A Sea of Mothers

A few years ago, when I was going through a terrible separation that ended in divorce, I had a dream. I was deep in the ocean when I saw myself as a baby. A panic rose, and I reached out to save the baby, but she said, “I'm fine.” I woke with an unexpected sense of peacefulness at my core, aware of this basic trust in life and a deep knowing that love exists.

Now, this might make sense had I had a different early life, perhaps a secure base with little tumult or loss. But that was not my beginning. In fact, before the age of one, I'd already had at least three mothers —maybe more, depending on how you define the role.

My first mother was Carol, who carried me to birth. Carol had become pregnant after a brief affair with my father, a postdoc student from India. The relationship ended shortly after he learned of my existence. When I met Carol in my late twenties, she told me the story of becoming pregnant at twenty-three, hiding the pregnancy under big flowing dresses, and giving birth to me alone in her room after class one day. She said that when her mother came home, she commented that Carol didn't look well. Still trying to hide me, Carol replied, “I think I have the flu.” A moment later, the lie was blown with a cry from the other room.

Perhaps Carol had not considered the consequences of getting pregnant, let alone the implications of having a brown child, but her decisions came to dominate my early fate. I was born in 1966 in North Carolina, a year before the miscegenation laws banning interracial marriage were overturned. Not only were interracial relationships illegal, but they were socially unacceptable to many, including my maternal grandmother, who upon seeing me said I was “too dark” and brought me to the hospital that same day.

I imagine myself as an infant alone in that hospital. I can almost feel the care of the many strangers who attended me during those early days—the nurses who fed me, the doctors who made sur