LOL! My lawn guy thinks I'm a 'ho!

I hadn't thought about it. I haven't seen him in years. Other than high school (which was many, many, many years ago) I've only seen him once before last week and that was many, many years ago. He has no clue that all my kids have come to me via foster care. He sees that I have kids of assorted races and that they obviously can't be full biological siblings. I've never been married, so I still have the same last name. I'm guessing he thinks I've been very wild in my past.

I probably still wouldn't have thought about it but he saw Alli yesterday for the first time and told her she had to be my daughter because she looks just like the rest of my family. (He's known my brother since high school and knows my mom. It's possible he actually encountered my father at some point years ago, too.)

I don't feel the need to clear that up. Why does it matter? I'm sure the parents of some of my students think the same thing. As awkward as it may feel at times, it's really none of their business. They can think what they want about me. Some parents in the school do know my kids are all foster or adopted. Some I see socially and they just know. Others have point-blank asked. Some of them have met my kids and my kids have volunteered the info. If they choose to do that, it's fine. It's their story, not so much mine.

When I adopted Beth, her adoption worker asked what I wanted to put on her new birth certificate in the "father" section. She said I could leave it blank or they could put the word "adoption" in that space. I had them leave it blank. At the time of the adoption, it was a very big deal around our house, but as time has passed, so has the excitement over the adoption. It's not part of our daily lives. Despite the fact that she still calls me by my first name (remember, I was her temporary foster mom for well over two years), I am just her mother, not her adoptive mother. She may not call me "Mom" but she refers to me as her mom and I definitely function as her mom. When she's 25 and needs her birth certificate to apply for a passport or some other exciting endeavor, will she want the world to see that she was adopted many years ago? Of course, my family was quick to point out that by not marking her as "adopted" I was essentially marking her as a "bastard." Beth and I found that rather funny, so I guess it doesn't matter.

What to tell my students is a whole other issue. I get asked frequently if I'm married. I answer truthfully that I'm not. They know I have kids. (My kids are in and out out my room during the school year.) Every year, one of my students will eventually ask how I have kids when I'm not married. How do you answer this question for a 5 year old?

As a parent, I appreciate my kids teachers refraining from discussing certain things with them. I hate when unmarried teachers discuss with their students that they live with a boyfriend/girlfriend before marriage. Old fashioned? Yes. Do my kids know people have sex outside of marriage? A big, fat, obvious yes! Do I think a teacher has any business discussing any of those facts with students in a classroom? No way! There are home discussions and there are school discussions. Sometimes it is hard to separate them but they need to be separated.

I do my best to dodge questions like that. Every year questions about Santa and the Tooth Fairy come up. This year, for whatever reason, my students have frequently asked about God and Jesus. Let me assure you there is NO WAY for a public school teacher to answer those questions for a small child. I wouldn't even try. I fall back on my "Ask your mother when you get home" response. Of course, that doesn't work in the situation of how I got my kids. Their mother likely doesn't know.

I have to admit that it does sometimes bother me that some parents likely think less of me because it appears that I have many children by many fathers. While it's true that most of them have different fathers, that wasn't my doing. Truth be told, they have different mothers, too. Wouldn't that blow the minds of some of my kids and their parents?