Adopted Daughter, Birth Parent

Today a New York Times article directed me to a blog by a woman who abandoned efforts to conceive through infertility treatments and seeks to help others come to terms with childlessness. She mentioned that one of the things that she realized she had to give up was the dream of seeing her mother's smile in her own child.

I've written before about how dually odd it is to me to realize that Allison Clare is my daughter by birth, and not adopted like me--but (and I know how ridiculous this sounds) it never occurred to me that she would not inherit traits from my parents. We can already see how she looks like Sam's dad, especially when her hair is covered in a little cap (he has hair! But it's not dark like hers.). And it's not like I've been looking to see whether she looks like my parents, but until I read that sentence in that woman's blog, I hadn't even thought of it as something I might miss out on. I would have loved to have seen traits of my mother or father in her physical appearance , so it's almost sad to think that she has no chance of it . . . but I suspect she will instead inherit a killer recipe for spaghetti sauce, and an appetite for hard work.