I'm BA Parker and this is Code Switch from NPR.

And today I've got a special guest on the mic with me.

She's a friend of the show and a reporter on NPR's education desk, Sequoia Carrillo.

Hi Sequoia.

Hi Parker, thanks for having me.

Of course.

Now it's that time of year where some of us gear up to see family for the holidays.

And I've been thinking a lot about the stories we tell about where we come from.

Like those origin stories.

Those stories are very real and straightforward.

And sometimes those stories sort of turn into myths.

Oh yeah, I feel like I can definitely relate to the latter more than the first part.

In my family, the story my dad loved to tell was about his biological parents.

He was adopted in 1952 in Salt Lake City, Utah without any details on his birth parents.

But his adopted mom, Cleo, had one story that gave us a few clues.

She was working in an emergency room at that time.

And an Indian girl came in with an Indian boy with a baby.

In the story, they were a young couple and they had a baby with them.

The guy was tall and lanky with a big belt buckle and the girl was shorter and more round.

They were both students at the University of Utah and the first from their tribes to go

to college.

So they couldn't keep the baby.

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