Thought Bubbles

Our little one at the beach.

Today I was at the mall with my ADORABLE three year old daughter. (Yes, I'm biased, but I am allowed to be because I'm her mother.)

A sweet old lady asks, "did you adopt her?" Sigh. Here we go.

There are times that I don't mind all the questions, I've grown accustomed. But, in this moment, I just want to sit there and have a quiet moment with my sweet little girl as we enjoy our cup of pretzel bites.

"Yes," I say and force a smile.

"From where?"        "China."

Her follow up questions get way too personal (as they often do) but I manage by giving general information about Chinese adoption and not going into anything specific about our daughter. The nice woman takes her leave. I sigh and think that could have been worse.

And then I look up.

I see a young mom with a stroller openly staring with wide eyes and an open mouth at me and my absolutely AMAZING and charming daughter. I make eye contact and she instantly looks away. I mean, her head turns so fast I'm surprised she doesn't get whiplash.

I fight back the tears.

When our family is in public, people stare. We are not all the same color. It confuses people. Our three year old also has an obvious physical difference due to a birth defect. I would have stared at her too; before she was mine. We usually handle the stares by making eye contact and smiling. It works great and eases the tension we and the gawker are feeling. This lady doesn't even give us a chance to smile. I can't tell if she's embarrassed to have been caught staring or if she's simply disgusted with what she was seeing. Maybe a little of both.

I decide that we need another strategy when plan A fails. I think of my 9 year old son and have an idea.

When we say family prayers he sometimes has a hard time focusing on the words so he started creating pictures in his mind. After we pray he will sometimes describe the pictures he drew in his mind. For example, when we pray for the homeless, "I saw a homeless man walking into a house with a thought bubble that said he was happy." Stuff like that.

It got me thinking. What if we imagine thought bubbles floating above people's heads when they stare? The idea made me giggle.  Here are some ideas for our thought bubbles:

"Wow, that little girl is really amazing."

"Look at that beautiful smile."

"How does she do that with no thumbs?"

"I wonder how hard it is to adopt from another country."

(And then I realized that "thought bubbles" is a FANTASTIC blog title.)

What thought bubbles would you imagine?