Efforts through False and Fake

               I have always been able to recognize my sister’s eyes. Psychologists and philosophers have spoken for centuries, if not millennia, about the bonds between children and their mothers and fathers, but siblings are too often overlooked. Clara would come into my room with a chalkboard and notebook in hand to teach me how to read before I started pre-school, a diary for my most intimate secrets when I turned twelve and keys for me to drive when I turned of age, and each time her eyes would shine like melted chocolate, smooth and rich. They had been one of my first sights, and even when the lights were all off and I was half asleep, I could recognize those eyes as she snuck back into the house from a late night through my bedroom window.

                Imagine my surprise when I sat with my mother at merely five years old, sifting through photos, and on glossy photo paper I saw not one, but two sets of those eyes stare back at me. One pair was set in the face of a little girl with dark skin that had been kissed by the sun maybe once too often in a single summer, and the second was a strange man’s that could have been just as old as my parents as far as my child’s mind could tell. I recognized his nose that hinted at Arab roots, the way his eyebrows curved sharply upwards then gently sloped down, and I recognized those double-take inducing eyes, but I did not recognize his face. As my mother gently explained to me, I realized that this man was not a complete stranger at all, that he had once belonged in my loving sister’s life, and that my sister was actually this man’s daughter and not my own father’s. At a young age it is hard to understand the concept of divorce, and my young mind could not recognize those eyes for quite a while after those realizations hit me.

                Such an event causes a person to look inward. Of the many features that could be pointed out, I hear most often of the wild, Italian hair I was gifted by my immigrant grandfather, and the olive Mediterranean skin  from him and the Portuguese settlers on my mother’s part that came to South America back in the 1500s. However, explanations are useless. When I mention that I am Brazilian I see false realizations dawn on people as they assume I am Hispanic, although Brazil is a Lusitanic country. I could go on for hours explaining that ‘hispanic’ is not even an ethnicity at all, and that the dark-skinned, thick-nosed South Americans they see immigrate to this country are results from the mixture of Iberian settlers and Native Americans indigenous to the tropical sections of the continent, but most do not care. A fair attempt could be made at explaining that our indigenous have stick straight hair and, in Brazil, fine straight noses which I inherited from a Native grandmother, but most would not process the information. Rather, people stay true to false realizations and fake recognitions, for both require an effort that most cannot be bothered with.