“What was her name?” my daughter asks. “Did anyone save a picture of her?” “Do you know where her house is so I can see where she lived?”
Her questions come fast these days; always asked with great curiosity and sometimes intensity. A salvaged photograph would mean she could see what her birth mom looked like – do we share brown skin, did I get my long lashes from you, is there any resemblance between us?
At night she burrows in between the duvet and me. Her long fingers interlaced with mine, she giggles into my ear and declares that she wants yet another hug. She closes her eyes with a gentle smile under my waterfall of ‘I love you’s. Our connection is secure, even as her curiosity is incessant.
I understand. After all, I have a birth mom, too. I don’t wonder about her name, how she looked or her address. I’ve never been interested in the details beyond her relinquishing me to an adoption agency, the good one that introduced me to my own mother. But I know deeply, somehow, what it is not to know and accept never knowing as part of adopted living. Maybe it is the price for redemption.
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