My Other Family

By: Emily Van Praag

It's hard to tell you about my brothers and sisters, and my mom and dad. Especially my dad. I don’t know them as well, because I am adopted. I live with my mom, Lauren, and my annoying cat and my birds. My mom is Jewish. So I am Jewish, too.

When I was born, my birth mom had a bad life and she wanted me to have a good life. When I was born, I had never met my dad. I wish I had. His name is Mario. I have a picture of him, but his picture doesn’t explain his life to me. I think about what my life might be like if I lived with him. My dad lives in Peru somewhere. I am Mexican American, like him. Sometimes it seems strange to be a Jewish, Mexican-American living in San Diego.

My birthmom’s name is Deonna. My brother’s names are Jon and Eddie, and my sister’s names are Jasmine and Mariah.

My birthmom lives in Bakersfield, but she use to live in Orange County. That's where I was born. When we go and visit her we have to drive for a long time. If it takes only three hours to get there, then the traffic is good. Most of the time I sleep and listen to music. Once we went to Jack in the Box on the way, but that was a treat.

I was my mom’s third child. Deonna was 17 when she had me. Just think how old she was when she had Eddie. Eddie was her first child, then came Jon, me, Jasmine, and then Mariah.

My middle name is Gloria. Gloria is my birthmom’s mom's name. Gloria is really good with my brothers and sisters. I know this because the last time I visited them, my birthmom was gone most of the time and Gloria was doing all the work. I felt so sorry for Gloria, because it seemed that my birthmom gets to go have fun and all Gloria has to do is all of the work. She cleans and she cooks she does everything. That made me so sad, I thought that my heart was going to cry blue tears.

People always ask me, "Don’t you miss your other family a lot?"

I answer the way that I always do, "No, not really."

"Why," they ask with confusion.

"It’s a long story, and I don’t want to explain it right now. Maybe later."

When I think about my birthmom and my brothers and sisters, I know that my life would be just like that. All the boys seem to be getting in trouble and going to jail. Except for Jon, which I haven't heard anything about yet. I hope that their lives will get better.

Some of my friends are adopted, and everybody has a story if they were adopted. It’s okay. You can make it.

I'm very proud and happy with my life. I know that both my mothers saved me from having a worse life. If I wasn't adopted, I wouldn't have been able to find one of my favorite schools and I wouldn't have met all of my friends.