Author's Note

Before I was a mother I have always been a writer. I'm an essayist, a memoirist, a contributor to fifteen books in Native and Indigenous Studies, memoir and nonfiction, and the author of two memoirs, We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir, and Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story.

But I never planned to write about my journey though motherhood. It began with a single essay in 1984 when my editor invited me to write a feature article, and my readership grew. I'm well into grandmotherhood now, and I'm leaving a trail of my motherhood footprints behind. 

When I began assembling a collection of my essays to include here, I found that each one begged for revision. A number of my feature articles were too magazine-y in tone and needed to be reshaped into essay and memoir. Other pieces, when further examined with my poet’s eye, had become too pretentious and gave off the full-bodied notion that as a mother I had things all figured out, which of course I don’t. 

 

I also contemplated my gloomy stories. Although I'm often remembered for difficulties I've faced, I want it to go down in history that there has also been great joy within my journey through motherhood. Today as a mother and grandmother my life in no way resembles what I had hoped for, or expected it to be, and yet I am deeply thankful for where this journey has led me. I also enjoy seeing how my perspective has evolved and changed over the past five decades. 

 

Thank you to the editors where these essays were first published.

Photo by Lawrence K. Ho

Terra Trevor is the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways: A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press), and  Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story (KAAN: Korean Adoptee Adoptive Family Network). Her essays are widely published in anthologies, including Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press), Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press), The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal (University of Oklahoma Press), Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press), and Mixed Roots: Writers on Multiracial Identity and Both/And Belonging, forthcoming from Beacon Press, Fall 2026.

Southwest Moonlight and Making Babies: An Excerpt from Pushing up the Sky

Fall, 1972. “I want to cancel my appointment,” I told the woman at the front desk. “Instead of birth control counseling I need a pregnancy test.” The doctor at the Clinic rubbed his beard. “If you are pregnant and don’t have any money you’ll have to apply for welfare.” He scribbled an address and phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to me. 

The next morning at the social welfare office, under bad fluorescent lighting, I filled out the forms. The clerk took my paperwork and motioned for me to sit down. “Number thirty-two,” the social worker called out. I was number fifty-six. My shorts were soaked with sweat, and my bare legs stuck to the orange plastic chair. The room was filled with women and crying babies. I thought of my mother at age fifteen, pregnant with me. Finally my number was called. I was led into a windowless office. The social worker lit a cigarette, and smoke poured from her nose like a dragon. 

“Are you giving the baby up for adoption?” She asked. The question unnerved me. She eyeballed me up and down and hissed, “You’ve written down that you are American Indian—if it was going to be a white baby it would be easier to find a family to adopt it.” 

I clenched my jaw to stay calm. Brown haired and green eyed, most strangers didn’t place me as Native American and the father of my child-to-be was a full blood. This was my first glimpse at the way race and culture collided in adoption. I was a nineteen-year-old college student, and pregnancy caught me unprepared to become someone’s mother. 

Though we spoke occasionally on the telephone, my relationship with R. was over. It had ended weeks before on a windy night in Nevada, under a climbing moon. The next day I headed home to California. Underneath my embarrassment about repeating the family cycle of unplanned teenage pregnancy, especially when I’d been so determined not to, there were moments when I smiled as the baby swelled within me. But I was certain I was not ready to be a mother. Or was I? Before I made a decision, however, I miscarried. At least I did not have to surrender my child to another. 

Twelve winters later, in 1984, I sat in the lobby of Holt International Adoption Services. The room was decorated in pastel wallpaper, with a nubby textured sofa. This time I was married and on the receiving end of adoption. Within the next twenty-four hours my husband and I were due to become the parents of a one-year-old Korean boy. 

As our son grew up I knew he would wonder about his first mother. I like to believe his mother is a lot like me, but was forced to make a decision that I did not have to make. 

An excerpt from Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story A Memoir by Terra Trevor

Copyright © 2006 Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.