Homecoming

I’ll never understand how they gave me away. I wonder if they held me first, tried to memorize my face, wonder how long was it before I was handed over to my new parents, a mom who seemed to still long for a child even though she had me, as though I was not exactly who or what she’d hoped for, her always searching my face with skeptical eyes, trying to uncover some nuance or angle she might come to love, and a dad who’s always been steady, unwavering, like the lamp they always kept lit in the living room, its golden light visible each night through the crack under the door of my childhood bedroom.

My mom’s gone now, me finally finding peace with her bitter style of loving through a combination of therapy and establishing an adult life separate from hers, so just my dad’s left, and when I pull my rental car into his driveway he’s out pretending to weed around the hedges, his skin nearly translucent now, blue veins visible branching off in every direction, carrying the message that time’s limited.

After chewy steak and canned corn we sit on the porch, the sky turning pink behind the mountains as he pulls a cigar box from the side table, yellowed papers inside, telling me I should have them now, the adoption certificate revealing I’d been given an entirely different name by my birth parents at the hospital—first, middle and last, and I’m awed they kept me long enough to name me, him sharing how my mom thought I’d feel more theirs with the new names she’d chosen, but he tells me he’d have called me anything, that I was his from the moment he first held me.

I take the box, thank him, unsure I’ll ever open it again, my brain trying to reconcile the me named on the certificate and the me I know myself to be, and after my dad heads up to bed, my son calls, tells me of a promotion at work, a dachshund he passed on his walk home wearing a hot dog costume, a girl he’s going to take on a second date, and I hang up feeling full, look up at the stars popping to life all around me. I’ll never understand how they gave me away.