Well. What can I tell you? If you start off as a cash transaction, money is going to have a strange place in your life.

When a baby/child/adult is attached to their parents through DNA, there’s something basically unarguable about the relationship, for better or for worse. We are connected.  

The moon and the ocean are connected because, in their relationship, they are part of the big picture of the universe.

If you cut the moon away from the ocean and gave/sold it to, say, I don’t know, Pluto, the ocean would be a different thing. The universe would be a different thing. What would create the pull of tides in the watery ocean body? How would it know it was still the ocean if it didn’t have the moon there, reminding it of who it was?

When my dad died, I went through his files and found almost every letter I’d ever sent my parents. In almost all of them, I wrote about money. In my childhood letters, I wrote about what I’d spent at camp or while vacationing with friends. There were so many dollar signs in these letters. When I was twelve and babysitting for my cousin in NYC, there were accounts of what I’d been paid and what I’d bought, down to the penny. I felt embarrassed reading them. They were boring and said very little about what I’d done. They said nothing ever about how I was feeling.

When I left home for college and life, the letters became requests and justifications. I needed money for books, to get my car repaired, for rent, to pay bills. I needed help catching up. I would be able to support myself soon, very soon, but at the moment I was in trouble and needed help. My parents almost always said yes. Many times we’d have to have conversations by phone before they’d send a check, and usually I’d start out sounding confident, but by the end of the calls, I’d be in tears. Please save me.

I never had money in the bank. If someone gave me fifty dollars, I’d spend fifty-one. Having money around was like having hot coals in my hand. Having a savings account made zero sense to me. What if money was something that could disappear without warning, like your good mood or a bird on a branch? Why would you save something that could be gone when you blinked? 

I always needed my parents to give me money, and if they refused or if I didn’t want to ask, I’d steal it. For as humiliating as it was to ask my parents for money, the world felt right on its axis when I got the check. I could breathe for a while.

If a fetus’s umbilical cord is pinched, it can cause malnourishment, brain damage, and death for the fetus. The cord between mother and infant is essential. When you are kept, life bonds you to your mother. When you are adopted, more often than not, money does.

I interviewed over twenty-five adopted people about money. I asked them about their relationship with it. I asked them if they knew how much they cost. I asked them if their bodies felt commodified. I asked them if they knew how much money they had. I asked them if it was enough.  

I’ll write more about this next time. And I’ll tell you the other question, the one about the money fairy, and I’ll tell you about me yelling at a bunch of adopted people and telling them they did not ask for enough.