DNA

I am made of the twisted ladders of DNA from all who came before. Each contributed a droplet of blood. Each bequeathed a snippet of memory to produce those déjà vu moments that perplex and delight me. Each lived so I could live. Without one, I would not exist.

I carry the good and the bad of all who preceded me, allowing me to choose the good over the bad. I choose calm and understanding over my father’s temper and intolerance. I have learned to choose self-determination and feminism over my mother’s acquiescence and meekness. My father gave me the talent to write, my mother the ability to nurture. A grandmother I barely knew gave me generosity. Other grandparents, unknown to me, added I don’t know what to my DNA but each had a contribution.

I was given heritages from France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland even though I have not stepped foot on the soils of those places. Perhaps these roots explain my love of bagpipes, cheese, chocolate, Edith Piaf, the Irish tin whistle, and Beethoven.

I did not pass on this DNA. It stops with me. I chose to adopt rather than conceive. My influence on my adopted daughter has been small — our tastes and opinions are inharmonious — perhaps because she was older when she came to me. Yet, surprisingly, her children could be my blood kin. They are a combination of the best in me, as though my DNA was absorbed through their skin during the nights I held them close easing a fear or relieving a fever. I look at them and see better versions of me.