My mother makes a stand

Once your life is touched by adoption, you notice a lot of things that might have gone right past you previously, especially the way language is used. You'll never look at an "Adopt-a-Highway" sign the same way again.

So I'm going to proudly relate the story my mother told me.

She and a friend and my dad went to a church craft fair over the weekend. They stopped at one booth where a woman was selling cute little finger puppets. She decided to get a couple for Owen and Renee .

The puppets were in buckets with labels like "Animals" and "Cartoon Characters."

Then she noticed a bucket labeled "Orphanage."

Okay...what's that all about? She asked the vendor why the bucket was labeled this way, and the woman said, "Oh, that's where I put the leftovers and the ones I didn't know what else to do with."

So my mom put down the puppets she was going to buy, spun on her heel, and walked out.

But it didn't end there. She thought about it, and then she decided she couldn't let it go. She handed my dad her bags and went to give the vendor a piece of her mind. I'm sure in the nicest way possible, as my mom is not the type to get in your grill.

She went back and told the puppet mistress that she was offended by the use of "orphanage." She told her, "I have a grandson who came from an orphanage, and he is NOT a 'leftover.' He's a blessing."

The puppet maker was pretty horrified, my mom says, at never thinking about it that way. She certainly didn't mean to be offensive, and she took my mom's complaint seriously.

And that's the way I think it is with most of the "civilian" population. They do stuff like this completely out of ignorance, out of just not thinking. I just never thought of it that way before. And I think adoptive families tend to fall into two camps: when you see it, you either let it slide (maybe muttering under your breath), or you become an adoption educator, schooling the uninformed (and maybe not in the nicest way possible every time). Why take the harder path? Because this is the world Owen and his fellow adoptees have to grow up in. We can't spare them every callous or unthinking use of words like "adopt" and "orphanage," but we can occaisonally win one.

So, way to go Mom. That was freakin' awesome.