My name is Alexa.

First, it was Alexandra, then Sandra, then Sandy. I was born in 1955 and adopted from an orphanage in Greece by Greek American parents, Bess and Jim Maros, around 1959. Those four years in between my birth and adoption are lost to me, and yet they have shaped much of the person I am today. Much of my life has been spent searching for people who looked like me, felt like me, worried as much as me. I longed to belong to a family and a place I did not know. I was always trying to “fit in” and was continually disappointed at how often I did not. Why didn’t I?

In the Beginning

I landed in Chicago, Illinois, not speaking a word of English. My adoptive mother traveled with me from Athens and later told me that on the plane I apparently hit it off with a little Italian boy my age. We didn’t share a language, but enjoyed playing together. I was always glad my mom shared that little tidbit with me. In fact, any little memory she had about my adoption and insights into my young life, prior to coming to America, were always like rare gems, which I diligently pursued, held on to, and hoarded. I always wanted to learn more about who I was before becoming Sandy, the adopted daughter of Bess and Jim, who lived about 40 minutes from downtown Chicago on a tidy little block in one of the first planned suburbs in the United States. It was a place called Park Forest.

On Feeling Different and Early Fears

Being adopted means many different things to people, whether you are an adoptee or not. For me, it meant feeling just a little bit different from day one. I came to a place where I wouldn’t eat the food because it wasn’t familiar, let alone comforting. I didn’t speak the language and found out quickly that kids made fun of you if you were different from them in any way. That went double for not speaking “American.” It won’t surprise you to learn that once I was able to cobble together some English, my parents could hardly squeeze a word of Greek out of me.