This is a picture of a man I’ve never met. His name is Rodney Stuart Scott. This is the shore of the Lake of the Ozarks, and the date was April 1971.
This is a picture of me taken from a cheap webcam while sitting at my cheap desk in a cheap cubicle, and it was taken sometime around 2000. It was during my “chubby” period.
The resemblance is not coincidental.
I like to think of myself as a pretty smart person. I believe that I display an attention to detail that is above average. Despite that, I was probably thirteen years old before I recognized an odd discrepancy in the photos of my parents wedding.
My parents had a very romantic, albeit as related to me very cold, wedding on the sandy shores of the Atlantic in or Virginia Beach. I believe it was at or near the First Landing cross at Fort Story. Regardless, a cross on the beach featured prominently in photos of the event.
Also featured prominently in the photos was an infant of perhaps six to eighteen months old.
I knew that the child was me. I had been told this several times. I was somehow cognizant of this fact, and that I was present at the wedding, but for whatever reason it never occurred to me to ask how, or why, I was present at the wedding.
The answer, of course, is obvious. I was born prior to the wedding. What I didn’t find out until that day, or did not process fully, is that my mother had been married before, and the man who is my father adopted me. This is something of a delicate subject in my family. My mother doesn’t speak of it often, and my father becomes visibly distressed when it’s brought up, despite the years that have passed.
I understand that many people who learn they are adopted, or discover unknown family members, feel compelled to search them out. I don’t really share that compulsion. I have a mild amount of curiosity, but beyond some rare internet searches I’ve never attempted to find Rodney. Last year when I uncovered a pretty reliable lead to his whereabouts, I didn’t pursue contacting him.
What do you say to a progenitor you’ve never met, know little about, and rarely thought of? I have a father, a man who chose to raise me and faced the numerous challenges of bringing me to adult hood, notwithstanding my many immature attempts to sabotage that process. I’m satisfied with the father I know. I don’t think I wouldn’t refuse to contact Rodney if the situation arose, but I have little inclination to pursue said contact.
This is not a photo of my son Logan. This is a photo of me at thirteen months old.
I really shouldn’t be surprised at the resemblance between me and my son, but I find myself experiencing a certain among of dissonance when looking at the picture. A wave or a pulse of unreality. Like looking into the mirror and seeing someone else, I look at the photos of someone else and see my own reflection.
I see it in Logan, and I see it in Rodney.
