LIVED THROUGH THIS
We Find Our Birth Parents to Find Ourselves
To know where you’re going, you need to know where you’re from
“If your own parents didn’t want you, what are you doing here?” — Olivier Rousteing, Wonder Boy
We sit at her small glass kitchen table. The Scrabble board she’s had since college takes up most of it, the ceramic napkin holder with neatly folded paper napkins takes up the rest. We haven’t seen each other since before Covid and waste no time getting to our favorite activity: cutthroat, take-no-prisoners Scrabble. That no one likes to play with us is a badge of honor.
I haven’t seen my mom in real life in almost two years. Now, sitting in her house, surrounded by her collection of teapots and abundant family photos, I realize how much I missed her — and how much of her I missed. FaceTime didn’t capture the beauty of her shimmering silver hair against her tanned skin, and it didn’t capture her decline. I did not see the fatigue in her eyes or the weariness of her soul; I did not see what 15 months in lockdown does to a human who’s already spent 87 years on this Earth.
She struggles to see the board with her regular eyeglasses, so she reaches for her new ones that look like binoculars attached to an eyeglass frame. The macular degeneration…
