My family knew that we were going to adopt from the beginning. There were no worries there. After all, my parents had adopted from Korea twice and everyone in our family, including the extended family, had gotten pretty used to it by the time we made our announcement. On our side, there weren’t very many questions, because anyone who mattered already knew the drill. The questions tended to be: “How long is the wait now?” “What airport will the plane fly into?”

The next step was telling my co-workers. I told my boss that we were applying to adopt from Korea. That was only fair so that we could make plans. At the time, I thought that we would be waiting much longer than we did and when we realized how quickly it was going to happen we all had to change our directions. In my department, there would be three of us going out with in a month of each other and all for twelve weeks. I’m told it was wild.

My boss was excited, but careful. She’s the kind of person that thinks before she jumps in so I didn’t get any of the intrusive comments. She sat back and waited for me to explain what I wanted to tell her. My co-workers were another story. Most of them were excited and they had a lot of questions. Some of them were a little intrusive (or a lot), but most of them asked without any real malice.

I think it was easier for me because I had grown up answering these questions. It was nothing new and nothing shocking. For the most part, I was expecting them and I had my answers ready. I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone who’s experiencing all this without thirty years of set-up time. I would think that it would be something like going from living in a vault to living in a fish bowl. It’s unfortunate that people who adopt or people that are adopted are expected to be much more forthcoming than everyone else.

Though, I have noticed that there is a similar problem when someone is pregnant. My friends all went through their pregnancies and everyone asks them very intrusive questions then too. Strangers seem to think it’s okay to rub a pregnant woman’s stomach. I’ve also noticed that many feel it necessary to tell pregnant women every horror delivery story that they’ve ever heard. Why is that?