Revealing Resemblance

I've been debating with myself for almost a month whether to blog about this or not. It means giving out a piece of personal information that's going to make it much easier for people to identify me in real life. On the other hand, I don't see how I'm going to avoid mentioning it at some point as I keep blogging.

Sunny and I have a fairly strong resemblance. Maybe it'll fade as he gets older. But right now, he looks like the baby I had with Tiger Woods. I didn't notice it as first, but then as people of several different races kept pointing it out, I accepted it.

My feelings were very complex. We look alike, but he doesn't look like my husband. What does this resemblance signify? It's like a triangle that should be equilateral but isn't. My husband doesn't love him any less... Should I be happy about it? Or simply neutral? If I'm happy should I be guilty for feeling happy?

A lot of people are going to assume that he's my biological child by a previous marriage. This will eventually mean that we'll get 50% less awkward questions about adoption and race. So that's a strong positive.

I hate awkward questions about race, but I've been getting them my whole life, so I've built up quite an immunity. But it's a good thing he'll be spared some of them. So in the larger scheme of things, I should look at this as a positive.

I'm definitely planning on getting some genetic analysis done for him. I'm hoping to do it for myself as well. Just like Sunny, my paternal family tree is shrouded by adoption. I've contacted a few companies already, but they seem to concentrate on Europe and Africa, and none of them had Ainu-specific detail. I imagine it will become available in the near future, however.

I'm excited that these tools are available nowadays. Sunny can use the information as part of a toolkit to build up a story for himself, a story that connects with the larger story of America. Where did he get his Asian eye shape? Perhaps from the Chinese laborers that built the railroads in the 19th century and then merged into the black population. Watching the first African-American Lives show, I think several participants had a family history of Native American descent that actually turned out to be East Asian after testing.

I just got into a slightly testy conversation over here about genetic testing and racial background (by the way I think it's wonderful that Yondalla has such a strong grasp on these issues). The more I get involved in these types of discussions, the harder it is to separate multiracial and transracial identity issues.

It's, well, interesting being the multiracial daughter of an intraracial adoptee, from an interracial relationship, in an interracial marriage and about to transracially adopt a multiracial son from an interracial relationship. The great thing is that past a certain point, I don't see how it can get any more complicated!

When we started on our adoption path, I gave up on the mental image of having a child that would look like me. But I couldn't get rid of the expectations that others had on me in that regard... and this is hard to explain, although I've touched on it several times. I'll try again.

When we made our match with Sunny, there was one other child in the picture, although the picture was hazier and the match was much less certain. All we knew was that the caseworker was interested in our family. We had a picture and paragraph description of a little girl. A beautiful little girl who was listed as "Hispanic" and had light skin and facial features that were more Asian or Asian/Indigenous than Caucasian.

Isn't it suspicious that the only two matches we had in a year, after making hundreds of inquiries, were of children who had some physical resemblance to me? And isn't it odd that it's a resemblance totally based on race, although the children were of different races? And that it seemed like we never had a chance for any of the Asian children I tried for?

I'm not being paranoid; I'm just being realistic.