Say there’s a big realization in what you’re doing right now,
a conception of things, but you get used to it, how I’d been dwelling all my life
in wanting to know my birth mother’s name.
It became my definition of self, it became a house
of vacant rooms, and then one Thursday it’s answered,
simple as a wind-up doll, as saying hi on an elevator
or dropping a pen, as if all things culminate.
Like I had this truck I loved. Toyota T100 long bed.
I could fit a full sheet of drywall in the back, flat. I did that only once,
but there’s a definition in knowing I could. And then this old guy
in a Toyota Camry runs a stop sign. I get a new truck, new
definition of self, and Boyd’s looking forward to being 16
and getting it. But it’s old already. It’ll be three more years
until he’s sixteen. Intersections are everywhere.
Our kitchen sink is getting difficult. Winter whistles
through the rooms. The floor lilts. What we plan falls apart
some Saturday when the blue spruce falls through the back porch.
We go to the Gallaher family reunion in Monterey, and find
it’s the same weekend as The Wizard of Oz convention.
We’re milling about the gazebo with the Tin Man and Scarecrow.
“Family is the family you make,” the message reads
that’s slipped under your hotel room door. When you’re adopted,
it’s always happening. Dorothy’s talking too loud,
or maybe it’s that everyone thinks they’re Dorothy,
a chorus line of Dorothys getting the best song. “We’re on a journey,”
the yellow brick road says. The Wizard replies, “A heart is not judged
by how much you love; but by how much you are loved.”
And what criteria are they using? Where’s the checklist?