A Packaging Problem -- A Guest Post by Ruth Monnig

Rachel and I met running.  Actually, we met after running a 5k.  I had moved back to Durham from Atlanta, where I discovered road racing, for fun.  I didn’t have false hopes of grandeur, but I did wait around after races for results and the potential material accolade for coming in within  a prominent place in my category.  Rachel was doing the same thing.  She, however, was accompanied by an entourage: Mike (her boyfriend), Andrew (her ex-boyfriend), Hannah (her dog) and Emma, her pet pig dressed in a leaopard skin hand made fleece sweatshirt.  I had to meet this pig, and, therefore, Rachel.  

We were standing there in our running clothes.  Without much equipment, running can be a great equalizer.  Yes, there are flashy technical shoes and sweat wicking fabrics that can cost a small fortune.  Generally speaking, though, you can’t read much into the running uniform.  Sometimes the best runners are in the most worn shoes and the newest runners are in the best outfits, all by design.  Experienced runners don’t race in new shoes, and new runners simply want to have the right equipment for their new , “thing.”  At the end of the race, there might be discussion of shoe fit or preferred sports bra, but it’s all a blur and everyone is sweaty.  “How d’ya do?” Is what is important.  

Rachael and I hit it off immediately.  We were both animal people.  We were both sporty girls.  We were both academically employed or oriented.  We were both goofy.  We were there to see The Results.  She was infinitely more competitive, and talented, than I was, but we were both there for that tiny bit of affirming acknowledgement that we were good enough to be awarded what Rachel called, an “SMO.”  Shiny Metal Object.  A medal.  A trophy.  An amulet rewarding a relatively insignificant accomplishment that would spark little bits of giddy joy.  The race t-shirt wouldn’t suffice as recognition of a job well done.  One really needed an SMO to feel accredited.

Rachel and I were both suffering from, “Look at Me,” syndrome.  We were both smart, funny and accomplished, but somewhere along the line, we didn’t get enough, “thatta girls.”  Each of our ailments had different pathologies and required different palliative, “remedies,” but ultimately, we had something in common that ran a little deeper than the finger nail polish and salad dressing that might normally align a female friendship.  Perhaps it was because we were both single and independent and were each fitting in our worlds in the same ways - we were figuring it out as we went along.   

She was a Yale grad who had gone on to be an editor for Oxford University Press and Duke Press.  At the time she was planning a stab at medical school. Her brain had a name brand pedigree in education and experience.  She was the smartest person in the room and you knew it pretty quickly.  Rachel was the first friend to be completely honest with me and not mince words.  She wasn’t afraid to hurt my feelings.  She also celebrated my good stuff in a way no one else ever had.  I would give her artwork, or something hand made and she would dance around the room and gush.  It was authentic.  It was authentic because she wasn’t afraid to say other things to me like, “everyone wants to write a book, you need to be sure your reasons for writing it.  People ask me to read their work all the time and it is a big responsibility I don’t want if they aren’t writing for the right reasons.”  Rachel had clear boundaries and I learned asking her for a ride to the airport wasn’t on her list of friend favors.  Yet, when my husband had a brain lesion, she dropped everything and flew to Phoenix to be with me for a week while he had unsuccessful brain surgery and then a successful gamma knife treatment.  Rachel and I were sister friends, not afraid to have a spat.  In addition to the therapy group that told me I needed to, “tone it down,” Rachel very specifically let me know I had a packaging problem.

We went on a road trip to Atlanta after I sold my house so that I could start packing up.  We found ourselves shopping in a Buckhead thrift store.  Neither of us was looking for anything in particular, but she HATED everything I pulled out.  I had been pulling out basic work dresses.  All in bold colors.  All conservative enough to be funked up with a scarf or jewelry.  To me this was the practical way to buy/shop.  More bang for your buck if you could prosper from your ability to accessorize.  

“Yuck.  Yuck. Yuck,” she would say at every item.  I wasn’t hurt but I thought perhaps she was indicating that I had bad taste. 

“I can’t believe you would wear that color pink.  Those buttons are hideous.  If this is how you dress, you have a packaging problem.”

Something in me wanted to argue with her.  A packaging problem?  She had never really seen me with clothes on - we were runner girls.  I felt this was unfair.  I was bothered by this, probably because she was so spot on it pinched.  At some point in the future, I let her know how I felt.  Maybe she didn’t get me.  I mean, there was a part of me that was hot pink.  This was how I was raised to look and it was ingrained in my essence.  My mother had even uttered the phrase, “Don’t you care about your appearance?”  I wore a dress to school every single day until third grade.  It was NOT a uniform.  How I looked was a, “supposed to.”

Reactions puzzled me.  Was Rachel calling me a fraud?  No.  She wasn’t.  She was just saying, that is not how I see you.  Neither she, nor the therapy group felt that my contents fit into my outward appearance.  Was I a fraud?  How could I know if I didn’t know?  

