A Letter To My Birthmother (Dear Nelly)

(Submitted for admission to Between the Lines and Scholastic Writing Awards)

Dear Nelly,

I feel like it’s weird to call you Mom since I haven’t seen you in over fifteen years. I call Sarah Mom, so what do I call you? I think I’ll call you Nelly, which is your name, right? That’s what I’ve seen when I ruffle through my adoption documents at 3am when everyone else is asleep and unaware.

My ex made me a countdown that ends when I turn eighteen. Even though

we broke up, I still have the countdown bookmarked on my computer. Sometimes I check it. 362 days, one hour, 40 minutes, 10, 9, 8 seconds until I turn eighteen and supposedly get to meet you.

When you spend a majority of your life with a different family, a different set of people that you call, "Mom, Dad, and Brother," it’s hard to imagine it any other way. I’ve dreamed about about getting to meet you since I was little. I have found myself wondering if you still bear any resemblance to the poorly photocopied black and white picture of your driver’s license from 2000. That picture looked like a mugshot, Nelly. You were scowling and your hair was ratty. I still love it all the same, but my license photo is the opposite. I had my hair pulled back in a ponytail and my facial expression is a sigh of relief, as in “thank God I passed that test.” How are we related?

I was snooping through things the other day, as I often tend to do, and I pulled out a little piece of paper that was shoved under some papers. Scribbled on it was your phone number, real name, address, and age. This was the information I had wanted to know all along. The entire time, your name has been Francia. I feel like I’ve been shorted and lied to. Francia and Nelly aren’t nicknames of each other, why do the documents and driver’s license say Nelly? Why was I told you were Nelly? Water under the bridge, mom. It was your age that really set me off. You’re the same age as my parents, you could have been my parent. You could have been my family.

If all goes well, maybe I’ll get to meet you before I turn eighteen. I sent the paperwork to the Colombian Family Welfare Institute a couple of months ago to try to speed up the process, but I haven’t heard back from them yet. I don’t think about you much because thinking about you makes my heart hurt. If I let you in my head, you’ll stay there for a long time.

Maybe I shouldn’t worry about sending this letter to you. Maybe I shouldn’t be so worried about the paperwork. Heck, I don’t even know if you want to meet me. After all, I don’t even know your name.

Sincerely,

*Name omitted*