I looked up from my splits, my palms pressed onto the baking pavement of the square, to the equally heated glares of the residents of Greenville, some with ice creams, some without.

Not the best reception.

Which was not entirely unpredictable.

TWO

Okay. For most of the time I have known myself, I have always been a person who is. . .different.

Mostly when other people talk about me being different they want to talk about the fact that I have two moms, which is not super different depending on where you are, but it’s a little different than a lot of the kids I’ve gone to school with.

I’m adopted; both my moms are white and I’m half-Japanese. I am the biological child of my mom Millie’s cousin Susan and was adopted after Susan and my bio dad, Dean, died in a car accident. I was three when this happened, so I mostly only have vague glowy memories of my biological parents. I know my grandma Hana looks like an old female version of Dean. (I have a sum total of four grandmothers, two moms, one grandfather, and one step-grandfather as a result of this family setup, which is either a lot or enough depending on what I need at any given time).

Really, I think the thing that sets me apart from my moms, like if you look at us from a distance, is the fact that when I was ten, I started dying my hair orange because it’s my favorite color and my parents said so long as I didn’t get it all over the bathtub it was okay.

(I totally get it in the bathtub, though.)

Once, when I was twelve, an old lady stopped me in the elevator and told me I shouldn’t dye it. To which I replied, “Maybe YOU should mind your own business.” Lucy said this would have been an acceptable response to the lady’s very rude comment if I hadn’t yelled it super loud into her face.

No one in my household is okay with yelling. Which means you can pretty much say whatever you want if you say it in an even tone. Nothing you say in anything resembling a shout is going to be okay.

Ahem.

Of course, you could also say that everyone’s upbringing and hair is unique and not really worth calling out as “different.” Both of my moms hate the word normal, like as in what is a “normal” family? Like who defines that, right? The patriarchy? Probably.

Unfortunately, a complete discussion of the origins of the so-called normal and why normal is a construct would get us way off course storywise, so let’s say the previously mentioned things are part of who I am and things that have been called out as being different. But really there are just so many other more interesting ways a person can be. . .unusual.