Fit

To begin with, I really love living in Eugene. Probably close to half my enjoyment of the past three years can be attributed to the climate, the culture, the politics, and the scenery. It's a wonderful place to live. Every time I leave town on a trip, it's not long at all before I wish I was back home. And yesterday afternoon, it hit me very suddenly what might explain that.

I'm adopted, in case you didn't know. My mother (not adopted mother; mother) told me that from the very beginning, when I was still too young to understand what it meant. There was never a painful sudden realization of anything, because she made sure that I was never unaware of it. Still, a few of the details didn't come out until I grew up enough that it occurred to me to ask the right questions. When I was in my early twenties, I finally asked for the first time, "Were my biological parents married?" She paused a long time before answering and said "They were both in graduate school, and they didn't think they could support a child and do that at the same time." And I said, "Come on, answer the question," and she finally admitted, "No, they weren't." For close to twenty years I've known that I'm illegitimate, and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. It means that on the few occasions someone's called me a bastard, I've been able to answer "Yep!"

But yesterday, I put two and two together with two, two, and two, and came to a big realization. I was conceived by two graduate students who weren't married, during the Summer of Love. And not either edge of the Summer of Love, either: the smack dab center of it. If we define summer as June, July and August, which is quite reasonable, then my entry into the world bisected it precisely.

Summer of Love.

Unmarried biological parents.

Who were not only in college, but grad school.

Very, very likely I am the offspring of two hippies.

Now, the only hitch in my theory is that this all happened in Texas. Texas was not exactly a hippie-magnet. Dallas has its Bohemian neighborhoods, but they're a bit put on. It's hard to imagine a VW bus with a gun rack, and a banner reading "War ain't healthy for buckeroos and other living critters," but maybe. At any rate, if I've got that much concentrated hippie in my DNA, then is it any surprise that I've found such a snug spot in Eugene?

What's far more surprising is that I survived thirty years in Texas without getting myself lynched.