I was reading an older post on the ReadingWritingLiving blog. She posted about a comment that was recently made to her mother that stemmed from the fact that they don’t look alike. The person said, “We didn’t know Susan wasn’t your daughter!” My first thought was how tactless that person was and then my next thought echoed the title of her post – “Does it ever end?”

I am a parent so I am well aware of the fact that most of our concentration is on making sure our children make it to adulthood. What comes after that is a little incomprehensible right now, but this post reminded me that adopted-life does not stop at age twenty-one. Our Korean adoptees will have no choice but to live with their status their whole life.

Truthfully, I get less intrusive adoption-oriented questions now that I’m an adult. Now that I’m not in the constant presence of my family, most people just assume that I am an ethnic Korean (or Chinese or Japanese). Instead, now I get rather intrusive questions about my culture. At that point, I am faced with a decision. Do I smile and ignore them? Do I pretend that I know what they are talking about? Do I explain about Korean adoption?

It’s funny, because I don’t have to open that door if I don’t want to. I know that there are Korean adoptees who don’t want to talk about it with everyone and escaping into the anonymousness of adulthood might be a relief. Perhaps because of my son or perhaps because there is still a little bit of teacher still trying to escape, I generally lay it all out and explain about my adoption. Therefore, I have no one to blame but myself when the barrage of intrusive adoption questions hit me in the face. Being a Korean adoptee is never ending.

If you would like to comment, but not on this site, please e-mail me at adoptkoreablog@adoptionmail.com.