Blood Type "O"

This summer I had the pleasure of traveling to Malaysia for some splendid eats and a comprehensive health screening. And wisely, not in that sequence.

Now, there was drama at the health screening results. But not in the way you’d imagine.

As the doctor went through explaining each part of my screening results, she got to the page on my blood works.

Then there, in the middle of the page, as my jaw dropped and my eyes fixated on four words: Blood Type “O” positive.

My blood type is “ A ”. As I’ve known my whole life. As informed by my mother years ago. Or so I thought.

I could’ve won an Oscar for camouflaging the look of horror on my face, I tell you, as the doctor proceeded to explain other parts of the report.

How could this be??! Mom had always said, we have the same blood type. “A”

That evening, we had a regular family call - my sister, my mom, my dad and I. Blood type was the topic of the night. Ofcourse.

My mom was equally shocked and could’ve sworn her socks off, she said. I jokingly said that this is where in the movies, I would be taking a flight in search of my long lost mother who had taken some other baby instead of me.

“That, could well be if I weren’t the only non-caucasian woman giving birth in the entire British hospital”, she nonchalantly said. And with that calmly went to focus on fixing dessert.

I heaved a heavy sigh of relief.

Jokes aside, that night under the moonlit bedroom window, in the comfort of my pillow and quilt, I pondered my family.

In the stillness of warm October night, for the first time in my life, I saw my family from the vantage of "almost an outsider".

How fortunate was I, to be part of this family. At the same time I also felt strangely subdued.

For the first time emphatizing how it felt to be deprived of the love & support of family, became more real.

I’d watched a documentary at one time about a girl who was adopted. She and her adopted father later only found out that she was a stolen baby. When interviewed, she said that she did not really want to find out who her real parents were, as she was already happily part of her adopted family now.

Had my mom not given me the assurance of being the only non-caucasian baby in the entire hospital, I would have been in a different position and predicament. Har har..

But after the initial moment of ..is loss, the word?.. in my hypothetical predicament, I had absolute clarity, that I too would not have the curiosity, desire or need to look up what happened or indeed who my real family were.

I was, am, home.