I’m seven years old.
I lose my parents after a soccer game.
A mom of my teammate is helping me look for my parents and she points to an Asian couple and asks, “Is that them?”
I’m confused. Why would that be them?
I’m ten years old.
I’m meeting my friend’s mom for the first time. I tell her my name is “Anna Wagner”. She asks me what my “real name” was.
I knew she wanted to hear an “Asian name.”
I’m thirteen years old.
I’m in class and some Asian writing shows up in the book we’re reading.
The teacher says, in front of everybody, “Anna, can you read this?”
I’m embarrassed that I look like the people whose language that was.
I’m sixteen years old.
I’m going out to eat with my dad for my birthday.
The waiter asks me, ‘‘Table for one?" I say no, I’m with him.
I see the confusion on their face.
I’m nineteen years old.
I’m maturing into a young woman.
No one says to me, “Everyday, you’re looking more and more like your mother.”
I’m pensive about the fact that I will never know anyone who looks like me and shares my DNA until or unless I birth a child.
As a product of interracial adoption, it creates countless barriers between and within my life.
