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The most significant photograph in our home hangs directly above the living room couch, protected by glass that bears a thin, jagged crack from a childhood accident. In the picture, a lanky teenage boy stands on a high school football field, his graduation cap sitting crookedly atop his head. He looks absolutely terrified, but his arms are locked firmly around a bundle wrapped in a soft blanket. That bundle was me. For eighteen years, I grew up believing the story behind that photo was one of tragic abandonment followed by heroic singular devotion. My father told me that my birth mother had left me in the basket of his bicycle when I was only three months old, accompanied by a note that simply said she couldn’t do it anymore. He was seventeen, a kid with a pizza delivery job and no safety net, but he chose to pick me up and never let go.
