I’ve been looking in mirrors. Searching for reflections of belonging. Begging for someone to teach me the undecipherable code of family roots. I look at my birth mother’s high school yearbook photo for evidence. My favorite image was taken four months before she knew she was pregnant with me. I long to find myself within the radiant archetype of her face. “You look just like her!” others kindly say. But I don’t see it. “Your voice just now, it’s so familiar, it sounds just like Gloria’s,” they say. But I have no intrauterine memory of her humming voice. 

Maybe I have a hard time finding myself because Gloria did not have a fully formed, solid sense of herself. But no, as soon as I speak this out loud, I know it isn’t true. Still, I search, trying out other possibilities, all in the name of wondering what’s wrong with me.  

Today I hear a voice, without sound, beckoning to me. “It’s all a matter of perspective, Julie. Try looking in the mirror from a different angle.” I watch fast-moving grey and white clouds layered over cerulean skies. And in the foreground, a newly formed puddle from today’s hard-pounding rains, spilling over the width of our gravel driveway. 

Searching for my biological roots, wondering who I come from, I walk to the edge of the muddy water, and look expectantly, but do not see myself. I see tall black Douglas fir trees reflected in a circle on the surface. I dream of the day I look up and see myself in her face. I watch as fir needles float in golden brown clumps, like little family groups, all belonging with each other. Different, yet the same. 

So where am I? How will I recognize myself? How will I know when I’ve found the reflection of my ancestry? Bending forward, I look for perspective. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to me to lean in deeper. I can’t tell you why, but looking outside my adoptive family has always felt like betrayal.

Deep in thought, I look up at the thin autumn sun. Maybe it depends on where the light is coming from. Maybe it depends on what the sky is doing. Maybe it depends on where I’m looking. And like a little girl wearing red galoshes, stomping through a puddle, I step into the center. And THERE! There I find myself, legs spread apart, looking down. I dance my hands around from side to side, in a flutter of wings. And I almost see my face! Then, from a side view, out of the corner of my eye, I see it! 

And I wonder, Is this what it’s like then, for a young child? Is it as simple as sloshing into the middle of a puddle to get a better view of what’s always been there?