Baby Girl

Somewhere there's a hospital bracelet with two words on it: Baby Girl. No name yet — mine hadn't been decided, or maybe it had, by someone who wasn't in the room to write it down. That bracelet is where my story starts on paper, before April, before Kristi, before any of the names that would eventually be mine.

I think about that bracelet more than almost any other object from my life, including ones I actually remember. It's proof that a story can start before anyone involved knows how it's going to go. Before the foster family. Before the reunion, forty-one years later. Before any of the people who would go on to love me had any idea I existed.

I ended up with three names before my first birthday. Baby Girl, then April — for the month I was born one day too early to be born in — then Kristi, the name I've carried since. Every one of them was true for a while. None of them cancels the others out.

I don't say this to make anyone sad. I say it because I think a lot of people — adoptees, foster kids, the parents on every side of these stories — are carrying a version of that bracelet. A beginning that happened before anyone could write the ending. If that's you, I don't think you're behind. I think you're just further back in the story than most people ever have to look.