Can I Just Get Through A Week?

I wonder, if I were not to visit any adoption forums, keep my TV turned off, not open the newspaper and eliminate myself entirely from the internet how many days could pass with there not being any reference made to adoption in my presence? Lately it seems like not many and it’s wearing me down. I come online when I’m ready to read and write about adoption – it is my choice at that moment. But I don’t like being ambushed with the topic when it’s not my choice. It ruins my day.

Now in defense of the people who refer to it in my presence, most don’t know I’m adopted and I usually don’t bring it up during said conversation.

Let’s see, this past week alone – Sunday before last at a 6-yr-olds birthday party. Sitting at the dinner table with hubby, hubby’s uncle and two people I just met. They were trying to make pleasant conversation by asking where we moved from. When I told them, I got the “my son lives there – oh, him and his wife just adopted a Russian girl” – then the ohhhh’s and ahhhh’s went around. “Yes, they are adopting another one.”

Friday – our sitter shows up – we go out every other Friday evening. She preceeds to tell us how she spent the past week caring for a 10-month old who was just adopted from Guatemala. The mom just got back with her and works so she is interviewing nannies and the kids is being passed around to different nannies all week. Oh, and she’s adopting another one next month who is two months older.

Saturday – at an indoor toddler playground with hubby and son. Run into cousin’s husband and child who explains cousin isn’t there because she had to drive in the snowstorm late last night to pick up her friends so-and-so who just returned from Guatemala with two children under the age of one.

I just don’t know how to react to these little adoption stories. I swear it’s almost as if people tell you these things and then take a long pause because they are so used to the “ohhhhhh, isn’t that special” speech that immediately follows. The only thing I manage to spill from my lips is a “hmm” – not even a long “hmmmmm” – just a “hmm” with a half smile. I can’t say what I really want to say. How on earth would they understand that the mere mention of a child being “saved” from a 3rd world country makes me sad?