Mysterious Origins:
A very good op-end in the NYTimes on adoption; nature versus nurture and the misty past:
I AM not adopted; I have mysterious origins.
I have said that sentence many times in the course of my life as an adopted person. I like it so much I put it into the mouth of a character in the novel I’m writing. The character and I are both fond of the idea. We can think of ourselves as living in the dense pages of 19th-century fiction, where one’s origins - the exact mother and father - are not nearly as important as one’s “circumstances.”
…
I like mysteries. I like the sense of uniqueness that comes from having unknown origins (however false that sense may be). I have a dear friend who is also adopted. We spoke as we were considering whether we should enter our names into the New York State Adoption Registry, where we might learn something about our history.
My friend grew up in a small town upstate near a university. She had constructed for herself a satisfying fantasy in which her mother and father were in town on fellowships from the World Bank, had the occupations “king” and “queen,” had ruled in a remote region where everyone was fit, ate a diet centered upon yak yogurt and lived 110 years.
No one is a genetic match to his or her parents. Nature has gone to a great deal of trouble to see that we are not like them (a strong argument against adding cloning to the human parental mix). Through the miracle of natural genetic recombination, each child, with the sole exception of an identical twin, is conceived as a unique being. Even the atmosphere of the womb works its subtle changes, and by the time we emerge into the light, we are our own persons. Knowing every single ancestor, therefore, will never solve the deeper mystery, which of course is the dreadful question of who we become.