Guess what?
I saw on CNN the other day where you can order these dna kits online. They send you a swab for your spit and you send it back along with some cashola and depending on the amount you want to spend they’ll tell you all sorts of cool things about your genetic makeup.

I’m so stoked!

I get to actually find out my nationality? Holy crap. How huge is that? Geez. I’m so giddy that I just sounded like Rachael Freakin’ Ray.
I’m gonna do it, y’all.
I’m gonna send for the kit.
Who wants to know what country I should be promoting?
I do! I do!

To be so totally continued…

After I return from Hornby Island, that is.

(Wow. What if I’m like, Swahili or Shoshonee or Swedish, perhaps?)
Any guesses from my peanut gallery?

I’m standing in the mirror.

I see the hole between here and there. You know the one. The one that defines you, the one that made you.
Mine’s an “inny,” as so described.
It’s getting more obscured as the years weigh in. I’m getting more discouraged as the years weigh out.

Most folks can add the there and then of it. The umbilical of it. Nourishment. Mother. Genetics. Home.

Not me. It’s just a hole.

Yep. I’ve heard you. I’ve heard you naysayers and scoffers and you, “why can’t you just be grateful-ers.”

Your; “geez Dee, what’s the big deal, anyway?”

I hear you every day. Whether you say shit or not.

You didn’t know that, did you? You didn’t know that the words you say that disclaim my lostness, permeate me.

Permeate me as you strut off to the next room or the next state or even the next country to view your kin, look them in the eye. I can’t see, you see? Get it? No. Not if it isn’t relevant to you.

I saw a show today about a daughter figuring out that her father figure was not figuring for the real father figure.
She KNEW he was real. Her real father. Wow.

What an awesome thing. To see your father, and know it’s him.
Let me repeat.
What an awesome thing. To see your Father, and know it’s him.

It made me cry. Tears running outta my brown iris’s. Yup. Another genetic, “take me for granted.”

There were times along my timeline that me and my mates would speculate about my sires and dams.
They HAD to be movie stars right? Gestation periods being what they are would mean that I was conceived in December of 1965.
We started with Melissa Manchester and Elliot Gould. Both for the dark, curly hair.

Can you imagine letting someone go that’s a part of you?

I can not.

But, yes. I hear you. I hear your: “It coulda been worse and she mighta been in trouble,” theories.

I hear you loud and oh so fuckin’ clear. Because you know me, right? You know exactly how it fucking feels, right?
You speak your language and eat your foods and see your parents, right? Oh yes. You’re right. Knower-of-all-things-right. I see you seeing yours in the right light. See you and envy you. Wrong or right in the feeling of it.

Right?

Me and Lu have our own ideas. She says I’m a hairless chihuahua. I say I’m a native indian warrior. I have to be. How else could I have the skin thick enough to shirk off the fact that I belong to no one, nowhere?

Don’t come at me with your ideologies. Don’t. They do not work on me. They do not, in any way, comfort me.

I still see my middle earth. Empty. The inny.

Does anyone out there want to claim me? I’m up for grabs, you know.

These are interesting strands, aren’t they? Our DNA, if unravelled, would go to the moon.
I am convinced that my hereditary units were stranded, lost somewhere. Here’s why;
I have a nose bleed. It’s been going on for a couple of hours now. I’m not at all prone to this ailment. In fact, the only nosebleed I’ve ever incurred was while visiting the folks in arrid AZ some years ago. But my sister, Ffej, was often prone to nosebleeds as we were growing up. Especially during those long afternoons of torture. The ones when Jeff would make us box each other to entertain him and his friends. Ffej would inevitably end up with a bloody nose. My tears would always feel a million times sadder than the red cells that ran down her face. I never wanted to hurt my sister. But the stronger DNA or chromosome that was our brother won out every time. Me and Jeff were tight at one point in our life. Then it dissipated. He was 16. He was naked with girls, I was not. He found better entertainment that did not include his 11 year old sister. Sister Suzie was off doing her honor roll stuff, having friends and being Ffej. They left me in purgatory. I couldn’t fit my genes in anywhere. I called them Levi’s, my brother called them Lee’s. Probably sounds bizarre to you, reader. But my siblings opinions and attention meant my life to me. Meant my world to me. Until it left. Until I left.
Segue to present day. My sister, my angel, I cannot go two days without talking to. My brother, the eternal enigma, I cannot go two weeks without wondering…who is he now? What motivates him to get out of bed each day?
But get this…
Our parent’s, the aloof anti-Jeffists, are visiting him next week. What about a visit to Fl. or Mn. you ask? Ha.
Me and Ffej have spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours acquiescing to our parent’s wishes.
They’ve not been to see us in eons. But guess what? They’re off to see Jeff in Calgary. The mutinous brother. The nose bloodier. The gene pool pee-er. Fine by me. I’m filled with angst at the thought of my folks in Jax. A stress I care not to endure. But it hurts my sis, I think. Though she feigns to care.
Fuck genes. Genes are immaterial. Families are supposed to be the substance, the strands that really bind. Not so, as would seem apparent in the life of me.
I’ll happily wade about in the shallow end of my own cess pool. It’s way more real and reciprocal.
And, I suspect me and Ffej know the true score. We understand and feel love. A gift that sustains us whom are true to one another…spanning this globe or that continent.
Genes or no genes.
Petrie dish or not…
I get to choose my genes/jeans today. That’s the blessing of becoming a grown-up.