The long way home

I’ve always known I was adopted. My adoptive parents, Earl and Charlene, were great. There were never any secrets, they told me about my birth parents and answered any questions I had starting when I was very young.

I was told they were both killed in a car accident when I was just an infant and that there were no other family members who could take custody of me. Mom and Dad said that my bios weren’t local people. One time Dad let it slip that they were aliens. I just thought Dad, in his politically incorrect way, meant they were from another country.

No. He meant they were aliens from another planet.

When I turned 20, my best friend, Ash, got me one of those DNA test-thingys. He knew I had a lot of questions about who I was and who my ancestors were.

“You never know,” he said. “There may be some long-lost cousins out there. A whole branch of your family tree no one knew about.”

Who knew a little tube of spit would cause a national security crisis.

I should have suspected something was off, when the testing facility contacted me to ask for a new sample. They claimed there was some kind of cross-contamination and they couldn’t process my saliva.

After a second go-round, contact wasn’t an email or registered letter. The testing facility sent out a person, a real Man in Black, and a big black car. We were driven out to some plain, window-less building way out of town.

Mom and Dad, and I were all taken to separate rooms. I can’t tell you how long we were separated. I was asked about my adoption and what my parents told me. How old I was, any history of very specific health problems. They asked about my green eyes.

“How the hell am I supposed to know,” I said, trying to keep my voice soft and calm. “I was adopted, remember.”’

They asked about my Rh negative blood. I tried to explain the science of the factor and antibodies. When the interrogator’s eyes glassed over, I switched tactics and said something about it being a holdover from being an alien spore that was used to artificially impregnate a human woman they abducted.

You would have thought I grew antenna and my skin spontaneously turned green.

My interview then came to an abrupt end. Understand, I was being facetious. At that time, I had no idea of what the truth actually was, or how close I came to it with my attempt at humor.

Later, at home, when I had a chance to compare notes with Mom and Dad, the truth, my truth, came out.

Early one morning, Mom woke up from what she said was the most vivid and most disturbing dream she ever had. Trying to shake the dread, she got up to make a pot of coffee. From the kitchen window, the same window I’ve looked out of for years when it was my turn to wash dishes, she saw a weird light at the end of our driveway. Our driveway didn’t end at the house, it went another 50 feet or so into an open field. The drive rose to a crest over a small hill. The light, she said, appeared to be coming over that rise. She woke up Dad to investigate, thinking some local teens were out rutting up the field. We had problems with kids in trucks mudding.

Turned out it wasn’t kids, it was a spaceship, a crashed ship. Dad and Mom found three… beings… inside. Two larger, seemingly adults and one small being… me. Somehow, and this is the part I had trouble grasping, the adult beings gave me to Mom and Dad to, I don’t know, help, protect, raise?

Dad said once he and Mom were holding me, the ship just… he said “disintegrated” was the best description. It didn’t burn, or explode, it just turned to dust, then the dust sort of filtered into the dirt.

They never told anyone about the ship and explained me away as “the orphaned child of a family friend.” From that point, my childhood was boringly normal, until a random spit test show some bizarre anomalies.

That’s how I learned the truth about my true identity, and it was that truth that had me up early that day While getting a glass of water at the kitchen sink, I saw a light at the end of the driveway. It must have been just like what Mom saw 20 years ago.

I hope they know where I am. Maybe the ship that picked me up somehow got a message to them, to tell them I’m okay. I hope so.