...of snake monsters and other scary things...

 Morning is in full effect here, after a deliciously late wake-up.  From where I'm perched, I can hear my partner grumbling as he waits for the french press to reach peak brew.  Turning just so, I can look past the open door, to where both my boys are snuggled up with Henry Raccoon in between them, and the cat is dutifully submitting to her morning fluffing.

My best laid plans have come to naught, by light of day, as I woke up this morning with my right eye swollen shut.  (To this day, despite consults with specialists, I've no idea the cause or cure...I just have to wait for the swelling to go down, frustratingly slowly.) A lifetime ago, when my eldest was barely verbal, he said that my swollen eye made me look like a one-eyed snake monster (thanks, no doubt, to far too many hours spent watching Scooby Doo together) and the name stuck.  So here I sit, sulking in my robe, feeling every bit monstrous and hideous, and absolutely not planning on leaving the house today.   While the morning unfolds around me, I'm hiding in the corner, hot compress up against my eye with one hand and typing with the other.  Slow and steady...on both counts.

My youngest stared at me intently this morning, when we first woke up.  A little furrow of a frown between his eyes as he tried to puzzle out what was wrong with Mami's face.  Quick thinking, I put my hand up to cover my swollen eye, and he giggled...all set right again...

If only...

Would that it were that simple.  Just a cover-up, and on with the day.  Just a flick of a hand, Vegas magician style, and back to normal.

~~~

Normalcy, or the feeling of it, has been in short supply around here lately. Whether it's the background work of my brain trying to prepare for all the emotional dysfunction of the upcoming holidays, or the logistics analysis I seem to be constantly running to cover all the bases, or simply the inevitable psychological frailty that comes part and parcel with the whole family having had RSV for a week plus...
I feel...othered.
Which is nothing new, but somehow suddenly much more profound.

Last week, I shared this as a fb post:
Being an adoptee is...weird.
Sort of...defining...as "undefined".
I don't belong in any family... I'm not a part of either birth family, nor am I really a solid, rooted part of my adoptive family.
It's like having both no history and borrowed history at the same time.
It's growing up seeing connections and not having any yourself.
It's rather like looking through windows...watch all you like, but always from a distance.
It's never really celebrating your birthday because that's the day you weren't wanted.
It's...maybe reconnecting with half-sibs, but not being a real part of their story or their family either.
It's being the eldest and feeling the emotion of 'I should be there for this' on your baby sister's/half-sister's/biological sister's wedding day but knowing full well at the same time that you aren't her big sister in any of the ways that count.
It's feeling the loss...the missing out...the trauma of separation...all over again any time you let your mind go there.
It's starting a family of your own and finding yourself in your children's faces.
It's knowing they'd be awesome nephews to have, but that shared genes don't equal aunts and uncles

I find my mind wandering to those mysterious alternate realities more and more lately...the what ifs of biological family and siblings, of shared DNA and memories, of holiday traditions and photo albums full of 'big sis' moments and nephews basking in the glow of uncles and aunts. What history went into making these faces, mine and my boys...and, even now, what chains in the gene sequence cause my eyelids to randomly swell shut?

I feel weighed down by a sense of obligation to my adoptive family, to fulfill the debt owed of saving me from foster care. That tour of duty doesn't peacefully coexist with any want on my part to build bridges to my half-siblings.

My mother-in-law (and dear friend) learned late in life that the father who raised her was not her biological father. I won't share her story in detail here...it's hers, not mine...but I've watched (or listened) to the beauty unfold as she's connected with her half-siblings and researched her genetic inheritance. It's been an interesting counterpoint to my experience, as she's felt free to explore and I feel stifled by responsibility and rejection and childhood-trauma.

I can't help but wonder about all those what ifs...

I can't help but wonder if my boys and I would see bits and pieces of ourselves in those half-siblings of mine...if shared genes equal comfortable familiarity, and if our shared face (because, really, that picture could be any one of the three of us!) would be reflected in any of their features...