She said what?

Once we made the decision to become adoptive parents, we started to learn new things about the people who share our world – some good things, and some not so good. I’ve learned that you can hold a garage sale fundraiser and someone you’ve never met before will give you $5 for a 25-cent item and tell you to “keep the change – just bring that baby home.” I’ve learned that there are people out there who will do whatever they can, whenever they can because they know adoption and family are beautiful things and they like to see others happy.

And I’ve learned that there are still people out there with incredibly prejudiced attitudes who just don’t get it and have no problem speaking their minds. It is this type of person your adoption agency warns you about in training classes, that you read about on listservs, adoptive parent magazines, and books. It is this type person you think you are ready to handle – until you meet them and they open their mouth.

Gregg and I were at a party last weekend, where I had the displeasure of overhearing an adoption-ignorant tirade by a woman neither of us had ever met before. To set the scene, we had just passed this woman to walk into the kitchen to get our food. Gregg excused himself for a moment and I started digging in. As I’m plating the food, this woman, who is now behind me, says to her two companions, “Seriously. If they must adopt, do it from the United States. Why do they have to go bring a child from another country here? There are plenty of kids here already.”

Now, I don’t know who “they” were, but I do know she wasn’t talking about us (like I said, I didn’t even know her). I do know that that was one way to get me good and fired up, though. I had a few things I would have loved to have said to her, but I didn’t. I bit my tongue, because I didn’t know her – actually, I didn’t know anyone there (including the host – an old friend of Gregg), and more importantly, because she was not speaking to me. Gregg came back, calmed me down, we ate; I stopped considering poking her in the eye with a beef kabob skewer, and life went on.

But then I started thinking. What would I have done if we actually had our child with us and the same situation had occurred? Would I have ignored it then? Believe me, I had more than one snotty comeback running through my head for this woman, none of which would have been appropriate to say in front of a child. (I guess I’d better start working on more child-friendly speech while I have the time.) My answer, though? No. I couldn’t ignore that if my child could hear it. A child needs to know that while people are entitled to their opinions, some things are just plain rude and wrong to say. So what would I have said to this woman if the situation (hopefully never) presented itself?

“I went to the Philippines for my child because my child was born in the Philippines.”