you're not even really my sister

A friend from Connecticut came to visit for the weekend. It was refreshing because it's been years since I have been able to play 'tourist' in this city. We set out toward Independence Mall to hop on a double decker tour bus. We bought our tickets and decided to go to the bathroom before we embarked on the hour and a half city tour.

In the terminal, I waited outside and held my friends purse while she went into the ladies room. I noticed that there were quite a few families there - typical of a warm weather weekend. One little girl caught my attention in particular: she couldn't have been older than five years, and she was an absolute doll. She was playing ring-around-the-rosie around her adoptive mother's legs (I knew instantly that she was adopted, being that the woman she called "mother" was white and she was asian). Nothing struck me as completely out of the ordinary until the rest of her family joined her.

I saw her husband and four young boys moving in a roudy pack toward them. I began to smirk as the apparent situation became clear in my mind: Nice young couple, four boys of "their own", who "hand picked" the little girl they never had. Inwardly, I was rolling my eyes. Again, I would have thought very little of it and it probably wouldn't have stuck with me... if it weren't for the next dialogue I heard.

One of the younger boys (maybe 6 or 7 y/o) who had already been punching his older brothers, moved to the little girl and pushed her quite hard and she fell at her mother's feet. She didn't cry; she just stood up, brushed herself off and frowned, pushing him back. I laughed a little at the spectacle of it all. But that smile was wiped clear off of my face. The little boy who had initiated the fight, once he realized she was pushing back, whimpered and cried and yelled at her, "You're not even my real sister!" The mother and father both repremanded him instantly, all the while looking over their shoulders to see who heard the boy's claim. My attention was completely on the little girl.

She was now hiding behind her mother's legs, her face buired in the back of her knee, hands balled into fists and clinging to her mother's pants. I literally bit my tongue to keep from saying or doing anything. I can't tell you how many times that very same scene played out in my own life. My brother, also adopted, used to pull that card every day when we were 10-15. I think we both said some things we regret. Our neighbor called me a bastard once; I burst into tears and ran home, unable to explain to my mother why I was so upset. My heart and my thoughts are with that little girl right now, wherever she is.

what do you mean i can't see you? i can always see you

you'll be in my heart

Now, I battled with myself in whether or not to admit that I was totally watching the Disney channel last night when Tarzan came on. But the reaction I had was too intense to NOT talk about.

I hadn't seen this movie since it came out in theaters way back when. It struck me as odd the other night, because I remember having no reaction whatsoever to the movie when I was.. 12, or however old I was when I first saw it. Needless to say, at 22, it was almost comical - and I would have laughed at myself - were I not too busy crying and hanging on every word spoken in the movie.

You know (Disney version of) the story: Boy raised by gorrilas. But he has this scene where he causes some rukus and sends the elephants into a tizzy. "Kayla", the mother figure to Tarzan, defends him to her husband, saying that he's just a little boy and he meant no harm. "Kerchak", the hubby, replies with, "Give him a chance?! Kayla! Look at him!" Little Tarzan then runs off and mopes, sitting by a little pool of water. He stares at his reflection and tries to understand why he doesn't look like everyone else in the group. I almost threw up.

I just spent the better part of 12 weeks photographing a series that deals with just that feeling. At 22 years old, alone in my empty apartment, I was weeping in front of my 24 inch TV set.

to flirt with rescue when one has no intention of being saved

You know you're adopted when: You can't even listen to Dame Judi Dench sing 'Send in the Clowns' without finding the parallels to your own adoption experience. Hearing the line "I thought that you'd want what I want, sorry, my dear," I immediately thought of my adoptive mother - the day I tried to explain to her that adoption is not all roses and lollipops (Gypsy!), counter to her beliefs. I begged her to understand that I was someone else before she .. got me. I begged her to realize/accept/acknowledge that before I was in her arms I was in another woman's body. And I was floored when upon saying, "You're my mother. You should want to understand this. You should wantto help me in this," she replied with, "I really don't see what you're so worked up about. It's not as if you were two or three and have memories of this.."

I'm one of those obnoxious kids who was 'raised on the stage' - not at all by my mother's design, mind you. You can hardly drag that woman out of her front door, let alone into a spotlight. I've been in theater since.. forever. I think I did my first play when I was 4. And looking back, every major play I did - i.e. every play I had a lead in - had a somewhat common thread.. or maybe it's just that I make it common.

