excerpted from the missing piece

So I haven’t felt much like writing about adoption issues lately.  Even though I’m always thinking about them.  The fact of my adoption is never really that far from the surface.  It is there in my relationship with my mother, with my daughters. It is always there, even when it seems not to be.  Even when I go through long periods of not writing about it, or consciously considering it.  It was there last month when I  travelled five and a half hours by plane to go to my grandmother’s funeral.   As my mother’s siblings and their children, my mother, brother and I gathered around my aunt’s kitchen, it was hard not to notice I am the only one who physically stands out.  (Sesame Street’s “One of these things is not like the other thing” comes to mind.)  It is rare for all of my mother’s family to be together in one room: we are scattered across the country. The last time we were all together was my grandmother’s 80th birthday nearly ten years ago.  It is natural enough to check everyone out, see how they look, how they’ve changed, grown up.  One of my cousins stated the obvious:  “My god, it is so easy to see who belongs to what family unit here; each one looks the so much alike.  And then there’s you and A.”  My older brother is also adopted.  The funny thing is, he actually looks like he could be biologically related to my mother’s family.  He has similar colouring, height, body type.  In any case, I am comfortable around this side of my family; I like them, they are good people, funny people.  But at times like those, I sometimes look around the room and think: who are these people?