One thing we’ve learned about adoption is that people only every talk to me about it.  As in, strangers, family members, friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, basically everyone asks me questions.

No-one ever asked Mr. MPB questions.

Now, I may be biased, but I do think Mr. MPB is pretty approachable and he’s generally a pretty decent guy.  So, I really don’t think this is about him.

In fact, I know it’s not about him.  When investigating adoption we were told by other families brought together through adoption and our location adoption agency, that people basically only ever ask the mom questions.  (The only exception to that is that people will ask the child directly if the child is of a different race from the parents – which I think is a crazy).  Anyways, this is been very true in our lives.  I’m asked questions all the time.  In fact, only once has Mr. MPB even been around when people ask me questions.

Which means no-one has ever asked Mr. MPB an adoption related question, on his own.

But last week, Mr. MPB was working with someone and adoption somehow came up in conversation.  Apparently, the other individual praised Mr. MPB for our decision to adopt, and was asking lots of questions about why we chose the USA not Canada.  Mr. MPB thought it was very odd as he’s never experienced a conversation like this before.  But, what struck him as exceptionally odd was that he was using adoption friendly/appropriate language – birth family, open adoption, closed adoption, placed, etc.

Evidently, this was so odd, that Mr. MPB asked the individual how they are so knowledgeable about adoption.

It turns out, years and years ago the individual chose to place a child for adoption in a closed adoption before open adoption became more of the norm.  To this day, this individual firmly believes it was the right decision for everyone involved and has the upmost respect and appreciation for parents like us.  Hence, the individual knows a lot about adoption and was very curious why we left the country considering they know first hand that adoptions do happen locally.

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I wasn’t part of the conversation, but I’ll admit, upon Mr. MPB’s retelling of it, I was thrilled that someone finally asked Mr. MPB an adoption related question!  (We had been wondering how long it would take for someone to ask him a question about adoption – turns out, it took over 1.5 years).  But mostly, for me, I thought it was great that Mr. MPB was able to have a real conversation with someone who understands adoption and can offer a different perspective.

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