I grew up not resembling anyone I knew, let alone anyone in my family.  I always smiled when someone told me I looked like an O’Connell or a Shanahan.  “You look just like your dad,” I‘ve heard many times in my life.  I don’t at all.  He has black hair and blue eyes, with ancestry from the south of Ireland.  I have olive skin, light brown eyes and hair (at least what’s left of it).  I’ve been described as looking Mediterranean or Eastern European.  Recently, I saw a Coptic priest from Lebanon; we could have been brothers.  Because I speak Spanish fairly well, I’m sometimes mistaken for Puerto Rican or Colombian.

 I suppose not looking like someone or having a clear sense of ethnicity has left me feeling unanchored at times.  That changed when my son Devin was born.   He was the first person I ever knew who was related to me by blood.  Knowing that we shared DNA was less important than looking into his face and seeing myself.  I was annoyed when people said he looked like his mother, which of course he did.  But he looked like me too.  Couldn’t they see what I saw?  Was I seeing something that wasn’t there?  No, he has his mom’s complexion and light hair, but he’s got my eyes.  He got something else from me.  It’s not physical, but part of his essence.  His first report card from kindergarten referred to him as impish, that’s a quality we share.  He’s got so much of me, and an equal share of his mom. 

When Daniel came along I saw myself even more in his physical appearance.  Still, for the first few years of his life, people said he looked like Ellen. More than once I dug out a photo album from my childhood to confirm for myself, and to prove to others, how much he resembled me.  We share a smile…the poor kid will need braces for sure.  He can fit a silver dollar between his two front teeth, as I could at his age.  But it’s not just the structure of his teeth, it is the warmth and joy of that smile that we have in common. 

Seeing myself in my children makes me feel connected in a way I didn’t before.  This isn’t about love.  I love my parents as much as any un-adopted child, and I know I could love an adopted child as much as I love Devin and Daniel.  Rather, this connection is about feeling more completely human.  Maybe parenthood does that to everyone.  But I sense that as an adopted person, it strikes me in a different way.  I now “see” myself as part of a bloodline.  From my perspective it begins with me and will hopefully continue for generations to come.  Of course, this bloodline not only has a future but is the result of two bloodlines with a history.   That’s something I want to learn more about.