By far most people I know are in direct contact with their sense of family heritage, of when relative X came here from country Y, and seem to benefit from this knowledge. In my family, this idea was long gone by the time I was adopted, and although the work of others has uncovered the obvious, (given the cuckoo clocks and dachsunds of my father’s childhood), familial connection to that identity has been sundered.
As an adopted person, my sense of why I am as I am is further alienated. I exhibit numerous behaviors and preferences that are not present in my immediate tree of heritables. Forgetfulness, for example, is not known among my father’s family nor my mother’s. Yet I have clean forgot my reason for writing this blog entry.