The Gift of My Adoptive Mama’s Perfume

If you pick up an empty bottle that once contained expensive perfume, its possible to still distinguish the fine fragrance, even though the bottle is empty.

Adoptive mamas, you are the perfume and you want your life and love to be a timeless fragrance of fine perfume for your adopted and foster child.

That’s what my mom longed for, but like many adopted and foster kids, I couldn’t smell the perfume.

But, if handed the full bottle, I’d either grab it and throw it to the ground, stomp on it while screaming, plug my nose and run in the opposite direction, or bite the glass container.

Why such a powerful reaction?

Was I just a character-flawed kid who had no choice? Were the genes stacked against me? Was there no hope for me to someday be able to cherish the fragrance of the perfume?

In a surprising turn of events, I can now smell the fine perfume fragrance of my my late adoptive mom.

I can smell her best-in-town apple pie, see her taking care of my kitty, and feel her gentle hands rubbing warm oil on my childhood asthmatic chest at bedtime.

It was her legacy to me.

Legacy is a gift from one generation to the next.

Could it be that what I was experiencing was that my late mom’s legacy was surfacing in me?