Sharing your face with a stranger
It’s surreal
For years I made it a running gag where I’d post an image of a Mayan death mask on Father’s Day and remark that it’s the closest thing to knowing what my father actually looks like.
And to be fair, the resemblance between my face and the artifact is uncanny. No one on my Mom’s side, the Black side of my family, has dark, narrow eyes that look simultaneously alert and tired, a bulbous nose with a distinctive, what I like to call, “hieroglyphic” line down the center, or the coveted cheekbones people tout as proof of their “Native American” ancestry until a DNA test proves otherwise.
It’s not that I’d never tried searching for my father; I looked online for years but I always came up short. In time I came to accept that the man was a ghost, and while I never really felt his absence in my life I wished that I at least knew what he looked like. The only photo my mom had she’d lost before I was born, which she deeply regretted.
Last year, nearly a week to the day before Father’s Day, I received a message from my Mom.
“I found your father on Facebook,” she said.
I didn’t believe her. I’d been searching for my Dad for years and always turned up nothing.
She sent me a link to a Facebook profile which included a picture of a man who really did look like Pakal the Great, ruler of Palenque.
“Are you sure it’s him?” I wrote back.
“Yes, I’m sure.” she said.
“You sure it’s not my brother?” (my Dad had a son and daughter not much older than me,) “he looks closer to my age.”
“Maybe it’s an older photo” she offered.
I wasn’t convinced. How was it that my Dad’s info would just pop up out of nowhere after all these years?
“Well, if it’s not him then you know what he looks like now.” she said, and left it at that.
I was frustrated and angry because I was certain my Mom was just getting my hopes up.
This was the Mom who’d post personal questions on your public feed instead of using messenger, and she thought the “poop” emoji was chocolate. How could she have found my Dad so quickly when there were a thousand other “Common-Spanish-first name Common-Spanish-last-names” on social media?
It didn’t make sense to me. Until I was hit by a big “duh” moment: Maybe the reason she found my father so quickly was because she…knows what he looks like?
I suddenly remembered a photo from when I was about four years-old, one I frequently use as a “look-at-how-cute-I-used-to-be” profile picture. That particular image came to mind because, well, in it I look just like the man in the photo who was supposed to be my father.
I made a side by side comparison. Same eyes. Same mouth. Same ears. The whole damn shape of my face.
I took a mirror and looked at my reflection. I held up the photo of the man.
It was him.
That was my face in the photo and it was his face in the mirror.
It was my Father.
I have a basic grasp of human genetics. I know that everyone is essentially a cocktail of two people who may or may not have tolerated each other for a period of time.
I knew that I probably looked a lot like my father because my mom had been telling me “you look just like your father” for the past thirty-nine years.
But when you realize that you’ve been parading around the face of a complete stranger it turns your whole world upside down. I can’t look at my reflection anymore without seeing his face.
It’s an odd feeling I don’t think anyone who knows both their parents can understand. Especially when you’re multiracial. When you’re mixed race it’s a constant battle trying to explain exactly “what”’ you are, as if it’s anyone’s business to begin with.
Clueless remarks about your appearance, including comments about my “flat” nose, from people who failed to realize that my nose is flat and wide because I’m Black. When the kids at your new school look at you like you’re from Neptune when you answer, “No,” to the question “Do you speak Spanish?” Having to convince people that you’re American-born, that your Mom is also American-born but the second you mention your absentee Dad is from Guatemala all your American-ness flies out the window.
I’ve also come a long way in understanding that when someone uses the word “ugly” more often than not what they really mean is “different.” I like my face and it’s hodgepodge of features but it can be hard to shrug off gossip when a coworker asks, “What race is she supposed to be?” and follows up with, “Well, they need to stop making that.”
It’s for these reasons why, when people ask if I’ve ever heard back from my father after locating him I tell them that, for now at least, I’m happy with just having his photo.
Of course I’d like to know more about his life in his own words. I’d like to be able to practice my beginner Spanish with him over the phone. I’d like to meet my brother and sister and my extended family, including the little boy in the photo seated next to him.
But I made it nearly forty years without my Dad in my life. And just knowing that there’s a face out there just like mine fills a void I didn’t know even existed.
I’m no longer an alien or an “other” but another “half.”
