The hardest thing to explain is just how pervasive the effects of this discovery have been. Most people think it is just a change in what I knew about my biology. Unfortunately it’s not that simple; it’s so much more complex and all encompassing. Unless you’ve experienced it, you don’t understand how the betrayal clouds not just your present, but also your history. Now when telling a childhood story or thinking about life as a kid, there’s always a shade to it, a question over my memory: what would it have been like if I had known the truth? Was that a lie too? Did that happen that way because my parents knew the truth? Would it have all unfolded that way?
One of the most surprising parts of this process has been how my feelings about my hometown seem to have changed. I grew up near New Orleans and lived in the city for college and afterwards. I then moved to California in my early 20’s for my career. Since relocating, my identity has always been that of a transplanted southerner, the woman who misses Mardi Gras so brings king cake to her daughters’ school every year, who makes gumbo every New Year’s day and still (even after 18 years in CA) addresses her casual emails to friends, “Hey y’all.” But since my NPE revelation, even my joy at recollections of New Orleans that have nothing to do with my parents are tarnished. Going to listen to Rebirth Brass Band at the Maple Leaf, eating po’boys, or hearing the clanging of the streetcar rolling past my first post-college apartment….they all seem gray now. I feel a sad pang at these thoughts, rather than the warmth I used to feel. I often now think more about the underbelly, the other side of the region. While the New Orleans area has a reputation of being open, friendly, and accepting, it wasn’t always like that. Now I identify it as the environment in which my mother felt she couldn’t be honest about her experiences as a young woman, the place in which she (or they) decided that living a lie was better than living the truth but potentially being ostracized.
Like so much of this situation, I now feel complexities around something that should be simple. Despite so many things being confusing and unclear, I do now have clarity around one thing: home. Home isn’t where I’m from, it’s where I am now. Home is here, in this house with the family I have created. As I rebuild my identity, I am rebuilding it here, in California. I am building new memories of family dim-sum lunches, of the foghorn and perfect fall days……and, maybe, still making gumbo on New Year’s day.