that I used to go to while I lived in N.E. Washington. The staff is friendly, they are very tolerant of children and the messes that follow in their wakes, and the food is typical American-style Chinese food. We were seated at a booth in the back, they were either being kind to my mother who would not have to walk far on her bad knees to the buffet or were putting us in Siberia because they remember when we last patronized them.

Mom wanted the buffet, but I decided to order off the menu - the buffet leaves too much opportunity for Micah Man to run around and cause chaos. About the time the kids were occupied with their egg-drop soup and dumplings, a woman stops by our table and asks, "Where are they from?" Since I was hungry and about to get my mouth around a dumpling, I didn't have the wherewithal to say Princeton, New Jersey, but I don't think that would have done much to shut this person down.

Her next query was, "How much did they cost?" At this point my idiot-radar did start to function, and I said something to the effect of "Not as much as we love them" which was sort of a nonsequitar, but anyone able to read social nuances would get the idea to BUGGER OFF, BUTTHEAD. I should have asked her if she had children, and if so, were they conceived in the conventional manner or with the assist of a petri dish, were they delivered vaginally or by C-section? But I digress, she followed this with, "Sooo, you weren't able to have children of your own?" What the HECK to these two little people look like? They are my own children, you moron. At that point I decided to just go back to eating in hopes she would find that she needed to return to her table before her plate of food from the buffet got cold. And if she made any further trips to the buffet, she thankfully left us alone.

In all the Yahoo! groups I've belonged to related to adoption from China, I've read about this stuff, and I've always figured that having read about it, I would handle it so much better, but I didn't. Fortunately the children were oblivious to the whole encounter, dumplings trump nosy strangers.

This is right up there with a question posed to me last year by one of the after-care teachers at Thea's school: What do you know about their real mothers? I AM THEIR 'REAL' MOTHER. I wrote that one off to language (the person's first language was not English) and cultural differences, but in many ways it still was irksome. And considering that there are a few Chinese-born adopted children in the school, they'd better learn the lingo quick, cultural differences or not.

Thea's been thinking about adoption: she knows that she was born in China and that we came to China to bring her home. And she knows that the same is true for her brother. While we were at my mother's, she made the observation that, "Micah's first mommy recycled him so we got him." Which is an interesting interpretation, and proof that Bob the Builder's "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" message has made an impression on her.

Monday we went to Miss Gertrude's to feed starlight mints to her neighbor's horses. Gertrude and Micah clicked so Thea and I walked to the barn and Micah held fast to Gertrude and regaled her with his best conversational tidbits, most of which I don't think she understood, but she did an excellent job of faking it. Thea again got into feeding the animals and allowed Ethel and the other horses to eat out of her hand; Micah at first wouldn't even go in the barn. But he got scooped up and brought in so he could help me feed some peppermints to the horse. Such a soft nose this one had, and they were nice because they were eager, but not greedy so they kept their teeth in check.

After horses came a trip for school shoes for the kids - with a stop to look at a desk Mom saw and thought would be neat for Thea. It was like a little secretary desk with a fold out table-top and lots of cubbies at Everything Amish (If It Ain't Dutch, It Ain't Much is the store's sign's subtext). I took pictures of it, but I think it's a little out of our price range.

The best day of the weekend - for me - was yesterday morning. My mother made an appointment with Lindsey, the stylist who had been cutting and coloring my hair until around the time we went to China last year. I went back to a salon around here that I had gone to once upon a time and the stylist was ok, but she wasn't Lindsey. So yesterday I got to catch up with Lindsey and I let her lop off and thin out a ton of hair. When I saw the floor, it looked like a poodle and a pitbull went at it, and it wasn't pretty for the poodle. (The haircut turned out fine, it was just more hair on the floor than I've seen in awhile.)

I think Thea was having a little pre-first day of school anxiety because I told her that we were going to home she wanted to stay with Oma and she was very sad to be packing up. By staying the extra day, we avoided holiday weekend/beach traffic. Everyone was in a good mood for the four-hour drive.

Anyway, the bottom line to the encounter with the nosy wench in the Chinese restaurant is: It is totally unacceptable to ask adoptive parents how much their children cost, and the sin is doubled if it is asked in front of the child(ren) in question. Ditto with the use of 'real' as an adjective in front of mother when the real mother is the one being asked. Birthparent. Biological mother. Whatever. Pick one, use it.

And don't get me started on people who ask about how my children were abandoned or found (not a subject for casual conversation) or those who say that "Baby girls aren't wanted in China" because it's so much more complicated than that.