It’s Thanksgiving morning and I’ve just finished making pies, a skill I learned from my mother.  Growing up I was her kitchen assistant.  I’d chop onions, celery, and carrots; peel potatoes and set the table.  Eventually, I became the baker of pies and the carver of turkey.  Even during my challenging teen years, when at times we could barely speak a civil word, we worked well side by side in the kitchen on Thanksgiving.  As I grew older my mother would make us a pitcher of Bloody Marys to sip while we prepared the family feast.  These are warm memories, but the daily struggles, laughter, and love of family are what helped make me a fairly well-adjusted and content man.  I have much to be thankful for.

So I begin this a bit conflicted.  Nothing is missing from my life.  I love my parents.  They are my mother and my father.   This is not about them.  It’s about me and some people I haven’t met, maybe never will meet. 

I’m still not sure I want to search for my biological parents.  Well at least I’m not sure I want to find them. I don’t want to complicate my life or someone else’s.  I don’t want to hurt anyone and I don’t want to be hurt.  So what do I want?   Answers I suppose.  I want to know something more about myself.  That’s an odd thought, needing to find strangers to gain insight into oneself.  But each of us is a complex mix of nurture and nature.  I’m aware of the influence my parents have had on me.  From my mom I get my desire to establish a scheduled routine.  My dad helped me to know that it’s okay to share my feelings with others.  These are some of the effects of nurturing by my parents.  My nature, that’s another question.

Back in the summer of 1966 a man and a woman “got together”.  The result was a baby boy who inherited the genes, blood, and history of these people and the families into which they were born.   How could I not be curious about these ingredients that help make me who I am?