Thank You, Mrs. MacIntyre

I am an adopted child. It seems to me that I have always known this, even from birth, but I've been told more accurately that my parents simply told me before I was even old enough to understand, and then explained in more detail as I grew and questioned the circumstances.

I've always been very open about the fact that I was adopted. Blessed with parents that imparted to me the very special nature of being adopted, I was proud of the fact and had no hesitation in telling anyone who would listen. After all, I was chosen by a family that most definitely wanted a child. Someone out there was just waiting for me to be born and come into their hearts and home. Perhaps in some strange way in my early elementary years of school I even fabricated some deal of a superiority complex.

Never one to have been faced with the negative aspects of being adopted, I was quite taken aback in third grade. A schoolmate whose name and face will be forever emblazoned in my mind was making fun of our school bus driver. Mrs. MacIntyre was saddled with the unfortunate nickname of Big Mac due to her rather immense size. This schoolmate was the one child in class you could always count on to make fun of others, but being that he wasn't directing his slander towards me, I was apt to laugh along with all the others, cruel children that we were. Suddenly and without warning, he turned his attentions towards me. "Hey, Ashley, you were adopted. I bet your real mom is Big Mac!" I was unable to respond, and the tears were rapidly filling my eyes as the other students on the bus joined in his laughter. Crying was a sin worse than murder, and I was committing a big one. My unfortunate lot was to be one of the last to depart the bus in the afternoon, and I sniffled my way through by ignoring my fellow bus riders for at least thirty minutes more before I saw my stop through the front windows of the bus.

Unable to look at the other students as I gathered my lunch box, I made my way to the front of the bus. Mrs. MacIntyre stopped me on my way down the steep steps. "Honey, it's all right. I'm not your mother, but I'd be proud if I were." With that, she gestured with her head for me to continue on and the bus doors shooshed to a close behind me.

From that day on, I looked at women differently, searching for similar eyes or a laugh that sounded like mine. I wondered if I had passed her on the street, and hoped that women that didn't appeal to me were in no way related.

I passed Mrs. MacIntyre on the street ten years later. I remembered her immediately, but hesitated to speak to her, feeling that she would never remember me. She did, and smiled at me with eyes nothing like mine. We talked for quite some time, and I learned that she had in fact put a child up for adoption some thirty years before. She cried at the thought that her daughter may have been put through the same teasing that I suffered. I was pleased to comfort her this time, much in the way that she had comforted me so many years ago. "I'm not your daughter, Mrs. MacIntyre, but I'd be proud if I were."

Credits: Ashley W. Robertson