The Never Normal

I like to pretend I can speak Spanish, though truth be told I can speak German better, and I can’t speak that either.  So I’ll bet the title is butchered.   I do have the Rosetta Stone Spanish learning system, the whole kit and kaboodle, and so learning Spanish is on my list of stuff to do, though it seems like a terribly difficult investment of time and brain-tax.

And so, in my gringo Spanish…the day of the fathers…

There are many in my life.  M.  My dad.  Andy.  Father Noone.  My Godfather, Poppy, who was also my grandfather; he passed away before I was even engaged.  I could say a great many things about each of them, and perhaps I will, but I’m distracted today by one I almost never even think about at all…my birth father.  (My birth mother was a married woman with four children, one of whom had already died when I was conceived outside of her marriage).

They give you a bit of non-identifying information  in New York State, if you are at least 18 and you request it.  The paperwork euphemistically states my birth mother was “separated” from her husband, during which time she became pregnant with me.  There is some information on my birth mother.  A little bit.  She was in her early thirties when she gave birth to me.  She was a “collector” (at a bank).  She enjoyed watercolors.  Her father had a heart attack and died when he was 45.  Genetically, from her side I am English, Dutch, German, and Indian.  I have always wondered what kind of “Indian” they meant.

From his side, though, there is nothing.  No information.

No paternity established.  Mystery Sperm Donor.

I guess I am half John Doe along with the English, Dutch, German, and Indian.  So that makes me a Heinz 57, and Jonah — well, he must have a bit of every nationality ever known to mankind.

Jonah Boo is the only person I am related to, that I know of.  I might want to know more of you related-to-me-people.  Maybe.  Why don’t I have right to know who you people are, and talk to you — just once?  It would come in handy with a lot of Boo’s medical issues, too.  The doctors say they wish they had genealogical information on my side, and I feel I’m entitled to at least that.

I wasn’t adopted until I was 6 months old.  Foster parents had me because there was some issue with my feet (which they either did not fix or over-fixed, for I’m a pigeon-toed thing to this day).  I wonder sometimes if the foster parents maybe wanted to keep me.  Wasn’t I just a little freaked out to be whisked away to a new home with new, forever parents?  Those forever parents tell me no; I settled right in.

“You were fine,” my mom and dad both insist.

I think that means I was one weird little baby.  If someone took Jonah away from me when he was 6 months old, I don’t think he’d have been fine.  To tell the truth, I kind of wouldn’t want him to be fine.  He was my baby boo.  Mine.  Maybe when you are fostering a baby, somehow the baby knows s(he)’s not your baby.  Maybe, somehow, these little new-humans understand more than we know or can remember.

I forgot about yet another father – one I’ve never thought about at all until today.  My foster father, who raised me so briefly, from birth to 6 months.  Unless I only had a foster mother.  I’m not sure, but I’ll bet it was a couple.  My dad tells me when he and my mom drove to get me at the Department of Social Services or wherever, the “transfer the baby” lady told them there were more than a few tears when they came to my foster parents’ house to take me away.

I wonder how many other babies they’d fostered, and if they adopted any of them, or had any kids biologically.  Didn’t I miss them at first, just a little?  Their smells, their touch?  Or was it bad there and so I was happy to get the hell out?

I think about my foster/birth people on three days of the year, mostly.  My birthday, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day.  That’s if I think of them at all.  I wonder if and when they think about me.

I was talking to M earlier about how my dad and I used to watch cartoons together when I was 6 or 7, and how much better the cartoons were than the crappy ones they slap together today with computer animation bullshit.  My dad and I watched the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Show every Saturday at 11am.  We’d lay across the couch with our hound dog, Flower, and laugh at Foghorn Leghorn or Daffy Duck, circa mid seventies.  He even watched things like Little House on the Prairie with me, God bless him.

Today we went to church and then out to breakfast, and it was really good.  I thank God I have a forever father, and that my son does too.  Gracias, mi padres.