"She's with me."
That's the line my mother uses when people look at her quizzically at the grocery store, at the doctor's office, the first day of school or anywhere public for that matter. She pulls me in very tight when she says it, like if she could just get me close enough, maybe she could transfer her skin onto mine.
At 5 foot 11, I'm almost half a foot taller than my mother. Her radiant green eyes always stand out against her flawless skin, making my brown eyes seem painfully ordinary. My almost-black hair turns brown in the sun, while her hazelnut hair turns red. She's well endowed enough to actually need a bra, whereas I ... Her cheekbones get a warm sprinkling of freckles whenever she is in the sun. All I get along my cheekbones are breakouts.
As a small child, I didn't realize that I didn't look like my mother. Then, when I was 7 and my sister was 10, we took a family trip to Jamaica. It was a weeklong vacation, and my dad had to leave early for business. Our seven days in the sun only increased the differences in our appearances. When we arrived at the airport, my sister and I had sun kissed complexions, while my mother was a sunburnt, aloe vera-wearing mess.
When we touched down in Toronto, the Canadian customs agent looked at me, then at my sister, and said, "Ma'am, you need special papers to take locals out of the country."
We live in an age where children are born a quarter Japanese, a quarter Italian and half Iranian. As a result of this ethnic blending, many children don't look like their parents. My family, a mix of Irish, Polish, Chinese and West Indian, is the new norm. We can go out for a Chinese buffet, roti or borscht and equally (not) fit in.
But blond, fair-skinned mother equals blond, fair-skinned kid in some people's eyes. I had to sit through a series of questions from Canadian officials.
"When is the last time you saw your daddy?"
"Is this lady your mommy?"
Throngs of others families moved swiftly past the customs agents while my mom answered questions. I just stood there, grasping her hand tightly, fully aware of where I belonged.
Again and again throughout my childhood, I was mistaken for someone else's child. It never bothered me all that much, but my mother felt differently. One particularly disheartening day when someone mistook her for my piano teacher, my mom had us stand in front of the mirror and try and identify one similarity. She was desperate to find one feature we shared. After about ten minutes she came up with fingernails. I let her have it, even though I didn't think that was a very significant trait. "You know, Shoola," my mother said, using her nickname for me, "If I hadn't carried you in the womb for nine months and been present at the moment of your birth, I'd never believe you were mine either."
But what my mom was forgetting were all the similarities we share that aren't obvious to the naked eye. Not only have I adopted her fondness of wearing head-to-toe black, but we harbor the same secret obsession with every "Say Yes To The Dress" franchise, and my mom is solely responsible for the secret stash of chocolate I keep in my bedside table. I have also inherited her love of creating to-do lists (for herself, and others) and her unshakeable determination that led both her and I to leave our hometowns at a young age in pursuit of better education and job opportunities. I've come to love that the things that tie me to my mom aren't the obvious, surface things. I don't even mind that some people, when informed that I'm my mother's child, might think I'm adopted. I don't mind that it looks like she chose me. Because although she didn't choose me, she shaped who I am now. I think what makes you a family is that even if you can't share a skin, you absorb parts of one another -- you can't help it. My mother now loves Indian food like I do. I have adopted her "If you don't ask, you don't get" motto, and I too have learned there should always be cake in the fridge. That, to me, is true resemblance.
It is a bummer that I can't steal my mom's makeup -- her bronzer gives me ghost face -- and that I'll never look at old pictures and be unable to tell us apart. But I still love family photos and have a collection of them hanging all over my room. There is one from a trip to the Dominican Republic that I keep on my fridge. We are all perched on the ledge of a pool. My Mom and Dad anchor the photo, and my sister and I sit squished in the middle. We had just spent a week on the beach. Last month, the photo caught the attention of a friend who'd stopped by. "This is such a great picture," she said, holding the frame in her hand. Then she frowned, pointed at my mother and said, "Too bad that tourist got in it."
Now that she is gone, it is the greatest compliment anyone could ever have given me.
It never seemed to bother my mother much except when we came back from a day trip to Mexico with a similar experience to yours. I tend to get an incredible amount of questions. "Where is this adorable little girl's mommy?" "Why didn't you stay with her father?" Or when people "joke" to my husband that he needs a DNA test. It can be amazing to hear what people will actually say out loud.
She's definitely my baby. She's exactly like me, which will make for some interesting teenage years I'm sure.
2.formality in language should be maintainned until your love has developed on intimate terms
3.aovid writing inappropriate terms even if you feel the emotin
4.it is advisable tio address your girl friend/doyfriend as "DEAR MISS "OR"DEARFRIEND"
5.avoid using childish expressions as"dearest Dualy:honey:or:sweethe:
6.USE commonsense with uncommon intelligence on the voyage of romance,lestyouare shipwrecvked
One nurse at the hospital where my son was born brought my son in to my room but quickly turned around and left the room when she saw me. A few seconds later she returned and ask to see my identification braclet. After checking my braclet against my son's, she exited the room and came back with the head nurse. The head nurse poked her head into my room and then back out. I heard her tell the other nurse "that's the right baby". The nurse thought the they had mixed the babies up and I some how got a "white" child!
I thought it was hilarious! The look on the nurse's face when she brought my son back to me was priceless. She just couldn't seem to figure out how this brown woman give birth to a white looking child.
By the time my son was a teenage, he began to look more like me. But in the interim, the number of shocked looks and comments regarding our relation was countless.
I'm sorry, but this makes it sound like adoption is a negative thing that you are willing to overlook since you know this isn't the case. As an adoptee, it seems a bit insensitive to me because the real adoption experience - in which being called adopted and being labeled "different" - is actually very painful.
Ironically, my eldest (who has a light complexion and a dusting of freckles across her cheeks in the summer that contrast sharply to my... I guess I could call my skin tone "milk chocolate"?) apparently looks more like me than I can obviously see. I always worried that people would take one look at her skin and ask if I were a family friend or, worse, the nanny. I'm glad I never felt the need to grab a hold of her tightly like that. We do share some features, (that nose is all me, but the smile is her dad's), but there's no doubt her father is at least part white. In fact, if I'm not around, you might think she's all white, or anything but part black. She's drop dead gorgeous, too, and that's not just me talking.
Anyway, I'm glad none of this has hurt you or anything. It's just a fact of life at the turn of this century. By the next one, people will wonder what the heck the deal was. ;)