The One Where I Find Out I’m Adopted

I don’t even have the strength to find a picture for this.

So after each day of sitting vigil at my dying mom’s bedside, I go to her house to slowly sort through things and haul out what I can. This process seems less traumatic than hiring a company to just trash everything all at once.

That’s how I found the letter last night from my uncle to my mom. He mentioned that their sister had told him that my mom had adopted a baby girl, and he commended her on adopting a child.

I desperately wish that I hadn’t found that letter.

It was written in 2000, and my mom and Uncle Jack hadn’t spoken in 40 years. He did time in Sing Sing and was disowned by the family. My mom reached out to him after my dad died in 1999.

My only hope is that my uncle is an unreliable narrator who heard something like, “She’s thinking about adopting.” But then I was born.

And I was born with a tooth. We have the tooth. What, the birth mother handed me over and said, “Oh, by the way, here’s a tooth.”?

I guess, maybe. But my mom also told me stories about her pregnancy and bed rest, since she had miscarried earlier, and how I liked to bite her as she breastfed me.

Can you breastfeed an adopted baby? I have no idea. I don’t nothin ‘bout birthin’ babies.