Names and Faces (pt.2)

Please read Names and Faces (pt.1) first.

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We asked our contact if they had pictures of the family.  Yes, there were pictures of the father, brother and sister. (There were no digital photos of her mother.) But they couldn’t be emailed right away.  We would end up waiting a week before we saw the pictures of L’s supposed family.

On a weekend morning, I went to my computer and there was an email with three attachments.  I sat down to open them.

The first photo I opened was small.  Maybe one inch by one inch on my computer screen.  It was a photos of an attractive Asian man.  But…I couldn’t be sure he looked like L. He looked serious, not smiling and looking straight at the camera.  And attractive.  (I will admit, I was a little distracted by the fact the he was quite attractive.)  He also looked pretty middle class.  He had a stylish haircut and a very nice shirt.

He certainly wasn’t how I imagined L’s father would look.  He didn’t look like a peasant farmer.  He wasn’t unshowered or sunburned or wearing dirty clothes.  The photo was clearly taken by a cellphone or computer.  He wasn’t in the countryside.  He looked like a guy Mr. A might hang out with.  He didn’t look like a guy who goes around dumping babies on the side of the road.

Then I opened the picture of L’s little brother.  He was a chubby little guy wearing a slightly grubby shirt.  He was cute and I thought maybe just maybe there was a hint of a resemblance to L.  But the photo resemblance wasn’t like those stories you hear of an adoptive family recognizing their child’s sibling on an orphanage group. It was more like here is a chubby Asian baby and L was a chubby Asian baby.  Babies look just kind of babyish, don’t they?

Then I opened the photo of L’s sister.  My first thought was, “Damn. This whole family is so attractive!”   The picture was of a pretty little girl, but she wasn’t the spitting image of L.  I still wasn’t sure.

As I stared and stared at her pictures, I noticed she was wearing very nice clothes.  Matching clothes.  A matching shirt and jacket that looked very new and nice and clean.  She had a cute little haircut too.  She looked like a child who was loved by her parents.

It was like a kick in the gut: These parents love and take care of their little girl.

They kept this little girl but abandoned my little girl.  My baby girl who was alone in an orphanage where she didn’t get enough love or attention.  They let my little girl end up in an institution where she didn’t get enough stimulation to make her eyes work right and where she sat in a walker so much her thigh muscles were very underdeveloped when we met her.  They left her alone in the world to fend for herself as a helpless little baby.  These are the people who made the choice that resulted in my daughter suffering so much trauma when she entered our family.

And they loved their daughter.  The daughter they kept.

Where in these pictures was the Evil Birthfather Who Dumps Babies?  Where was the Tragic Unwanted Older Sister?  Where was the Little Brother I was determined not to like?

These were just pictures of a family.  An ordinary family that looked a lot like mine.

All the unconscious assumptions I didn’t even know I had made were crumbling around me.

To be continued…

Names and Faces (Pt.3)