“He has your nose, can’t you see it?” I commented recently to a friend, on the resemblance she shared with her son. “Wow, where’d she get those curls?” I asked another. “You look just like your father did at your age,” my mother has said of pictures where we are both around twenty years old. “Yup, I’ve had a lipoma in my foot for years,” my father told me when I shared the news of my recently discovered and unwelcome growth.

For good or for bad, we carry with us the genes of ancestors past. We use it to define families, “Those O’Connors all have that red-as-Maples-in-Autumn hair.” We anticipate the various ailments that we’ve seen befall our parents and grandparents. And, we take pride when our genetics bless us with good looks. “My mother still has the legs of a teenage girl at 74,” a friend at the gym said when I complimented her on her own shapely gams.

I’ve thought about this quite frequently as a prospective adoptive mom. When questioned about the Armenian people, I’ll describe them as “Mediterranean looking with olive complexions, brown eyes and dark hair.” “Oh, that’s good,” will be the response. “Your child will look just like you.”

Replicating my genetics has very little to do with my reasons for adopting. Sure, there’s a small part of me that would get a kick out of seeing a mini-me running around the playground, or might get misty-eyed if I see our kid, use that same bite-the-bottom-lip expression Big Papa pulls out when he’s really trying to focus. But seeing us in him, for me, goes so much deeper than the curls on both our heads.

Friends have asked us about how our parents feel about our pending adoption. Fortunately, Big Papa and I have very adoption-friendly families. His two older siblings are adopted. My sister’s daughter is adopted. Big Papa’s mother, in the 1950s no less, even traveled by herself to Germany to adopt her first child. Because of this, our families are nothing if not supportive of our decision

That said, Big Papa is the last of his lineage. On his father’s side he’s the only biological child of an only child. Neither my sister, nor I were able to give birth. Her ovaries gave out before they even got started and mine just plain gave out. So we are also the last to be birthed in our family.

When all is said and done, in the moments I imagine a friend telling us there is something in our child that reminds her of one of us, this is what I want to hear. That our kiddo has Joel’s sense of humor and generous heart, my green thumb or way around the kitchen. If they say he’s kind to those less fortunate or works hard to make the most out of life, that’s good enough for me. In fact, it’s better than good.

Our essence is not our dark, curly hair, easily tanned skin, large hands or tendency toward high cholesterol. It’s not my luck in aging so well that I feel compelled to pass down for generations. I don’t want to be remembered for everything on the surface, but rather everything beneath it. If our child inherits any of this from us, my heart will swell and my soul will sing. I’ll be as proud as any parent can be.