Let's laugh a bit

Okay, I read back over my posts for the last few days, and I have gotten pretty serious into adoption issues. I need to get off my soapbox for a minute and lighten things up.

I know when people see my husband, myself and my kids walking down the street, and if you don't know me, all kinds of questions are in people's minds. Just plain curiosity kicks in and people wonder "how did they get put together?" I know little assumptions come to play. I know that we are a walking beacon for questions. I understand that, and I also understand that is what I signed up when I adopted children of a different race.

I have been told in the past that one incorrect assumption is that, when I am not with my husband, people think my husband is African American. That is a logical guess. I can see how someone would guess that.

Here is the craziest one I have heard in all my years of being a beacon.

Summer of 2006. JM is in swim lessons. BM is just barely walking (unlike the whirling dervish he is now). So as BM and I sit and watch JM in the bleachers, there are tons of other moms with their little kids around us. There is one mom who has her kids plus a couple of daycare kids she watches. She never asks about adoption but she is definitely enthralled with BM because he is so cute. He also had his full afro hair at the time. That fro is probably what people noticed the most about him then.

Anyway, all the parents always bring a towel for the kids, of course. We have a towel that has a map of the Caribbean on it. We bought it when we were on a Caribbean cruise several years ago. It has actually come in handy for showing the kids where Haiti is. Plus, when we have gone on other trips there since then, we show them where we are going. So we have this cool towel. Keep in mind, it is mostly folded up in a bag, or I am wrapping my kid in it and heading to the locker room. It is not out on display, and I am not thinking a thing of it. When we use that towel, it is a towel.

Almost towards the end of the summer, this daycare lady who is bubbling with curiosity and I didn't know it, finally says to me one day,

"So your husband must be from the Caribbean."
I say, with a huge wrinkle on my forehead, "Ummmm.....no. What makes you think that?"

She has put this huge string together....
"Well, I see your kids are of African descent. And you have this towel of the Caribbean, which I figured your husband brought to America when he came here."

I just say with a smile, thinking the reality is simpler, "No, my kids are adopted. My husband is whiter than me."

I can imagine she sat on those bleachers all summer trying to put this together, the kids, catching shorts glimpses of the towel, me, etc. I had to giggle at what a huge stretch she had to do to come to that conclusion.