Too Much Love

For the past six weeks or so, I have been writing fast and furious in my journal every evening.  I have written several posts and am thankful I chose not to click on the publish icon.  Something about the tone was just negative and angry.  Certain situations were beginning to seep and fester right down to my core.  Adopting transracially, I anticipated intrusive and possibly rude comments from people concerning our family, but could not foresee or understand how awkward I would feel in trying to find a graceful response in order to make a quick exit.

More often than not, my sons are present and putting me on the spot (especially in their company) leaves me incredibly flustered.  My older son can understand enough of the language to know what's going on and both can see that it makes me uncomfortable.  I am struggling to overcome the anger I feel at a complete stranger approaching me and asking personal questions concerning race and/or adoption. I do feel the need to be polite and teach my sons that anger is not a useful tool in dealing with these folks, but interestingly, it is my initial emotional response when boundaries are crossed.  I am learning with each new question and comment (you would not believe some of them if I told you) what responses work best and am also discovering that telling people a question is inappropriate and highly personal can be an educational moment for them, myself, and my sons at the same time.

Not only am I perplexed when searching for responses when dealing with adults, I have found answering questions from children to be equally as difficult.  These types of questions don't make me angry, but I just can't seem to find an answer that is satisfactory for young, inquisitive minds.  In responding to adults and children alike, Daddy O has demonstrated tremendous reserve, grace, and creativity-I continue to observe each day and hope that I can follow in his footsteps at some point.  One scenario that kept repeatedly confounding me last week was a little boy who would stop in front of our house on his bicycle as Baby O and I would play on the front lawn.  He would stop and stare at us for a few seconds, furrow up his brow, and say "Why do you have that baby?".  I would usually respond with something along the lines of "Because I love him.".  This of course was completely inadequate for his 5 year old mind and his next question would be "But why do you have THAT baby?".  My next response: "Because I do, I guess.".  Still unsatisfactory, but he would take off down the block and be back the next day with the same line of questioning.  This went on for about four days until Daddy O was present for the question.  I knew it was coming and was cringing at what might come out of Daddy O's mouth (I know, I know, where is the faith, Mommy O?).  Here is how the conversation went:

Boy on bike:  "Why do you have THAT baby?"

Daddy O (without hesitation): "Well, we just had too much love in our house and needed to spread it around."

Boy on bike: "What do you mean?"

Daddy O: "Well, our whole house was filled with boxes and buckets of love-so much so that it started to spill over into the garage and we had no room to park our cars.  Love was everywhere and we were running out of buckets and boxes, so we needed a family to soak up some of the love.  That's why we have THIS baby."

Boy on bike (eyes wide, looking at all the boxes and buckets in our garage): "Oh.  Okay."

He hasn't asked the question since.

Being witness to this short conversation completely washed all the anger right out of me. I will never be able to control or predict when and where questions/comments are going to present themselves, but what my husband taught me in that moment was to take a deep breath, don't hesitate, have courage and be honest in the moment-if it takes a bit of creativity and humor-even better.

Please let me clarify that my definition of honesty in this case is being honest with myself-this doesn't mean that I need to feel any obligation to respond or answer.

I love THIS baby.