Adopteee Awareness

My adoptive mother tells me I was precocious enough as a toddler to ask if I came from her belly. She says this was a sign I comprehended my adoption so early she never had to explain it to me.

No, home is not as simple as the heart-shaped sandwiches Ma placed into my lunch bag on Valentine’s Day or the way my father confessed to listening to me sing shower showtunes or washing a car beside my brother as the summer sun beat down.

Most of all, I hoped they’d see how well I turned out and regret ever sending me away.

If the average lifespan is roughly 76 years, then that one muscle, the size of a fist, beats 2,796,192,000 times. It never quits, until it quits.

I hand-wrote my mother a letter entirely in hangul. It looked like a child wrote it, which was because a child wrote it.

For as long as I remember, I have had stories in my head and instead of writing them down, I had imaginary conversations with people.

But then someone appeared: a woman. Forty-ish. Brown hair. Casual sweater and jeans. An apologetic grimace.