How can we be so much the same and feel so different? How can we be so different and feel so much the same? - Stellaluna

When you were born, the sun was setting over the Manhattan skyline, and your mother could see straight across the city from her room in Mount Sinai hospital. It had been a long, hard labour, but surprisingly, you were born naturally, with little complication. The nurse said to your mother that she could already see that you'd be one to watch, because when you were born, you were born with your baby-blue eyes wide open.

Your father, a steel tycoon from England, didn't care much for the birthing of babies. He was at home with your older brother, his favourite and heir. Through the years, you'd notice that although he'd pat you absently on the head in passing, you couldn't really say you'd had a strong father figure in your life. The fact is, your father didn't really know what to do with a little girl. The fact is, you were an afterthought – an accident. It's sometimes funny how the accidents end up as the influential stars of the family.

It was an April day, that day you were born. The trees were starting to bud out, and the forsythia was in bloom. As your mother finally delivered you, a red ray of the sun fell across the end of her bed and onto your little head. Whatever colour your hair had been turned a burnished flame-red. You were stuck with this blessing for the rest of your life – through taunts of "carrot-head" and "ginger kid", even though your skin was purest ivory, with barely a freckle. As an adult, men would tell you that your hair was what attracted them to you and your charms.

That day you were born, your mother was crying because she didn't know what to do with another baby, especially a girl. That day you were born, your brother was kicking at the base of your crib because he didn't want a baby sister. That day you were born, your father sat in his study and secretly hoped you'd be another boy in case something happened to Hugh, your older brother. That day you were born, it's safe to say that you were unwanted.

However, you pushed yourself into that cold family and you never stopped pushing. It's why they learned to love and respect you. It's why you became the best in your field.

They named you Addison Forbes Montgomery, a high-class, male-sounding name. However, you never let them forget that girls are more than sugar and spice. You were Addison Marie until the day you died.

So you were born to live in a trailer. That doesn't mean that you didn't struggle the minute you entered the world. That doesn't mean that you were going to accept it, for God's sake. There wasn't a minute that you didn't stand in the gutter that was your life and stare at those far-away stars. You were born to reach them and to never let go.

You were born at a dingy county hospital, three hours outside of Seattle, Washington. Your mother was a sixteen-year-old single mother, an unfortunate legacy she would pass to you later in life. For now, though, the nurses gasped when you were born – a perfect baby with slate-grey eyes, golden curls, and pink skin. You would have thought that they expected you to be some kind of three-headed monster, from the way they treated your mother. Another knocked-up trailer trash brat. Another dirty kid from the other side of the tracks. She screamed and cried and vomited and even shit on the table, but they didn't show her an ounce of sympathy. You learned early that people are assholes and that if you want to be loved and respected, you'd better damn well work for it.

You didn't have a father and according to both your mother and your grandmother, you never had one. You learned later that he was a deadbeat who had ended up in jail for stabbing another deadbeat in a bar fight. Your mother was a pretty blonde cheerleader that he'd raped outside of the weedy football stadium. Because she was Catholic, and because she tried to hold onto innocence, you ended up being brought to term. However, you always felt that she resented you, and because she never told you why until you were a respected surgeon, you just tried to stay out of her way. Even as a baby, your cries were stifled – your face turned into the crib pillows.

The day was beautiful – an October morning, as bright and brassy as any hooker hanging around outside of the diner on a late Saturday night. Hospital windows don't open, but if they did, you would have felt the fresh wind on your face and smelled the slightly smoky air that signifies autumn, and Thanksgiving. Maybe you sensed it, because for the rest of your life, you adored holidays and pored over the Christmas Sears catalog, tracing the smiling face of the little girl in her red dress as you tried to block out your mother's drunken screaming and your grandmother's pleading.

Yeah, it wasn't a great situation to be born in. Yeah, your mother didn't want you at all and it was only thanks to lapsed religion that you didn't end up on the floor of an OR in a bloody, crumbled mess. But maybe your mother felt that even though you'd wrecked her life, you deserved something beautiful. Maybe she felt even then you'd rise above the situation you'd been thrust into.

So, Isobel Mary Catherine Stevens, you heeded her unspoken advice and once you'd figured out how to play this dirty old world for all it's got, you lived up to your melodic name and showed those bastards that you were a lady and they could shove their "baby" and "chickie" up their goddamn asses.

Christening day is normally a happy time in every Catholic family's history. You dedicate your child to God and hope that they decide to live a decent life. Sure, there have been many kids who decided to leave the church, or torture small animals, or do other heinous things that would make the Baby Jesus cry, but a lot of kids who are raised in the Catholic faith put it to good use. They put aside the guilt and focus on the beauty and majesty of the oldest Church in the Christian religion. Of course, you can't convince a baby that later in life she's going to spend hours on her knees, praying to a gold-flecked statue painted in Virgin blue. A baby doesn't think past her next feeding or diaper change, and really, all she really cares about is being held close and loved and knowing that she's wanted. But sometimes, that's what church does – the great Mother reaches down and cuddles you close, and all your troubles melt away in the song of a thousand Glorias and the scent of incense wreathing around the candles on the altar.

Your head is covered in soft red ringlets that make most people smile and reach out to touch one. However, your own family doesn't care if you're the most beautiful baby in the world – they're concerned with making a good first impression. That means you, too, Addison. How they expect a four-month-old baby who can't do much more than drool to make a good impression, God knows. But that's the rules for today and somehow, deep inside, you know that you're expected to do something.

