There is a woman that i visit regularly for almost a year now. I love her to pieces. She is quite a special person. She has years of wisdom and a unique personality and she just doesnt sugar coat much. Her family always sends her pictures. They’re very involved and present, even the ones out of state. Well, she has sight deficits so when the pictures come i tell her who is in them and hand her the magnifying device so she can look at them. She has a grandson with 4 children who just recently had a fifth. Three of the children resemble their mother and only one of the children looks like the dad. I always felt sorry for her. She was the only one who was different. All her siblings had the same dark brown curls and caramel skin. I was worried that she would feel left out. So when it turned out that the new baby was resembling their ginger dad i was so happy. I thought immediately, “This will be so good! Half the children look like mom, half the children look like dad. Nobody will feel left out or alone or less than!” Then somebody walked in and began a conversation with her. I encouraged her to show them her new great grand baby thinking it would be a bright piece of news to share. It was a hard lesson for me. I realized that while i had been looking at all the pictures and seeing a little girl left out of something because she was the only one who looked different from her siblings, my friend had been seeing one child who looked similar to her own traits and three children who held traits that were different from hers. She was excited that the baby was going to be a ginger, but for different reasons than i was. It was at the moment when she squinched her nose up while describing the mother’s country of origin that my heart dropped and i realized i hadnt ever clocked this detail until now. I felt like i needed a shower. It had never occurred to me that i might should worry about the other three feeling less than. The saving grace was that she was near blind. She would have to hug them all the same when they came to visit. She wouldnt be able to see any of them.
As a woman who is unable to have biological children i have in the past turned to another country in an effort to pursue adoption. If the process had worked out i would have felt so blessed to receive a child with dark hair and caramel skin. These are the prominent traits of the country of my choice. I chose the country because of the economic problems that resulted in a surplus of children parents couldnt care for and because of the adoption policies. The system i would be dealing with was less corrupt than other options, the caretaker to child ratio was better, the children were relatively healthy and well cared for, and they allowed single applicants. Physical features were not a factor. I would be happy to receive any child God blessed me with the responsibility of caring for and rearing up. During my fertility treatments, i never chose sperm donors based upon hair and eye color. I chose based on medical history and the donor essay. I wanted to know why they had donated. “To help people” sounds like a good answer but its not very deep. I find it is often what is written when the real answer is “for a small amount of cash”. Or “because i have a god complex and i want to know thousands of me are out there in the world but i cant say that or id be disqualified.” Those that really care write more than the single half sentence “to help people”. There was one profile that caught my eye. He had immigrated from the middle east. He was muslim. I was christian. He had very specific reasons why he was donating. I felt he was a very deep person who had thought a lot about the value of human life. He had watched children blown up in the street in front of him, and watched their mothers cradle their lifeless tattered bodies in anguish. He knew the value of human life. He wanted to leave that environment but those people from his childhood never left his memories. Now that he and his wife had a stable safe life in another country he wanted to put a dent in the pain of those childless mothers from his past. But they were strangers and they were gone. Here were others, other strangers, whose pain he could put a dent in, and so he donated. Someone close to me said, “but your baby would have middle eastern traits. He or she is going to look middle eastern. Are you okay with that?” At base level, yes, i would be smitten to death with any child that was entrusted to me to love and raise. I was however worried how society in this country would treat my child following 9/11. I didnt want them to suffer any because of something that had nothing to do with them and happened before they were in existence. I told myself there were many countries where people had dark hair and tan skin. We lived so close to Mexico, they would probably just assume my child was hispanic. However, it was clear to me in my heart that he was the best donor for what i was looking for; a child who would be kind and have empathy towards others. Nobody knows how much of our personality ends up being genetic and how much is environmental but i felt if even a tiny percentage was attributed to genes, this decision was too important to be messing around with qualifying questions like “who looks like me”. I read the donor essays and staff impressions like a detective and looked for clues on who the person was. If all the staff says is “this donor is always on time and dressed nicely.” Then you should consider that there was nothing remarkable about his personality or compassion to mention. I just feel that we are focusing on the wrong things. Whether a person looks like you does not dictate whether he or she is good or bad, healthy or not, empathetic or heartless.
Those babies and their caramel skin and curly dark hair are beautiful and i hope she is just always so blind that she cant see which is which. I hope they never know this side of their Grammy. I hope they live their entire lives believing she saw them as equal. God let it be so.