Many years later, when I met my husband, he would introduce me as, “a triathlete.”  We met cycling and I can understand it, but I couldn’t stand it.  While it was true at the time, I was also a PhD student.  I was teaching classes.  I was dealing with my dying parents.  “Triathlete,” felt wrong.  None of the other labels seemed to fit then either.  For what ever reason, it bothered me that I didn’t have a concise way to define myself or label who I was.  Did I know who I was?  

Cliches abound.  You can’t judge a book by its cover.  Beauty is only skin deep.  Not all that glitters is gold.  I have always preferred, Character is what you are in the dark.  Probably because I was in the dark and had been living there without knowing that a nightlight wasn’t natural.  Cliches and stereotypes exist as organizational constructs.  They are generally thought of as, “not good,” but they do exist for a reason.  They put people and concepts in certain places to organize our understanding of our world.  They are generalizations of our own personal metadata.  They are a label, and that label is a snapshot of the ingredients of our life.  Any vegan would tell you you have to look at the whole label and the specifics, but we don’t do that with people.  

For me, as an adoptee, I think I have always searched for my ingredients.  Not knowing what they are has made it impossible for me to fit comfortably into any category.  I didn’t come with a label or a table of contents.  Most things in life do.  In fact, most people can look at an FDA food label and relate to the dilemma adoptees face.

Name of the product: adoptees aren’t allowed to know.

Manufacturer or distributors name and address: for adoptees, we get an altered version.  The real names on our official birth certificates don’t reflect our manufacturer’s name.  As for address?  Most birth mothers in the 50’s and 60’s went somewhere else.  An adoptee, frequently, is not indigenous to the area.

Weight of the product:  metaphorically heavy.

Ingredients listed according to amount:  UNKNOWN.  The bits and bites of who we are, and how much of what we have in us from a genetic standpoint is hidden from us, and is routinely discounted as “not important.”  Sure, genetics was in infancy when I was born, but times change.  What about disease?  Why can’t we know our “what,” in context?  We can take the test, but we have to have a comparable to understand what this means.  We aren’t allowed to know any of this unless we do the digging, and are lucky enough to have genetic relatives who test, too.  

Number of servings per product:  a liberal interpretation might be siblings?  Sorry.  Can’t know that.  

Our food comes with a list of allergens, a bar code, a use by date.  Adoptees know more about a can of soup than they do themselves.  

If I had to come up with a label generic enough to cover me in my life, what would it be?  

I am a missing person.

No, you won’t find my face on a flyer stapled to a pole on a city block along with photos of dogs and cats that owners are worried about.  That is not the kind of missing person I am.  I am the verb, the noun, and the object.  This is not a grammar lesson, but the words, the nature and use of words and meanings matter.

To look at the root of the word is to look at the label for me, the adoptee.   An old English and Germanic word.  Look at  the history and synonyms of the verb:  failing to hit, escaping notice, failing to find, lacking, failing to perceive, perceive with regret an absence or loss, avoided.  The history of the noun: a loss or lack, the act of regretting a loss or absence, an act of being without.  

There is no better label, no better package.  Each one of those definitions fits.  

My life might be described as, “fitting in while missing.”  I listened to what I thought, “they,” wanted.  I molded myself into their definition of me.  I was packaging myself to get a reaction, to gain approval.  My outsides were not self expression, but a reaction to an expectation.  My actions did elicit reactions, just not from the people I was trying to please.  People who were looking at me, really seeing me, really knowing me, saw the incongruity of it all. On a micro level, the pink dress, the blonde hair, the extreme athleticism, fit me bit didn’t fit me.  On a macro level, these things fit me precisely.  The contradictive packaging was real.  There was conflict.  I was in but not of.  I was a neutral color in a hot pink shirt.  I was a girl who knitted and sewed and needle pointed when not out training on a bike or in a pool or running on a road for hours and hours to win the SMO.   I was the picture of conformity in a constant state of protest.  As such, I was missing.  Missing the mark.  Missing the point.  Missing the recipe that would help create something tasty from this mixture of sweet, sour, salty and bland.  I didn’t know what I didn’t know.  The facts were kept from me.  I was missing the details that were inherent to my definition.  

In French, the term “I miss you,” is, “ tu me manques.” Literally, that is something akin to “I am missing you from me.”  Bingo.  The perfect sentiment.  The perfect way to address the otherness.  A beautiful way to recognize the relationships involved in missing.  An eloquent way to recognize that there is a singularity in the duality of missing.  I am missing you from me.  Yes, birth mother, I am missing you from me.  Yes, secrecy and hidden truth, I am missing you from me.  I am missing the details, the ingredients, the you and the things about you that  created me.  I can’t have a label until I know that.  I am missing you from me.  I am missing me from me.  I am missing,  I am a missing person.