Chapter 10. Adjustments and Tune-ups for Your Identity

Rob turned on his television and was flipping through the channels when an episode of the reality show X-Factor caught his eye. Though he didn’t usually watch such shows, one contestant kept him from flipping to the next channel. He watched 17-year-old Emmanuel Kelly tell how he and his brother had been found as severely injured infants in war-torn Iraq, with no way to know how old they were because they had no birth certificates. Kelly said of his adoptive Australian mother, “I was born in the middle of a war zone. My brother and I were found by nuns in a box in a park, in a shoebox.... It was like looking at an angel when my mum walked through the orphanage door. She brought us both to Australia for surgery originally and then, sort of, Mum fell in love with both of us. My hero would have to be my mother.”