This week-end we went to the adoption agency holiday party. One of the things that I love about the party is the bazaar. This year, I ended up buying a Korean doll, a Korean police car and a package of Korean coins. I’m not sure where I’m going to put the Korean doll and what I’m going to do with a package of Korean coins, but my son has yet to let go of the police car so that was a hit. My mother and my mother-in-law also did their fair share of shopping – especially my mother-in-law.

I walked up to her and she was browsing through some Korean books and coloring books. She asked me if my son had any and I told her that he only had the one. She started picking up books and I thought that she was buying them for my son. I opened my mouth to tell her she was buying too much, but she spoke first. She was buying them for my nieces and nephews. “They should know where T comes from,” she said.

How nice, I thought, that I have family that makes an effort to understand. On one of the threads on the adoption.com forums, one of the posters is having a problem because her family doesn’t understand the process. The process is hard enough without having to constantly fight your family too.

I’ve always retrained myself from buying Korean things for my nieces and nephew. Mostly, I didn’t want to force something on them or make my in-laws feel obligated. Besides, they aren’t Korean adoptees and it just doesn’t have the same meanings. To have my mother-in-law running around holding up hanboks to see if they were big enough for my nieces dolls and rummaging through piles of coloring books to see which ones have the best pictures was nice. It was nice that who we are was important to someone else.

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