Due to a strange parallel or coincidence, I was given the same the opportunity involving my biological roots on my maternal side. I still can't believe that it happened. While all of this immediate family has already died, my biological mother's long-time partner is still living and he contacted me at the end of March. Prior to this, I had spoken with him one time and had sent him 1 letter. I left it up to him to decide it he wanted further contact and after several years had passed, I assumed that I would not hear from him.
Imagine my surprise when he called and said that he had pictures that he wanted to send to me. Imagine my bigger surprise when 3 weeks later (on April 18th, mailed 2 days before by priority mail), I received a priority mail box from him filled with all sorts of information about my biological family, including a family scrapbook, a scrapbook of my biological mother's, and a number of pictures. The earliest picture dates back to the 1910s.
Working with the memorabilia on my adoptive side brought a new level of understanding. Adding the new information on my maternal biological side brought a new level of groundedness.
If you are not adopted, it can be hard to truly fathom this. In another interesting coincidence, several weeks after I received the box, there was an article in the paper about a local photographer, who is also an adoptee and who started the Family Resemblance Project back in 2016. The newspaper article was about a book coming out about this project. Everything on this website for his project and in this article really resonates with me, but the following quote from the article especially nails it for me.
In the article, he is quoted as saying "I think we’re all pattern-seekers. We so want to see faces in things. We want to see ourselves in other people, and I think it’s because we all want a human connection, whether we admit it or not. And when you can actually see the human connection, I think it makes you happy. I think it gives you peace. Because it’s a visual reminder that we are indeed connected to other people, inextricably."
When I think about this quote, it's interesting to me that in the early part of this, I experienced a pivotal moment when I could not see the patterns between my biological mother's face and my own and I also could see them. In the very first picture I saw of her, I really wasn't sure if there was a resemblance, but my spouse clearly saw one. In fact, he had an visceral reaction to the picture. In one of the next pictures that I saw from one of her college yearbooks (aside - - it's amazing what you can find on the internet), where there's an entire page of pictures of different people organized by name, my eyes immediately were drawn to her face. Before I looked at the name, I knew that it was her. I'm not sure it was about resemblance, but some part of me still just knew.
This is another post that I started awhile ago and decided to clean up and post.
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