Conspicuous-ness

(Still waiting!)

Besides contemplating makeup, praying, planning our Disneyland trip, praying, craving ice cream, praying, getting motivated to write another Soapbox Monologue and - you guessed it! - praying, I have been thinking about being a "conspicuous" family after we bring our daughter home. To us, she will look like our beautiful daughter. To the outside world, she will look different.

My family was conspicuous, but growing up, I didn't think about it. Even as an adult, I have been in denial, thinking all the while that this adoption will be my first experience with conspicuous-ness. Here I was, concerned about what life in a conspicuous family will be like for our children, when it hit me: I grew up in a conspicuous family, I just didn't see it because I was in it.

One of my brothers was adopted from Vietnam when we were both toddlers. At first, N blended in when we went out as a family. My dad had black hair and an olive complexion, particularly when he was tan from working outdoors during the summer, and N's Amerasian complexion was on the lighter side. My mom still smiles about the lady who came up to us at the zoo, shortly after N came home.  She said "you have a beautiful family! your daughter looks just like you, and your son looks just like your husband!"  After my dad passed away, however, N stood out as "different" from our fair-skinned, red-haired, freckled mom and siblings.

All this time, I have said "oh no, N blended right in!" because he did - to me! He was just another brother. We loved, we bickered, we wrestled (him with first one, then both arms tied behind his back... and still he would beat me!), and most of all, we laughed. My mom recently reminded me of strangers who would stare, and sometimes ask about N. I had forgotten all about them. It was our normal, and it meant nothing to us -- just silly questions quickly answered and dismissed.

My family was also conspicuous because of my mother. Since having polio as a toddler, she wears a steel brace on her youth-size-1 1/2  shoes and walks oddly, with a pronounced limp. When walking long distances is required (Disneyland, here we come!), she now uses a wheelchair. People often look twice, some stare, and children especially will ask what happened to her. The innocent curiosity and straightforward questions of children is so refreshing!

Because of her legs, Mom often falls. She can collapse when walking in a straight line on dry pavement. I remember one time in particular. I was about 16, and my siblings were 15, 11, and 10. It was an icy winter afternoon, and we were just leaving the store. As we crossed the parking lot, my mom fell. Her feet flew out from under her, and in seemingly slow motion, down she went. Getting her up off the ground takes a certain technique. As N started to 'pull' her up, she started laughing, us kids started laughing, and just as we were dealing with life as we knew it, the only way we knew how, my instructor drove around us.

I started to wave. He looked the other way. We all noticed. Maybe he didn't recognize us. Maybe. He saw us well enough to avoid running us over, but then we would have been hard to miss, with Mom down on the ground and four kids standing around in stitches.

We all paused, realizing that he expected us to be embarrassed, realizing that we were a spectacle. Then we grinned at each other, shrugged, managed to pull Mom up, and continued walking, unscathed by it all. We were conspicuous, but it was our normal, and it was okay.

Our children will grow up in a family that is, perhaps, even more conspicuous.  I pray that they will be equally un-phased by it all. We will strive to teach them to deal with the attention with grace and humor. Hopefully, our children will have to stop and think long and hard to even remember that we are a conspicuous family, despite all of the external cues. God-willing, their first thought will not be that our family is "different," but that our family is full of faith, love, laughter . . . and kids who are cute as a bugs ear! :)