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Growing up, my dad worked in the city and was often out around the world on business trips; auditing hotels and having affairs. My mom stayed at home raising us. Making sure we were fed and watching the television. We never lacked toys for food or clothes. Birthdays and Christmases were always a haul. Still. It's only been recently that I've started to truly contextualize the neglect and what I have to assume is a fundamental lack of basic parenting on both their parts.

Being the oldest of three; they tried and failed to conceive and by their early thirties adopted me. First on the scene. White, French-canadian mother. Black, english-american father. Biracial, bilingual adopted son from the maritimes. Post-nuclear family.

Then, as you do when you adopt a pet, a couple years later you adopt another one to keep it company. Same deal as me. But then, as it turns out. He ain't shooting blanks and here comes number three. The accidental surprise.

No sweat, right?

Except now Larry, moving up the corporate ladder and in line for a big promotion suffers a stroke at 30,000 feet and is in a hospital in Toronto while Carole travels back and forth while we are being watched by our grandparents the summer before I start kindergarten.

Everything changes forever.

I'm awkward and shy and I don't quite understand why I can't speak English in the French school. Also what is English and what is French and what's the difference? Might be why this girl named Crystal keeps sticking her tongue out at me? Or why the older girl from across the street was yelling at me to go away and all I was doing was staring. I was probably just lonely and wanted to watch them skip rope or jump elastics.