Last week's new theory, which, I guess, means it's not so new anymore

My Dad was adopted when he was about one. He was born during World War II (or, if you prefer, World War – Part II) and most of my theories surrounding his being put up for adoption involve the War. My guess is that his birth father was a soldier and killed in action, perhaps even before Dad was born. Unable to deal with a child on her own, or deal with another child in the family or perhaps unable to deal with this reminder of her dead husband, his birth mother put Dad up for adoption. The fact that Dad had a bad neck at birth may have also contributed to this decision. We have a picture of him as a toddler, looking cheerful as can be, but unable to lift his head. Surgery fixed that soon enough and he’s been as well as can be expected since.

Dad has long expressed a disinterest in finding out any information about his birth parents. They didn’t want him and that’s fine because Grandma and Grandpa did. He considered them his parents and that was that. The birth certificate we have for him lists his birth name as one of the spelling variations of the German version of ‘Smith’ (I forget which and don’t feel like guessing today). As a result, we’ve always just generically taken our heritage from Dad to be solid German because really we don’t know. (Hey, maybe his parents were spies for the German government during the War and were caught and executed and that’s why Dad was up for adoption. That would be interesting! Not very cool really but certainly interesting!)

Last week while we were chit-chatting amongst us, I came to a different conclusion. Since we didn’t know what background Dad is really, that meant, instead of just being one heritage, it could be all of them! I mean, genetically all humans are essentially the same. The divisions amongst humans have been created by humans, not by whatever being or process started humans in general (and belief in what being or process is certainly one of those divisions!). So, while I already believed that all humans are just one big race of people anyway, this decision just made me feel more connected to everyone a little bit more. Which was nice.

It also fed nicely into one of my other beliefs. Why dislike someone based on the colour of their skin or their country of origin? That’s silly. When you get to know people, getting beyond all those surface things, there’s often perfectly good personal reasons you can find to dislike them.

… You can smile at that you know. It was a joke. Relax a little…