The Hill News

My mother carried a copy of my birth certificate in her wallet from the time I was about 4 years old until I was almost 21, prompted by an incident with an emergency-room nurse who was shocked and confused to discover that the blond-haired, green-eyed, white woman in front of her was not a camp counselor, as she’d initially assumed, but the actual birth mother to the brown-haired, brown-eyed, brown-skinned child whose bleeding foot she’d just attended to. While my mom was a combination of shocked and confused herself, in that moment she focused on a larger issue: the safety of her child. She was afraid of what would or could happen some other time in some other emergency if she were challenged, and I was somehow denied or delayed needed care. For me, it was the first time I remember thinking how weird it was that anyone would think she wasn't my mom. At 4 years old, the conclusion is easily “Grown-ups are dumb.”

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