Robin de Puy Instagram – LEUXIAN WITH AN X.
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On the 23rd of March in 2022 I receive an email from Amanda who lives in Utah. In 2019 her husband Andy and herself adopted a boy with the uncommon name Leuxian. Searching for more information about the origin of his name she finds pictures of a two-year-old toddler photographed by me. “Do you remember anything of the encounter with him? We know very little about his past.”
In 2015 I indeed photographed a boy with the name Leuxian. He lives in a decayed motel surrounded by hardly anything good. I remember him walking outside in his diaper, and shortly after burning himself on the hot exhaust of my motor cycle. He doesn’t blink. He is only two years old, and already has a tough skin.
In the following years I return several times to the motel looking for the young child. Never do I find him. Until last year’s email. My motherly heart is – in regards to Leuxian – finally reassured.
Nowadays Leuxian lives in a good, decent neighborhood in Midvale, Utah together with his adoptive parents and his little foster brother. The New-Mexican roots of Amanda are tangible everywhere. It is a warm, colorful house with dogs, cats and mountains of toys.
I am looking at Leuxian who has grown to be almost as tall as his new mom. He is dancing light-footedly through the street with his basketball. The bouncing of the ball is echoing against the big concrete wall which is placed in the middle of the neighborhood.
“Why did they build that wall?”, I ask Amanda. Above the wall a traffic light is silently rocking back and forth, coming from the time in which sky-high walls weren’t necessary. A story about teenagers in cars who blocked driveways, and something about a busy road follows. The wall keeps the danger away. While she is telling me this, she rolls her eyes.
At the end of the day we eat large scoops of ice cream. Leuxians favorite flavor is chocolate. In no time he eats two ice cream cones. His face is covered with sticky stains that remind me of the photograph from eight years ago. Amanda sees is too.
“There is one big difference”, Amanda says quietly. “He can be dirty now, because now he has a mommy that cleans him afterwards.” | Posted on 17/Oct/2023 21:30:00
