Dear America

Without realizing it, I replaced Mama, to whom I barely spoke at the time, with Pat, Sheri, Mary, and Gail. I couldn’t talk to my own mother while I was collecting mother figures.

Recently, after meeting some members of my “white family,” which is what I call the folks from Mountain View High School, a Mexican American friend asked me why I think all those white people helped me. Was it “white guilt”? The “white savior” thing? I laughed out loud. It’s neither of those. I told him that even though I know that they’re all white—physically, that is—I didn’t think of them as white people when I was growing up. I associated white people with people who make you feel inferior, people who condescend to you, people who question why you are the way you are without acknowledging that you, too, are a human being with the same needs and wants.

As people mingled with each other through the buffet dinner of chicken curry, samosas, biryani, and naan, I realized that I had made a mistake by keeping everyone apart all these years. I was afraid that they wouldn’t have anything to talk about. It was not until my family life, my school life, and my work life all converged in that Indian restaurant that I discovered that they indeed had something in common: their generosity to me.

And to be seen by so many people, so many good people, meant that I was here, and maybe even that I was supposed to be here.