I stood on the corner
waiting patiently for you.
It seemed like hours.
It was probably minutes
but Einstein was right
about relativity also.
You never arrived,
but I hadn’t expected
you to do so, that was
the nature of us.
I will wait again
in two weeks.
Same corner as usual,
but an hour earlier.
You will not show up
and will offer the same
excuse you do always.
Why do you assume
being dead excuses
your duties as the parent
I never got to meet?
Walking down the helical
road, untwisting as you go
you discover places
you never imaginged
visiting, nothing
like the path you
thought you knew well.
Stop and claim
your new heritage,
find yourself
on an alien map,
bury yourself in books
of new and ancient history.
Pause here and consider
a King of Scotland,
knights and lords,
in the far distance
know that you claim
a link to a man
so honored that he
died by hanging, but
was then beheaded
and drawn and quartered.
Too late to unswab
your cheek, so simply
enjoy your ride.
It was easier
having no history
of my own, borrowed
histories are easily discarded.
After a while, you
begin to think of the adopted
history as your own,
and no one doubts you.
I have a history now
countries woven into
my DNA, always present
but never before seen.
It is mine, I passed it
along to my sons, and
although it grows weaker
it is a burden they cannot avoid
and one day, perhaps,
they will stop and consider
from where they came, and not
have to invent the answer.
It wasn’t lost on me, mother, that this year
on the anniversary of death, you had been gone
eighteen years, Chai in your beloved Hebrew,
a lifetime for me, having never met you
save in the half of my genes you implanted
in me when I was implanted in you.
As you aged, alone, did you wonder what
became of the closest family you had after
your parents were interred in the soil of Charleston?
Did you ever regret not knowing, or were you
comfortable that the Jewish Family Service Agency
would make a selection of which you would
have approved had your approval been sought.
You have grandsons and greatgrandchildren
who will mourn me, carry my memory forward,
but know that I do the same for you, and you
never aged a day from that one when the photographer
took your college yearbook photo, a grainy
copy of which is tucked in my wallet and heart.
There is a language
spoken within a family
that no one outside speaks.
It may sound familiar
but listen carefully
and learn otherwise.
It is so with my brother
even though there are
thick walls between us
and yet, in a few words
intentions are obvious.
He keeps me far
from a place
I’d just as soon not go
and in her panic
my mother hears only
our words and not
their hidden meaning.
It is when we fall silent
the conversation begins.
There is one thing that none
of the books on discovering
who you are when you are
adopted bother to tell you.
If they did, it wouldn’t change
anything, but it is a burden
you assumed you’d easily bear
that grows heavy with time.
What they don’t warn you is
that you will discover yourself,
your heritage that was denied
to you for one engrafted on.
But you will not be prepared
for the hidden tax that is levied
with that knowledge, for your
mourning is too soon doubled.
By the way, the headstone is lovely,
designed by your niece, it pays tribute
to you as aunt, as sister, as friend.
I do wish it had said mother as well
but I know I’m the one secret you thought
would fit into a corner of the pine box,
buried with you, to be, like you, reclaimed
by the rocky soil of West Virginia.
Little could you have imagined that
a few cc’s of saliva could expose
what you so carefully hid, and you
were helpless to avoid it regardless.
My adoptive father, the second one,
slipped away slowly, dying before death,
under the living eyes of aides and nurses.
You just lived your life your way,
answered to yourself and perhaps God,
and decided it was time to go, needed
no permission, made no farewells,
and in that regard, I am one of the family.
I’ve always imagined that one of these nights
I’d see my mother’s ghost. I would welcome the sight
welcome she that bore me, not she that stepped in
in a way,absolving my birth mother of her sin,
while assuming adopting me would make her complete.
She hasn’t visited yet, neither has done so,
but I hold out hope, it is after all the last to go,
and I do hear her voice, faint and all too distant,
sounding very much like my own one instant
and then no more than a faint whisper in retreat.
I don’t need a long conversation, a few words would
more than suffice, but some at least, a child should
in advancing age hear the sound of a mother’s voice,
if only to find solace in the fact that her choice
to yield the child was made from love not defeat.
It was the moment they said, we picked you, that I knew they had not. They thought they had to say it. They knew they shouldn’t. I was the next gumball down the chute. You put in your nickel, move the lever and wait. Actually it wasn’t quite like that. If you don’t like the color or flavor of gumball, you throw it out or give it to someone else. Spend another nickel, simple. In adoption, there was no do over. In my case as well. Well there was, actually, but if you give one back, you don’t get another unless there was a really big and hidden problem. Read the fine print, the lawyers say, adoptees come with no warranty, and you take us as is. You wouldn’t buy a car that way, would you.
Growing up my family always had dogs,
only one at a time, of course, since we
were a modern suburban family,
which may be why we had a dog.
It clearly wasn’t because they loved dogs,
they tolerated them on good days,
ignored them the rest of the time
and the good days were few if any.
I never asked for a dog, knew
the daily care would fall to me, for
my sort of brother and sister would
never lift a finger if they didn’t want
and they rarely wanted for other than
themselves, but I didn’t mind, for each
dog became my true family, we all
shared a common blood among us,
which is to say none, and we all said
in our own languages, which we all
understood while no one else did, that
we were orphans who beat the system.
