December 2018 – the unSecret Garden

(or Caterpillars & Cucumbers, Confusion & Clarity)

I’ve got the idea of home on the brain again. It’s probably not surprising, given the time of year. Well-meaning friends and neighbors casually ask “are you going home for the holidays?” to which I can only reply “no, we are staying right here.” But it is actually fitting because, for all intents and purposes, this is home now. It’s the place I’ve lived the longest. It’s the only home my boys have ever known. Yet this idea of “home” seems to elude me, and gnaw at me, a kind of still unresolved story line.

My wife and I often play the “where should we move to” game? I actually get unnerved when we do this because we just seem to talk in circles, feeling more unsettled each time we take up the discussion. “If you don’t like where you are, just picture where you want to be” extols August “Auggie” Pullman in the movie version of Wonder. It sounds easy enough, but this particular vision seems impossible to see. Earlier this year we flirted with packing it all up and moving somewhere else, a kind of “anywhere but here” mission. But in the end, the stars just didn’t align. Job offers never materialized. Negotiations stalled. Dreams and desires and hopes collided. It was as if the universe was clearly sending us a message. We are meant to stay put, right here. For now at least.

Continue reading “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” →

(or The Ghost of a Therapist Past)

I was awoken the other morning by the most disturbing dream. It was one of those dreams that felt so very real that it took me a few minutes to realize that it was only, thankfully, just a dream. So here goes:

I was at my old summer camp, or a place that felt and reminded me of camp. I was there with a group of cousins and their spouses. Actually, they are my first cousins once removed, the first cousins of my mother, but due to some wacky birthing patterns on that side of the family, I am closer in age to those cousins than my own actual first cousins. There was also a group from KAAN – the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network – at this camp-like retreat, and it became clear that the space had been double-booked, and we were forced to share this communal space for our respective gatherings. We were tolerating each other – and each other’s presence – but only barely. Suddenly, I said out loud, to no one in particular, “I never thought I’d live long enough to actually feel home-sick, to actually want to go home rather than be a camp.” To which, the ex-therapist, who was sitting in a rocking chair across the room, replied “but you did” in the most snarky and cruel tone.

Perhaps I should stop and explain. The ex-therapist has 2 adopted children from Korea, which is why my unconscious put my family gathering in conflict with this KAAN meet-up. That part makes some sense to me. What I do not understand, at all, is why the ex-therapist is still showing up in my dreams and what in the world I can do to expel her, once and for all, from my unconsciousness! And I don’t have any idea of why my unconscious needed to send me this message or what it even means. Was the ex-therapist making a statement on the length or quality of my life as compared to her own? Was she a ghost or spirit in the dream? And why was she and her chosen family intruding upon my own family gathering at my beloved summer camp of all places?

Continue reading “Dream Dream Dream” →