Who's Your Daddy?

During our January '05 travels to adopt Lil, we encountered the occasional Chinese resident who was curious about why we were wandering the country with a little asian girl strapped in the snuggly. For the most part, there was a friendliness or at worst, an indifference shown to us by the asian people. I sensed that the mood in China was different this time...perhaps because it was summer and the masses were out and about...we encountered many people who looked at us suspiciously, or with anger. Some of the younger women would search the baby's faces as if they were looking for something familiar in them and I wondered if they had faced a terrible decision once.
I certainly don't know what the Chinese are told about international adoption, nor have I spent time walking in their shoes, so I would never pretend to understand how they feel or why they make the decisions they do. However, I did feel a little sad this time, and slightly uncomfortable that I had two asian daughters, while most Chinese families were only allowed to have a single child. Once home, I was relieved to be out of that spotlight...or so I thought.
Last weekend we could no longer tolerate our craving for Chinese food. Our usual place was closed for holiday, so we tried another Chinese restaurant that had a good reputation. Once the four of us were seated the waiter asked: Are they your grandchildren? After we explained that Lil and Grace were our daughters, he went to the back of the restaurant and had a loud Cantonese discussion with his wife. She then came to our table to fill our water glasses and simply stood and glared at the girls. Mr. Waiter returned throughout our dinner to ask more questions and deliver delicious food, but it was pretty clear that he was completely gobsmacked by the notion of us as a family.
The curiosity does not end with the Asian's of course. Many adoptive parents have told stories of how they were asked inappropriate questions about their kids in the lineup at the grocery store. One of our adoption group was approached by a person who asked if her husband was Asian. She replied, "no he is not, but my daughter's father is!" I'm gonna borrow that line some day.
My best giggle came from one of our long term patients soon after our adoption of Lil. I was standing at our office front desk holding Lil and when the patient arrived and she asked who the baby belonged to. I explained she was the newest member of our family, to which she responded: "but I didn't even know you were pregnant".
Another patient asked our receptionist, "how did they get a Chinese baby?" and our receptionist said: "Mix up with the sperm bank".
Admittedly, we live in the altered reality of reproductive technologies. But you would think in a society that forms families through donor egg, donor sperm, surrogacy, donor embryo, adoption, fostering, non-monogamy, serial monogamy and occasionally traditional marital relations, people would not approach a stranger and lead with the question: Is your husband an Asian?
I get that parenthood in one's midlife (assuming a lifespan of 110 yrs)is not yet commonplace for women. But I am thinking there are definate advantages to being a Zoomer parent. When the girls are teens, there is a pretty good chance that I won't see well enough to notice the tongue piercings, or hear well enough to find out what trouble they are up to, and even if I can hear and see, I probably won't remember 5 minutes after the fact. This will save us all years of therapy.