The "Look"

I come from a different tree

My adoptive family is huge.  And nearly everyone looks alike.  Most have the same face shape, similar hair, and the same laugh.  Even I have a hard time telling my mom and her sisters apart from their laughs and I've been with the family for twenty-four years.  They are just that similar.  Most of my cousins look alike too, which means that when we get together, you'd be able to tell we're a family (with the exception of a handful of us, mainly me).

I have a group of cousins who look very much like my mom.  They have the same facial shape, use the same expressions, have the same hair, and their eyes are like carbon copies of my mom's.  It's interesting to see how genetics come into play, especially when they have a father who clearly isn't genetically related to my mom.  It's different.  Anyway, we've been spending a lot of time together lately and when that happens, things come up.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard someone comment on the [insert last name here] look.  It's the "look" that clues everyone in that we're a family.  Well, that they're a family anyway.  I have to wait to be introduced and then it's assumed that I take after my father.  I do, just not the father they're thinking of.

Oddly enough, it hasn't happened as often over the past few years.  I think it probably has something to do with the fact that we're growing up and don't spend as much time together as we used to.  We don't have the same amount of family fun time that we used to, plus I've been living in another state for five years.  I haven't even been home a year, but I'm reintegrating with my family and getting back into the swing of things.

Back to the family fun time that we've been having lately.  We've been together a lot in public places and meeting new people.  And new people love to comment.  And thus the "look" was brought up again.  Only this time, it didn't bother me so much.  I didn't feel like there was a knife sticking out of my back and being twisted. It didn't hurt as badly as before.  Before it had been a reminder that I was different, that I wasn't "one of them" and that I didn't have people that I looked like.  Now, I see it as a celebration of those differences and I know that had my first family been there, those people would be saying the same things about us.  What a difference it makes knowing where my own "look" comes from.

This is just another example of how reunion has allowed me to start to heal and to live a happier life.  It's certainly one with fewer questions and more awareness of self.  Yay! :-)