how will she react?

Sometimes my daughter Devlin seems aware that she does not look like the rest of the family. She will point out people with 'eyes like mine' or marvel at how tan she gets compared to me. Sometimes she seems quite oblivious.

Last week we were in Chinatown for dim sum and Summerfest. It was a resturant we visit often and some of the staff knows us, others, not. The ladies pushing the carts often stop to marvel at the beauty of our girl. But they don't just tell us, they touch her. They touch her hair. They touch her face. It cultural. It happened a while we were in China, although with her sickly pallor and short, choppy hair, not nearly as much as it does now. It did not happen to us, but we have heard stories of other adoptive families whose daughters were picked up and carried into the kitchen. This is not something that Americans do. I have seen mothers in this country get nearly hysterical over a grandmotherly type touching their baby's foot while out food shopping. I have seen sprints across a playground if a parent sees an unknown person in the vicinity of the swings, even if there is an unknown child right there as well. It is simply not expected or accepted for an unknown person to touch a child in anyway.

My daughter seems to have internalized this and for the first time seemed uncomfortable with the caresses she was receiving. But to me the more suprising thing was not her discomfort (which I understood) but her confusion. "Why me, Mommy, why aren't they touching the boys?" The fact that she and the wait staff looked alike while the boys looked like Mommy and Daddy did not occur to her as an explanation for the difference in treatment.

I wonder how she is going to react to a country where most people look like her and the rest of us look different. Will the attention be on us as a family? on her as it is when we visit Chinatown? Or will the tables turn and the boys will be the focus of most people's attention? If the focus is on her will she accept their touches, or draw in close to me to get away from them.

When we were in China to adopt Devlin one of the other families in our group had their 7-year-old girl with them. Golden brown hair with blond highlights and natural curls caught the eye of many that we met. She drew many stares and many comments and there were even people who asked to have their picture taken with her. Will this happen to Mac and Liam? When they babies we would go for dim sum and the waitresses would tell us we were lucky. We agreed. After all the trouble it took to get pregnant and their early arrival we knew that we were truely blessed to have two healthy little boys. But for the Chinese it went beyond that. Our first born was not just a son, but two sons. A double blessing. And, they were born in the year of the dragon, the most powerful sign in the Chinese zodiac. A triple blessing.

I guess we can just prepare them all and wait and see what happens.