“Ignore the man behind the curtain!” The Great and Powerful Oz bellowed as smoke and flames shot into the air around his enormous translucent head. This command struck sheer terror into my heart. Not Dorothy, though. She marched right over to that curtain and yanked it back, exposing the knobs and levers and fraud of a polished showman. She was far braver than I am.

Sometimes I worry that if I ask too many questions I’ll expose something ugly and raw that I would rather not know. I don’t agree with, “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” as national policy, but on a purely personal level I have used it more times than I would like to admit. I’m not proud of this cowardice, but I do own it.

I was raised in a family that kept secrets. As far as I know, I was the biggest secret of all. Nobody was supposed to know that I was adopted, least of all me. I might be scarred. I might be ruined. Or, worst of all, I might turn out like my birth mother, who was obviously incompetent or worse. She must have been, or she wouldn’t have found herself in a position to give up her baby. Me.

It took so many years and so much preparation to finally gain the courage to peek behind that curtain and ask, in so many words, “was I adopted?” It’s an easy question, really. Basically a yes or no would do. What I got in response was, “Would it matter?”

Yes. It matters. It matters that my entire personal history has been a lie. It matters that somewhere out in the world there are people with whom I share a genetic tie that, in spite of the lies and omissions of truth that began the day I was born, cannot be denied. Until my own child was born I had never laid eyes on anyone who was related to me by birth. I had never before seen myself in anyone else, and it was a strange experience indeed.

So, yes, it matters. I wish you had come out from behind that curtain years ago. I wish you would have trusted me with the truth of my existence. I would have loved you still.

TODAY’S QUESTION

For some reason I frequently feel like I’m totally forgettable. People I’ve met several times don’t seem to recall who I am. Have I left no impression at all? Am I invisible? Sometimes I wonder. If I don’t seem to leave much impression in life, how am I to leave any type of legacy after I’m gone?

When it comes to the big picture, we are all just tiny blips on the radar screen of time. We are born, we live, we die. Most of us leave behind loved ones who will mourn and remember us, but over time they too will expire and along with them, the memory of us will die. It’s as though our lives are a flame, warm and bright but fleeting. Some of us are like tiny birthday candles, snuffed out quickly and soon forgotten. Others are a bonfire, or even a forest fire. Some lives reach millions, for better or worse, others hardly reach beyond their own front doors.

Of course I want my family to remember me with love and tenderness, and I’m sure they will, at least for a little while. I do wonder what will become of me and my memory after I’m gone, but deep down I think I know. I came from nowhere, and I will return there. I was adopted at birth, never allowed to know anything about the circumstances of my origin. I simply appeared. I believe that after I’m gone a while, I will simply disappear, forgotten from the family history, possibly relegated to a footnote, or an asterisk on a distant relative’s family tree. I was a give away for one family and an add-on for another, and as such, perhaps easily dismissed by both.

Outside of my family, I hope to leave a larger legacy. I hope that somewhere out in the world at least a few of my students look back fondly on their experiences in my classroom. I hope they remember that I taught them something, or tried to make some lesson memorable, or even that I was goofy and silly in class. I hope that at least one person took away something positive from their time under my care. Sadly, I feel like the odds are against me on this point too. People grow up and move on. Rarely do they remember their fourth or second grade teacher making a mark on their lives. It seems the only time they do recall these people, they do so in horror.

Maybe this is part of the reason I write and quilt and scrapbook. These are all ways for me to say, “I was here.” I may just be one of those little blips existing in a tiny space in the universe until my own flame is snuffed out, but my life is important. I live and love and dream. I can and will leave my mark on the world, and I will do my best to leave it better than it was when I arrived.