My Neighbor

Deb is sitting in my kitchen. We've smoked a little medical cannabis. We are as high as possible and comfortable with each other.

Deb and I went to the same high school. We graduated in the same class. Back then, we knew each other but were not friends. She lived on one side of town and attended one Catholic church; I lived across the river and attended a different Catholic church. That was enough to separate us when we entered the city’s only Catholic high school.

Christmas is in two days. I tell Deb that I bought my brother a DNA kit for his holiday gift. She listens, looks at me but says nothing. Sharing info is easy for me. Sometimes I share too much. Deb knows things about me. She knows that I am adopted. She knows that my brother is adopted but we are not from the same family. And she has an idea of how much I receive from my social security check. She asked and after a pause, I gave a vague answer.

I elaborate.

“My brother has never cared much about his background.”

Deb laughs and says, “Hell! All I know about my family is that we're a bunch of Germans.”

"You missed the point. You missed the point. You really really missed the point.” I sing it to myself, look at Deb and wonder whether to explain. I don't think so.

She has no idea how that reply gets to the heart of an adoptee, who as adults are forbidden to know the simplist things - like their ethnicity.

What my neighbor doesn't get is that up until two years ago, I could never say with certainty that I was German or Polish or any other ethnicity. An early boyfriend told me I looked Native American so I let my hair grow down the length of my back and took on that heritage.

But I really enjoyed being Greek. I was younger then. I held on to this identity for decades. It came to me in a dream. A green mountain top and a column of hearty Grecian women each carrying a tray of fresh, luscious, plump tomatoes. My black haired Greek woman toppled the anemic lore of childhood. In that tale, I was of French ancestry. My adoptive mother told me so. I imagine it was one of the few deliberate lies she'd ever spoken. Because she knew better. But more on that later.

I am trying to convey to my neighbor the immense delight and wondrous surprise of my DNA results. If anyone should be properly awed, it would be her. Like I said, we went to Catholic schools. Attended Catholic church, catechism classes, confession, confirmation…

“Imagine my surprise,” I tell her, “when I did the spit test and discovered that I am Jewish.”

My neighbor's face remains undisturbed.

There is so much that I want to share. But I would be talking to a stone wall, to a golden crucifix hanging over an altar, to someone I knew and thought a friend.

The percentage of Ashkanazi genetic material in my DNA is nothing less than a modern miracle.

What is my ethnicity? European Jew. Ashkanazi.

My neighbor leaves, thanks me for sharing, heads across the street to her barking Dachshund, a dog with German origins.

We are closer than she knows.