Alvy
Legacy Name: Alvy

My memories of my childhood are mostly very positive. I was adopted by two amazing women, Lisa and Naomi, they clearly loved me and raised me really really well. Yet, my earliest memories caused a lot of trouble for all of us. When I was first adopted I was adamant that these women were not my parents, I knew who my parents were, their names where Karina and Henri. At first everyone thought it was still really hard for my poor toddler brain to process that my biological parents were dead and that's why I had new parents.

But as I explained what I remembered from my home country, my mothers became unsure. Once they contacted the adoption agency for proof of my biological families death, they saw the red flags start rising. I don't remember a lot from my biological family. A pink house with a swing. I remember my old house pretty well even today. An old building, Tudor, rose coloured siding. A large beautiful tree with a tire swing. My parents faces I knew as a child. I could describe them to a police sketch artist when I was young, but memories fade. I used to speak in another language, with a little English. My age and my mother language should have been the first red flags they saw when they first picked me up at the hotel. The child they saw didn't match the file. I was a little older than they said I was, as well. They had learned basic Russian to communicate with me, only to discover I didn't speak any. I spoke Deutsch. They didn't really pay attention to the flags, they still wanted me to be apart of their family. But I wouldn't let go that I was taken away from my family, that they hadn't died. I was interviewed by a child psychologist just to be sure my brain wasn't completely fried, yet he became so unsure of the legitimacy of my adoption he told my parents they better get an investigator involved.

They took it really well. They bombarded the adoption agency with a litter of questions, and investigations. They hired police sketch artists, private investigators. Newspapers. The works. It was obvious the adoption agency was hiding information, but no investigator could figure out what had happened, or who or where my parents were. I was three and a half, roughly, when the kidnapping first took place. I was adopted at around four. That's six months of unanswerable questions. Even at five, I was stubbornly waiting to go back to my biological family. At six the private investigator had returned with gained information about stolen children sold to adoption agencies, but the information couldn't be tied to myself. Just that it was known to happen and these were the agencies that were known to have bought children. The name of the adoption Center I was put in was on the list. It was as far as he got because his "guy" he was using to get information over seas inexplicably... disappeared. He'd tell my mothers in a hush voice he didn't know I could hear that he was assasinated, but his body wasn't able to be recovered. That's all my mothers could handle, the investigation put on hold. They didn't want people to die over it, and the hope that my parents were actually alive also dwindled with the possibility that my parents also "disappeared".

I remember the beginning of the kidnapping, very little of it. I had tripped on a plastic bag in a dark alley, then it was black and I was in a car. The car was moving very fast and I had felt sick. I remember the cellar they kept me in very well. It smelled bad, later I'd learn it smelled like wine... and something far more sinister. A small wine cellar, where I was taped down to a chair and I had started to cry. A woman would come down the stairs to comfort me, telling me my parents had died, I was to stay here to be safe because 'they' wanted to hurt me. So I had to be quiet so 'they' couldn't find me. I wouldn't believe her so I kept yelling. The memories loosen and they begin to fade. I don't know what's real and what's been made up. Floral patterned wallpaper, but is it my grandmas or the adoption Center? The same woman was there from the cellar, so it was the adoption Center right? A boy, around my age, playing on a slide and teeter-totter. Was it at a park or another 'ophaned' child? I don't know. What was before and what was after? I don't know what happened at the place I was kept before I was adopted. I don't remember the building, I don't remember the people. I don't remember the children. But there is an idea. Whether or not it was from fiction or fragments of memory I can't be sure. Ideas of it being glum and the idea of hunger. Even when I was young, listening back to voice recordings of my memories I couldn't answer questions about the adoption agency or the housing I was kept in. The private investigator when looking into the adoption Center I came from said that even though they couldn't look at the records or gain any hard information, the place itself seemed well run. The children didn't show signs of neglect or abuse. Maybe it was run down and overpopulated. But the people taking care of the children seemed to care. That's all I remember him telling my mothers. The child psychologist didn't see any mental signs I was horribly abused, just that I had been through a tragic event and what memories I did have I seemed to believe wholeheartedly. The only physical signs I have of my past are a few tiny tiny scars on my lower back, signs of maybe being spanked with some sort of instrument of pain. Yet that's just overprotective mothers' theories. It couldn't ever be backed up with memories or evidence. I'd slowly get over th obsession of going back. We were all aware we didn't belong together, but that didn't mean we couldn't be a family. A messed up, weird, glued together family.

They tried adopting again after the investigation slowed to a halt. This time with a better understanding of what to look out for. They knew all the red flags. When my sister was adopted we both didn't know what to think of each other. We were both weirdos. She knew she didn't have parents, but never thought she'd be adopted. She was happy to be adopted. Loved that her new family would let her wear dressed and pink and was allowed to grow out her hair, let her have a girls name. I distrusted her and her happiness. I have memories (and photographically evidence, thanks moms) of sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to either be a psychologist or investigator and I'd have a clipboard analyzing my new sister from afar. We can laugh about it now, but it was a little worrying for my mothers I guess... I'd attach myself to weird obsessions to try and differentiate myself. Since my new sister got a bunch of attention that was different from the kind of attention I got. So I looked for new and intriguing way to be, unique? I guess. Taxidermy was the one that lasted. Yep, dead animals. Surprisingly, my mothers, particularly Mama L (Lisa) were very good at directing my fascinations to actual education. Instead of the 300 dollar taxidermy baby alligator I desperately wanted I got books about why and how animals were taxidermied. We would go to museums to look at the animals, Mama L would ask a curator to explain to me the process of how they gained the animals and what they did with them. It's very much the reason it stuck, it was really interesting. Mum (or mama Naomi, or mooooother) was good with enrolling us into extracurricular activities. Lowan (my sister) got ballet, photography, fencing, soccer etc. I got wilderness explorer camps, fencing, I thought I wanted to be a fencer, turned out my sister liked it far better. Bug catching and identification day camps, and later on in my teens a taxidermy class. Both mothers nurtured us into really, really, really strange but well rounded adults. Even with having two fantastic mothers, and a sister I sometimes can tolerate; there is a piece missing. I know the shape of what's missing, I know their first names and their smiles. I want to know happened. I want to know who Alvy really is. It's been missing for far too long. I just hope the missing pieces can be found one day, even if they're long dead and gone.