My daughter brought home a family-tree assignment

Dear Delyara, My daughter is ten. Her homework tonight was to make a family tree. She spread colored pencils across the kitchen table and asked what to write above my name. I froze because I was adopted and do not know the names of my biological parents. I have always told her I was adopted, but children hear facts differently when school asks for branches. She said, “So do I put Grandma Diane or the lady who had you?” I told her Grandma Diane is my mother. She nodded, then asked where the other woman goes. I had no answer. There is no box for someone whose body made you and whose face you cannot remember. No line for the mother who raised you. No symbol for gratitude and abandonment occupying the same generation. My daughter solved it herself. She drew two roots under my name instead of one branch above it. On one root she wrote Diane. On the other she wrote unknown but important. I went into the bathroom and cried quietly because a ten-year-old found language I have been missing for forty-two years. Her tree is drying on the table now. Mine is the only person with roots instead of parents. Somehow, it looks more accurate than anything official has ever asked me to fill in.