When I tell the story of my childhood, my adoptive father, John — a gem of a man, who wanted a family as much as we needed a father — is often the hero. My mother gets credit for marrying him when I was 10. She did many other things right, I’m sure, but I don’t remember them, because as I’ve since learned firsthand, mothers do not always get credit for things like keeping small people alive and safe and delivering them to school on time with their teeth brushed and their book reports proofread.