For whatever reason, I've been pulling out all of my old broadway soundtracks lately - specifically the plays that I have been involved in. And perhaps it's only my current state of mind.. but each one touches that sensitive little 'adoption spot' in me. Even if it's theme is completely unrelated, I manage to pull pieces from each one and make it applicable. Maybe that's why I kept doing theater.. and maybe that's why I rocked at it (sorry, no modesty this morning).

Into The Woods: I remember seeing this play when I was little - maybe four or five. And I remember some woman ignoring my presence there at her knee and complaining to my mother that she couldn't understand why she had brought me. The tickets were expensive and there was no way someone my age could follow such a 'complex character study'. I then proceeded to relay the entire plot, scene for scene, and my interpretation of the moral of the story. Many many years later I was lucky enough to be a part of a production of this play. I was first cast as the Baker's Wife and later on as the Witch. As the Baker's Wife, the character wants nothing more than to have a child. She and her husband try everything possible and eventually end up striking a deal with the Witch, who gives them a magic potion and voila! Baby is born. ..And I remember thinking to myself that I would play the part with the desperation I saw in my adoptive mother...

Later, when I played the Witch - who is Rapunzel's captor/adoptive mother, I remember being elated because a) it was an amazing part to play with amazing songs and b) because I could put a little something extra into it. I knew how Rapunzel felt. I know what it's like to be locked away in a high tower without any chance of rescue - this was her lot in life and she had to accept it. And later on in the story, when Rapunzel dies at the hand of the Giant, while her mother, the Witch, looks on in despair and disgust and utter helplessness - I remember trying to imagine my first mother (though I knew nothing of her at the time). I remember trying to imagine how it must feel to loose your only child to some 'greater force' that you have little-to-no control over.

Les Miserables: I played Fantine once. A single mother who loses her child to a villainous couple because she cannot afford to keep her. She works at a factory to scrape together money to send to her, and when that isn't enough, she sells everything; her hair, her jewelry, her body. She gets sick and knows that she is going to die. And she sings this lovely ballad to her daughter from her deathbed. Again, as I was performing this, my mind was with my first mother: with no choice but to turn her daughter over to another so that they would have everything she could not give her.

Annie: Even though I did this play when I was younger, you can imagine what was going through my mind. 'Little Orphan Annie', trying desperately to find her birth parents - only to be taken advantage of by three unlikely criminals. For months after this production, I felt uneasy. It could be argued that 'Daddy Warbucks' represents every set of wealthy adoptive parents..appealing to every child. Who wouldn't want to go live in a mansion and have everything you could ever ask for (except for your first parents)? When fellow cast members, audience members, friends at school, etc. would realize that I was adopted, they came to the strangest conclusions. The adults in the play forced the idea that it was a cathargic experience for me. My peers in the play as well as classmates at school assumed that this was natural for me - that like Annie, I had a ton of friends at 'my orphanage' and how much fun that must have been! Kids have such a warped view of what adoption is.. 

The Baker's Wife: Yes, it was a play separate from Into the Woods, but the same character - different situation. I played the Baker's Wife. As a young woman she falls in love with a man who asks her to pick up and leave and begin a new life with him, but she declines, insisting that it is irrational and there is far too much grounding her in her town. She winds up in a loveless marriage - and at one point, sings this beautiful song called Meadowlark, which essentially is the story of her life. I got a lot of crap when performing this song - I was told my emotion was 'too forced'. What those critics failed to realize was that in a way, this was my own story. Certainly, I was never asked to run away with any man.. nor did my relation to the song have anything to do with any man.

I did, however, relate to the Meadowlark in that she was 'rescued' by the King.. he gave her everything she could ever want or need and she was his most prized possession (and I don't use that term lightly). The Meadowlark loved him for everything he had done for her. Along comes the Sun God...one whom the Meadowlark belongs with. Her place was with him. They could have soared high above the beaches together, living side by side in complete bliss. But the Meadowlark refuses to leave the King. She is endebted to him for all he has done for her. She doesn't want to hurt his pride.

So, thank you, theater, for allowing me to act and sing what I wasn't allowed to feel.. Into The Woods and The Baker's Wife are on DVD.. and I would strongly recommend that you watch them if you have any interest in musical theater at all. They're brilliant plays with brilliant music that will undoubtedly move you. Especially in light of what I have written here this morning.

i'm not really like this; i'm probably plightless

It's kind of funny how even the smallest things - things that in any other case, to any other person - would be so menial...can trigger the deepest hurt. I've always loved this photograph. This is the photograph that made me fall in love with Annie Leibovitz. It follows me everywhere. Without fail, every semester, someone shows this photograph. And every time, without fail, I feel a little sick. That...kind of tightening in your stomach..that's somewhere between butterflies and nausea...that makes your heart beat strangely and your eyes burn.

