Rachel Cormier is a student in Northern Illinois University's Journalism 401 class, Editorial & Opinion Writing. We'll bring you more Perspectives from the class in the coming days.
My dad always had this immense pride whenever he told us the story about how he and mom first met. I’ve heard this story so often it feels like a fairy tale: Once upon a time, he sat down and the first question out of her mouth was, “how do you feel about adoption?”
The story felt like that moment when Cinderella tries on her glass slipper. As if telling us, their four Chinese children, it was meant to be from the start. While the story should’ve gotten repetitive by now, I always think back to it when that glass slipper begins to feel tight around the edges.
For me, there was never a doubt that I wasn’t my mother’s daughter. But like many adopted children, I always struggled with this nature vs. nurture mentality that I truly belonged to them. For one, it was obvious just by looking in a mirror. Me with hair as dark as the night’s sky against my mother’s brown curls that fought every hairbrush when we used to play beauty salon. Maybe it was the difference in tastes. She could pop down olives like they were blueberries while I absolutely despised the salty little things. And yet funny enough, she could not stomach actual blueberries.
When I’m now at the age where having kids is no longer some far-off fairytale, I wonder how she found the confidence to ask my dad a question that held so much vulnerability as a woman who couldn’t have children herself. I fear I’ll make the same mistakes I often scorned her for and my slippers will only fit in the aspects I hate about myself. And yet I like to hope her strength and tenacity were passed down to me the same way she looked at herself and still decided that she was going to create a family.
While my glass slippers ache from time to time, I’m eager for my own children to eventually try them on and hopefully see the same resemblance I found in her.
I’m Rachel Cormier and that’s my perspective.