Day 33: I Want to Understand

Ever since we got Rex, our family sticks out in public. Our adoption trainer said we would, and we thought it might be a possibility, but you don't know for sure until it happens. Let me tell you--it happens. Today Colette was buying Halloween candy with the kids and she got stares from several different people. They weren't friendly stares either. They were searching stares, scorning stares, stares of people trying to figure out why this woman was with these two children who didn't look alike.

I had the same thing happen too. I was playing with Rex and Asia in a public sandbox. People would look at me, then at the kids, then back at me, trying to process what they were seeing. They would curl their lips and squint their eyes suspiciously as if they were investigators who just came upon a crime scene. Why does it make me feel guilty, like I have to explain the situation? Why do I get self-conscious and want to show them our adoption papers? I don't owe any strangers an explanation, but I find myself wanting to offer one.

Tonight Colette said to me, "It's easier for people to judge than to understand." She nailed it. I was feeling judged, and she was feeling judged by the shifty glances of those around us. And yet, it made me think about all the times I've had shifty eyes myself. I took Colette's statement on: "It's easier for me to judge than to understand," because it's true. That's the tatoo I should have gotten on Day 30. In my life, I've made the most unfair judgments about people I barely knew, all generated in an instant. I don't want to be that way. I don't want to make people feel the way others have made us feel. I want to understand.