Stacey and I have missed the opportunity to ever be like this. 20 years without seeing her face; without ever hearing her voice. Hugs at the airport are awkward. And I've stopped wondering if that will ever go away. It won't. We'll never have a photograph like this. I'll never be in her lap and she'll never have her arms around me. I'll never feel safe enough to just stare at her face and search for the similarities in her features. The best I can hope for is a chunk of time in the afternoon where I can be let to pour over photographs of her when she was little. Somehow it feels so safe to look at pictures of her before she gave birth to me. Maybe because in those photographs - for that split second - there is a fleeting chance that she won't give me away. A fleeting look in her eyes that maybe - maybe she'll keep me. And maybe we'll have this photograph together.

We have the same hair; the same eyes; the same hands. We have the same laugh; we get hiccups when we're hungry; we have the same toes. Our handwriting is impossibly hard to differenciate. And for 20 years I missed it. She made me miss it. I spent 20 years wondering why my hair never fell straight around my face like my family's. 20 years wondering why I could draw and paint and dance - and they could calculate and solve and manage. 20 years of adjusting my laugh to match those of my parents and their families. 20 years of hiding and adjusting and trying to figure out what it was that I had done wrong.

I wanted so badly to look like them; to fit in around them. I thought that when I found Stacey I would finally be complete. That she would scoop me in her arms like I was still a child and she would hold me and rock me and cry with me and laugh with me; and she would be my mirror - and I would finally look like someone and laugh like someone and fit in with someone. I would have forgiven her everything. I would have shown her the endless pages I drew as a child, filled with her eyes and her smile: a child's desperate attempt to find her place. I would have told her that everything was okay; that we found each other and now we would both be okay. We both found our place.

But everything was ruined. An emotionless, awkward hug - one you might give to that distant cousin, who married your uncle's granfather's sister-in-law - where you lean in and wince and already you wait for it to be over. And it's all elbows and crashing cheeks and you hold the rest of you back, careful not to touch, so your just standing a pace back from where your upper bodies meet. And then it's over. And she turns and says, "the car's this way," and you're just kind of standing there, confused, staring at her back as she starts walking away. And you realize you've seen this once before. And your breath gets trapped in your lungs and your eyes sting and you realize you've been dreaming of this - you've been dreaming of her back as she walks away - for your whole life. And all you want to do is sink to the floor like the bones in your legs have just suddenly disappeared. And you just want to be left alone.

You don't care about your similarities anymore. You don't care that when you look at her you're looking in a mirror. You don't want to hear her laugh or play with her hair. You don't want her to hold you while you stare into each other's eyes and let silent regrets swirl around you like the air you're breathing. You want the air to be still. You want to stop breathing.  And you want Annie Leibovitz to take her photograph and shove it up her ass.

sometimes a great notion

I finally settled on a topic for my portfolio grad show...and - shocker - it's adoption related. The whole purpose, I realized, of my going on such a scientific tangent of ideas..was to get as far away from the subject of adoption as possible. And what could be LESS emotional than Quantam Optics? Not much.

Out of respect to my a-parents, I wanted to steer clear of the whole subject...but it seems to follow me whenever I take a photograph. There's just no escaping it. So, I rolled over and let it happen. And it's amazing. You should come see them at the end of March. I even worked it out with the professors so I don't have to display an artist's statement along with the work, just to avoid a repeat of the events that took place with the first adoption project. More to come on that...

it's not some cosmic vending machine

Still no word from Stacey. I was sneaky and checked to see if she read my message - which she did - but it's been a few days with no response. Sometimes I don't know what to make of our relationship. There are some days when I just crave time with her, and I feel like the distance between Vegas and Philly may as well be an entire universe. And then I have days like today, when I feel like lifting a very large middle finger to the west and cutting my losses. I'm sick of the childish way she's handling everything...I'm tired of hearing about how she convieniently forgot the dates of the trips she was supposed to make out here for a vist. And frankly, I'm angry at her for making me feel like a prize fool. I've been talking to the whole family and all of my friends about how Stacey was finally going to come out here for my birthday and how amazing it will be. It's embarassing to have to explain that she says she forgot the date and won't be coming.

Depressing, really.