The Day I Found My Birth Family's Village

I was adopted from Guatemala as a baby and grew up in Minnesota. This year, at thirty, I traveled to Guatemala for the first time to visit the village where I was born.

I didn't know what to expect. I didn't speak much Spanish. But when I got there, a woman at the little market asked me who I was. I showed her the name of the town on my paperwork. She called over her neighbor, who called over another neighbor.

Within an hour, I was sitting in a courtyard with a dozen people, eating tamales and drinking coffee. They didn't know my birth family, but they welcomed me like I was a long-lost cousin. An older woman braided a red ribbon into my hair. A little girl taught me to make tortillas.

When I left, they all hugged me. "Come back," they said. "This is your home too." I'm going back next year.