How I Met My Mother

How does one start the day knowing one thing and end the day knowing something completely opposite of what they woke up thinking? How does one’s world flip completely from what they grew up with? I’m still not sure.

I woke up this morning just like I did each morning before. I put my everyday scrubs on and brushed my hair; nothing fancy. I touched over that awkward birthmark on my neck with my fingers. I always despised that birthmark, the root of me being bullied throughout elementary and junior high school. Well, along with my name, Chitrakshi, whatever that means. I always wondered why I acquired my birthmark and how it got there. My eyes, a unique bright blue color, looked back at me, tired and lonesome.

I have been living by myself since I was 18; I am 27 now. I mean, I have my cat, Tidis, but that’s about it. Mother comes by every other day to check on me. She says she worries about me a lot.

Mother is beautiful—well, my adoptive mother. She has a glowing complexion and beautiful, long, thick blonde hair, unlike my dull, thin, limp, brunette locks. Mother has big brown eyes and freckles covering her light-colored face. Me, I am a little tan, somewhere between the color of coffee that has had too much cream added to it and a brown eggshell. My mother and father both have very fair coloration. My mother is fairly thin; she doesn’t have a huge bust…average size, I would say. Her hips, as she would say, are like that of an undeveloped teenage girl. I couldn’t relate; I can never find jeans that fit my thighs, butt, and waist evenly.

I found out I was adopted at the age of eight. It was a strange experience and since then, I have been trying to find my birth mother with no luck.

I grabbed my toothbrush, which still had some toothpaste that I had failed to wash off the day before. I washed it off and brushed my teeth. I gathered my keys and tote bag and said goodbye to Tidis.

I made it to work 15 minutes early as per usual. I was greeted by Bertha sitting at the secretary desk, just like she does every day.

As I walked down the hallway, I heard differing sounds coming from the ER rooms.

“Chitrakshi, can I have you take this patient? It’s an older lady,” Dorris whispered. Dorris hated the elderly.

Every time I heard my name aloud, I winced. I wasn’t too fond of it, and every time I asked my mother why I was named this, she always changed the topic. So I stopped asking after I was about thirteen.

I pinned my name tag on my shirt and headed through the curtain. The woman in the room looked to be in her fifties and of Indian descent. She had incredibly long brown hair tied back in a braid. There was something remarkable about her, though. Her eyes, hidden behind years of wrinkles, shined brightly like they were made of blue zircon gems. They were beautiful.

“What’s going on, ma’am?”

The lady laying in the hospital bed scanned my name tag and looked up as though she had found the answers to everything she had been searching for her entire life.

“Your name,” she muttered, followed by a cough.

“Yeah, I know. I don’t really know what it means and I’m not too keen on it, either,” I said focusing on my clipboard in hand.

“Well, I do. It’s beautiful. Actually, it means owner of beautiful eyes in Indian,” she spoke in a raspy, Indian-accented voice.

I looked up in shock; I had never heard anyone say that they liked my name before. I blushed slightly.

“Thank you,” I said noticing the bold birthmark on her neck, previously hidden by her braid. “Why exactly do you like it?”

“Because I’m the one who gave it to you,” she said, smiling seeming to have forgotten any reason why she was in the emergency room in the first place.

“Mother?”