I’d forgotten I wouldn’t be able to sleep in. After deciding to call in sick and desperately waiting around for 2 hours for someone to jump my car, I probably mistakenly, made the long, dark drive North. I was plagued with fatigue, and sinus pressure, my ears were both plugged, and at one point felt my blood sugar tank, having eaten nothing all day, and rabidly pulled into a McDonalds. I managed to finish my two burgers, fries, and shake while getting completely disoriented in the dark and lost on my way back to the highway. I pulled into my parent’s driveway at 11pm, having been awake nearly 18 hours, sick, and exhausted, and fell into bed.

I was roused at 7:30, wrapped up in blankets, and pets, and phlem, and sinus pressure. Mom offered to shut the door and let me sleep, but I valiantly rose and off we went. 

A leisurely, if rainy, morning in Sequim, WA. We were handed broken candy canes, during breakfast, by the slow walking, pipe smoking Santa. After, I watched him haul himself back into his white creeper van, and drive away. We patiently navigated shopping aisles, carefully avoiding what I like to call, The Parade of Geezers. Mom hushes me, telling me they can hear me. I give her a look and ask, “really mom? Can they?” We finally find some cold medicine and after wrestling with the packaging, I down some greatfully.

“What are you doing?” My friend texts me. “Sitting on the couch, coughing, and looking up Hoodoo books.” I respond.

I took a long nap. Waking at some point, covered in sweat and needing to pee. Its silent downstairs, and I crawl back into bed. I think about random things. The fact that I never really get sick. My life is so stressed right now. With the new kitten aka monster, and the new adventure car that has been a piece of shit since I got it, the changing dynamics of my work, the bittersweet wedding and then death last month, the failing health of my grandma, my own cancer issues… and when life’s got you down, what better answer than to give you a cold… I think about all the people who keep telling me how much money I could save if I quit drinking, like I’m some kind of chain smoker who spends hundreds of dollars a year commiting slow suicide by smoking each day. No one ever talks about how much money I could save if I quit eating food. Or how much money I could save if I quit taking showers. Well maybe think on that. And then I think about DNA testing. The answers it might provide me. And the answers it might not. “You’re Korean,” my mom laughs at me. “Am I? Am I really?” I respond. I am past 30 now, navigating thru my first life crisis, trying to figure out how to dip my toe into the water of my adoption, and am starting to face my first real health issues. As a child, calling myself a box of chocolates was cute, the mysteries of an adopted child, but now is a time when I need some answers. “Just make it simple,” my mom says, about the dreaded Letter to my Birth Mother, the key to opening the door to begin The Search. “You’re over thinking it too much,” she says. But she doesn’t understand how terrified I am. At worst, this could be the first, and the last letter I ever write to my birth mother…

I wake up again and we head out to dinner with friends. We were 15 minutes late, but thats not unusual. I order a Hot Toddy and Crab Risotto. The place is loud, and warm. And because, as is the way with loud places, we all talk louder. I’m sure the combination of cold medicine and alcohol was a questionable choice, but for the time being my sore throat and cough were abated. We asked what our friends did today, in the rain. “We went to Sequim, WA.”