My earliest childhood memory: Getting my Sasha doll on my 3rd birthday.

My earliest childhood memory: Getting my Sasha doll on my 3^rd birthday.  

Yep, I still remember this VERY moment: all dressed up in my gypsy-best, looking down lovingly at the brand-new baby doll that was all mine….ALL MINE!  And - she even looked like me!  Well, as near as a generic brown doll with bone straight hair can look like me…it was, after all, 1971.  Nowadays, dolls come in all colors/ethnicities/hair types, and I know one thing for sure:  if I would have popped a baby girl out of these here loins, I would have definitely given her a brown doll.  

One of the most difficult parts of being a trans-racial adoptee is that I often felt like an alien in my own home.  I mean, sure, they were my family, but I cannot help but imagine that one of the ways we come to know we belong is that we see people who look like us.  And I don’t think that we consciously register this, it’s just something that IS and then becomes part of the background.  

I don’t think I would consider this experience to be a “luxury” that I didn’t have and/or that most folks take for granted.  I think it’s more accurate to say that there is a “human experience default” (growing up with one’s biological family) that instills in us our initial sense of belonging.  Absent this default setting, and the potential for mayhem opens up reeeeeeal wide-like.  Absent this default setting, and perhaps you get the "gift" of trying to manage a colossal identity crisis.  Does anyone remember the book “Are you my Mother?”   Well, imagine that the momma bird never comes back.  Yeah, I read and re-read that book, hoping that, somehow - perhaps by some sort of tricky osmosis - my mom would suddenly feel “familyar” to me.  But it never happened.

Now, before you go make a grab for the tiny violin or the tissue box (depending on whether or not you have a heart), it seems as those this history of mine has set me up real well to ask the big questions, like “who am I?”  Starting out as I did, trying to worm into some type of identity (to no avail, obviously…I work it like a chameleon) it’s become a regular practice of mine to drop coats that don’t seem to fit the particular occasion.  And it’s also forced me to try and integrate all of the different “I AM’’s” who have taken up residence in my psyche.  Does anyone else live with “the perfectionist?”  Or how about “the inner critic,” the “nagging mom” or the “know it all.”  Or, one of my favorites: MILF.  And u know it. 

So – here we are – 43 years later and I have finally started meeting my family.  And I don’t just mean my biological family.  I mean the family who I feel in my heart, my soul brothers and sisters, people who I have chosen to love, and who have chosen to love me.  And lots of you will be at my celebration on Saturday and I cannot wait!  And for those of you who cannot be there (or weren’t ‘formally’ invited – we will be at the Grand Lake Farmer’s Market at 1pm if u wanna stop by!) thank you, bless you, I love you. 

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      - mo