PANDORA
The Legacy Tree people sent me an email the other day. They were sure they would be able to identify my birth mother and father and siblings and have the time to do a more comprehensive biological search.
It triggered dread and sadness.
What if I don’t like my biological people? What if I don’t connect or feel a belonging to that tribe?
A memory emerged from who knows where. A memory long forgotten that I wonder if it made itself up. As a child I often needed to escape my parents. Sometimes their drunken rages were focused on me or my brother, sometimes on each other. As a child I couldn’t discern the difference. My room had a crawl space where luggage was stored. At times it was a play area. At times it was hiding place, behind the luggage, hunkered down, fetal so rage couldn’t find me.
When that ruse no longer worked, I escaped to my parent’s closet. I had forgotten the small door into a dark crawl space where unused clothing was stored. Hidden behind stuff on the floor, I opened that door. It was a hook latch. I crawled in among the forgotten stuff hoping I too would be.
Memories emerge like ghosts; some are lovely and soothing. Those long forgotten are for good reason until they, too, emerge with details necessary for finishing the painting, creating the whole, completing the novel.
I opened the box wherein my Pandora has slept fitfully for 73 years. She is awake and refuses to go back. She knows that what I experienced as home and what I yearned for as home are still potent and emotionally charged memories. Perhaps, they are what define one’s destiny not blood.