Every family has one story. It is shared at the table after the company is over. It could be how a couple met or an encounter with a celebrity. My family’s favorite lore is how my dad’s adopted mother, Cleo, met his birth parents.
Cleo worked as a nurse at Salt Lake City’s emergency room when a young American Indian couple brought their baby boy to her.
The man was tall and lean, with a large buckle with chunks of turquoise inside. His partner was shorter and rounder, with a newborn in his arms.
Cleo heard from the couple that they loved their baby but couldn’t have him. They were the first in their tribe to go to college and couldn’t afford to have a child. To help them, she gave them the name and number of her priest.
They were just a couple during a long work shift. It wasn’t until a few months later that she realized what it was. The same priest called her back to inform her that her prayers were answered and that he had a baby boy available for her adoption.
My dad grew older and began to search for his parents. He kept the image of the tall, belt-belted boy and the small, round girl in mind. He searched for his parents and his tribe for many years, but to no avail.
The students were not there. Cleo made up the story to give her baby a sense of self in a very white setting.
My dad found his biological father in 2018, and he wasn’t a University of Utah tribal student. He didn’t know that he was Native American. His name was Phil Martinez.
We now tell the story at the dinner table of how two families from parallel lives came together six decades later. This reunion brought up new questions about identity and how the generations of American Indian displacement have affected that.
