Gina Cameron was always aware that something in her family wasn’t quite right. Her relationship with her father was volatile—strained and lacking in warmth and closeness. Her mother was critical, controlling, and went to great lengths to point out the ways in which the mother and daughter were different. But Cameron had no idea that for 63 years her mother had been keeping a profoundly disturbing secret.
It wasn’t until Cameron was in her sixties and her mother had died that the secret tumbled out. At a family reunion, her cousin Dan inadvertently dropped a truth bomb in a casual conversation, commenting that Cameron and her sister had different fathers. Her family had always been aware, he said, and had been told not to tell her, but he was certain that by that time she’d have known. She was blindsided by this revelation that, in turn, triggered a childhood memory: an aunt saying, “Louie isn’t Genie’s father.” When she later confronted her mother about what she’d overheard, her mother not only insisted it wasn’t true, she also accused her of being ungrateful, shameful, impertinent. She was ignored for days by her parents and stuffed this experience deep down, only to have it resurface five decades later.
Rattled by her conversation with Dan, Cameron arranged a meeting with her father’s niece Ellen, and got a lead for another piece of the puzzle of her origins while strolling together on the High Line in New York. Ellen called her sister Karen, who in turn phoned Cameron and recalled that they two had met when Cameron was three years old—when Louie had met her mother. And again, a memory arose from deep within her—from the time her father, in a letter, disowned her when she was 42 years old. “You’ve been a thorn in my side since you were three years old,” he wrote. She was sick, he’d said, selfish, hurtful.
Looking back after all those years, it all began to make sense. “Scenes from my past crowded my waking hours,” she writes. “The revelation about my paternity was a new frame for the puzzling, troubled undercurrents I’d always felt in my childhood home. For that, I was grateful.”
Grateful for a reason why she’d been seen as the family’s problem, why she’d been branded bad, a compulsive liar, a stubborn and willful child, why she’d been locked in a closet as a punishment as a child, locked in her room when her parents went out, and locked in a hotel room during a family vacation. That gratitude found expression when, at a family visit, her cousin, Carol, asked if Cameron had felt that she’d been treated differently as a child—something she and other relatives had clearly observed. When Cameron acknowledged those feelings, Carol took her hand and said, “Now you know you weren’t crazy to feel that.”
“I bathed in her words and gesture—a simple acknowledgement of my perceptions, believed as fact, no judgment. Seen, and accepted, I felt more and more at home.”
The pieces of the puzzle were beginning to take shape, but there was no one involved who was still alive and could confirm all the details of what had happened or answer a burning question: Who was her father?
Who’s My Daddy? Exposing the Roots of Family Secrets, is Cameron’s memoir of a journey to find her roots, her identity, her father, and herself. It’s also a retrospective examination of her relationship with her mother—a reassessment made necessary by the discovery of her deception. “Now, in light of the revelations of lies and deception that permeated every aspect of our relationship, I realized my mother had an intimate familiarity and comfort with fabrication and prevarication.”
Cameron began to create a revisionist history of her family—to see the story anew based on new facts and, thus, see herself anew. It’s a well-written, deeply moving story that certainly will resonate with NPEs (not parent expected) and adoptees as well—with anyone who’s sense of self has imploded and who had to recreate, brick by brick, their identity and reestablish their place in their family and their world.
—BKJ
Gina Cameron is a founding member of San Diego Writers, Ink, a nonprofit organization that offers classes and literary events. She holds a Master of Science in physical therapy from Boston University. After decades as a pediatric physical therapist, Cameron is now retired and enjoys writing, swimming, hiking, and traveling the globe. Her work has been published in
A Year in Ink, Volumes 13 and 17 and Active Voices, Volume 3. Who’s My Daddy? Exposing the Roots of Family Secrets is her first book. She can be found on Instagram @ginanataliecameron.