I left home at the age of one hour, give or take. I was given, or taken, from my birth mother, and my quest began. I spent a month in the care of a foster family. Then I journeyed on, in the care of the man and woman who adopted me. The fable of my life story begins then, at least in their telling of it. “No baby was ever wanted so much as you,” I’ve heard at least a thousand and one times. I’ve been told tales of all the baby gifts that were sent to me when I was “brought home,” the moral of those stories being that I was given too much and wasn’t I just the luckiest, most spoiled infant in history? The “you should be so grateful” is right there, in the subtext.

I envy those people who have a strong sense of “home.” Whether it’s the neighborhood they grew up in, or the vacation house they’ve returned to for two weeks every summer all their lives, or the holiday dinners that always include all the aunties and cousins and Grandma’s special chocolate cake. Home is connection. I’ve always missed that connection and my life has been a journey seeking it, trying to find a place to plug myself in.

Memories of the early legs of my journey are foggy. It started with psychological warfare: a thorough, targeted extermination of anything perceived by my adoptive family as negative feelings. Fear. Shyness. Anger. Especially anger. 

I adapted, and switched tactics, opting for camouflage instead of open hostilities. Smiling sweetly when the hairdresser told me how much I looked like my mother. Trying to fit in with the elementary education majors in college. But the strain of a life spent living undercover wasn’t sustainable, so I needed an escape hatch. I found it in a dance club. I discovered I had wings. They were stunted and weak, but they were there. I just needed to learn how to use them.

I got married to a guy I met at the club. Felt the first intimation of home as I stretched my wings and turned my feathers out to dry in the sun of independence. I requested the paperwork to register with a database that would connect adoptees with their birth parents if both requested the connection. But my wings were not yet strong enough to lift me, and the papers sat in a folder for years.

After 15 years, I was strong enough to fly out of the nest I’d built with my husband. I realized my husband had been clipping my wings as I explored the power within me. I took my daughters and we soared to a new place, not yet home, but closer to it, I was sure, because as my daughters grew into young women, I could see myself reflected in their faces, in their movements, in their spirits. And they could see themselves in me. Like an echo from home, something heard long ago, and forgotten.

Eventually, my wings developed fully enough to support the weight of my DNA search for home. That tube of spit was tiny, but it held the burden of decades of guilt and shame. Some of that weight fell away when I found my family, but it was replaced with an even heavier burden: grief.

But even grief couldn’t stop this journey now. I’d soared too high, seen too much, to go back to living only on the ground. I met sisters, nieces, and together we are headed toward somewhere like home. I’m not sure where it is or what it looks like, but I know we’ll get there together. We fit. I’m plugged in and the lights are flickering on. Welcome home.