EYETWITCH

I'm an actual, real, human, adoptee/ex-foster child. I believe I'm allowed to use all the tags that non-adoptees have used to advertise "adoption" of their characters, of their dogs, of all the things that are not human children who have been removed from their parents.

Adoptees are 2% of the population, a highly diverse group who have all suffered trauma, and the very language used to discuss us has been appropriated by non-adoptees to sell their products.

Please take a moment of your time to actually listen to an adoptee voice.

NEW VIDEO!!! This one is about my process of painting and why I'm making certain choices while I create things. Want to learn a few things about watercolor? https://tinyurl.com/finalspaintings

Full series is available here:

New video, new painting about what it's like to be a closed-record adoptee in the US. This time it's about how I had multiple names and no name at all.

Because of an error or a lie, my biological mother assigned me the incorrect ethnicity when she gave me away. It changed the entire course of my life.

My adoptive mother, as I have detailed in other little essays, is slowly flaking apart with senile dementia. Every day I talk to her and another few pieces of her memory and cognitive abilities gently disappear, honing her down to a person who remembers everything up to age 10 vividly and very little after that. What she’s losing in long-term memories is being replaced with weird little confabulations that stick, once they appear.

For instance, she just had gallbladder surgery. We went through months of her walking around with a drain sticking out of her side and a bag collecting bile that had to be pinned to her shirt. We met with surgeons, I researched alternative therapies for treatment, it was a whole production. We set the surgery date in advance a couple months ago, and I took her in last week to get it. She packed four bags for her overnight stay (I winnowed it down to a change of clothes). And yet if you ask her today about the surgery, she will say “They took my gallbladder out and didn’t even tell me they were going to do it!” I said, “Why do you think you were in the hospital, Mom?” “For my gallbladder.” “And do you remember meeting with the surgeon the morning they took it out?” “Yes but she didn’t even SAY she was going to do that! They could at least TELL you before they do something like that.” (The surgeon did tell her, multiple times. I was there.)

Anyway last night her old friend Carol called me to say that my mom seemed to have written her phone number down wrong and was calling all their other mutual friends to get it, over and over. I have programmed Carol’s number into my mom’s iPad and her phone, but she pulls out a tattered address book and uses Carol’s number from 20 years ago. I dutifully wrote down the correct number and called my mom to have her cross out every wrong number in the address book and put the new one in instead.

“I HAVE that number,” my mom said. I asked her to read it to me, and she did have it. “Well, please call that number instead, then,” I said. “I do but that’s the dog’s phone,” my mom said.

“..What” I said.

“It’s PICKLE’s phone number. It’s Carol’s DOG’s phone number,” she said. “He’s a POMERANIAN. Named PICKLES,” she added, helpfully filling in all the gaps in my knowledge.

I paused, considering what to say next. “….Mom, why do you think the dog has a phone,” I said. “Well I sure don’t know, it’s CAROL’S dog, ask her,” she said.

“No, I mean, do you really think that the dog has a cell phone,” I said. “Yes, that’s PICKLE’S phone number and Carol never calls me back from it,” she said.

“No but. But. Mom, why would a dog need a phone,” I said.

“Well, she takes him EVERYWHERE so he has a phone,” she said, with exasperation.

“I…do you…has Pickles ever called you,” I said. “No he’s a DOG.” “But he has a phone, you said.” “Yes, IT’S. PICKLE’S. PHONE,” she said, fed up.