You're fussy when they put you into the Italian eyelet-lace christening dress that's almost too big for your thin little baby body. You're also too hot, since they've dressed you as if it's December and it's mid-August. But your grandmother has convinced your mother (never a very confident woman at the best of times) that if you're not dressed in a thick cloth diaper, a pair of woolen white tights, a onesie, the dress itself, and a scratchy lace bonnet, you will catch your death of cold. Your mother goes to slip on the rubber pants for good measure and that's when you suddenly feel that this maybe isn't going to be the best day.

All you really want is your mother to hold you and maybe feed you a nice warm bottle, but it's time to perform and your godmother, a loud upper-class woman with a braying voice is holding you loosely in her arms and marching you up the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral while calling over her shoulder to your little brother, who is glaring at you over his picture Bible. You and your brother will never be very close, throughout your whole lives, and that's a shame, because maybe you could have conquered the world of Manhattan socialites if you'd stuck together. You start to cry, but are immediately silenced by your godmother patting your back firmly as you're carried up the aisle of the endless intricate nave.

You can see your mother standing beside the font on the carved altar of the church, but even as you reach out your arms for her, you're handed off into another unfamiliar pair of arms. The choir intones in an unfamiliar language that you'll learn later is Latin as your head is washed with cold holy water that makes you wet your pants and squirm and begin to cry in indignity. But it's not over – now they're smearing your soft little forehead with funny-smelling oil that makes you sneeze a little bit. The whole church makes noises of pleasure at the sound of your delicate sneezes.

You're placed back into your godmother's arms, and she decides to jiggle you up and down a bit to stop your crying. You're not really sure why no one is giving you to your mother, because you're hungry and cold and wet and all you really want is to be cuddled to her chest, but as you twitch your itchy little legs in the hot tights, the priest begins to talk, and talk, and talk. It seems like forever and you finally lose your patience. With a look that will be mirrored on your face every time something goes wrong in your OR in the future, you make use of your red-haired temper and let out a scream that echoes off the angels on the clerestory windows, forty feet above you.

Finally, you get what you want – your mother, after a murderous look from your father and several sniffs from your godparents and the other ladies present, takes you into the back room and comforts you. When you get older, you won't remember any of this, but the best way to get you to stop crying after a hard day of losing patients will be to rub your back, stroke your hair, and rock you back and forth, which is what your mother does now. She changes your diaper; she takes off the hot tights, she gives you her breast, even though breastfeeding is forbidden among upper-class women.

Your last thought is of warmth and comfort and light through the coloured stained-glass above your head, and every time you enter a church in the future, you'll feel just like this and be glad that church is a heaven and not a hell.

You're not really lucky enough to have a nice christening, because your mother can't afford it and the only one who really cares is your grandmother. You're a quiet, introspective baby who's prone to getting a lot of colds, because your mother and grandmother both smoke like chimneys and they don't really care if you're around the smoke or not. You don't cry very much, because you've learned that every time you do, your mother grimaces, or yells, or cries, and it's your grandmother who roughly tends to your needs. No one really holds you close unless it's a stranger – no one gives you the love and comfort that you need. Maybe that's why in the future, you turn to any gentle person who will give you a hug and rub your back. You constantly look for human contact. It's also why you turn out to be a wonderful doctor.

They troop off to the old stone church on the corner of Nothing and Nowhere (or the freeway and the old highway that crosses it in the middle of a bare field). This church has been around since the first settlers came across the plains of Montana and the Midwest, and it's really quite lovely – intimate, full of character, and set with carefully-made stained glass. As your mother, who's holding you loosely on her hip, passes under the stone arch that's the entrance, you reach out your little hand to touch the little lamb on the doorjamb, and get your fingers roughly scraped across the stone for your pains. Your lower lip trembles, but you don't cry, even though one of your little fingertips is bleeding.

You're a little older than most children, because your mother couldn't afford the fee that the priest charges to baptize babies. Your grandmother has trembled in fear every time you caught a cold or had to be taken to the expensive walk-in clinic down the road when your fever got too high or your bottom too raw with the thrush. Now, though, she doesn't worry – you'll be saved and if you die, well, you'll go to heaven. It's nice that she cares, but you would have preferred her to come and rock you at night instead of ignoring you, making you cry and cry until you fall asleep, your little tummy growling, or your diaper so wet that it soaks through to your sheets.

The priest is a gentle man – he has a nice smile. You're a sucker for a guy who will smile at you, so you reach out your little hands and giggle as he nuzzles his soft beard against your fingertips. He notices that you're bleeding, and he tells you in his soft Irish accent that he'll make it all better. Before you can blink, he's bandaged it up and drawn a happy face on the white band-aid. You wiggle your finger in front of your face and laugh again. You're such a cheerful, curious child, if only someone would pay attention.

The ceremony is short, but you don't want to let go of the priest's gleaming white robes. You cuddle against him, your head resting on his shoulder, and whimper a bit when your mother roughly snatches you back, telling the priest that she's got a shift to get to. He bids you goodbye and you love the way he says "Isobel". You watch him all the way out the door and when the door closes behind you and your family, you feel a physical pain at the loss. Your mother can't understand why you won't stop wailing and even though it's only early spring, she lays you on the bench outside of the church and roughly pulls down your pants, checking for wetness.

The air is cold on your little bottom, but you ignore it, because the sky is so beautiful and your eyes are big and bright in the beautiful light. When you get older and go to confession every week, without fail, you remember this light and you imagine that your soul must look like this. It's that light you fight for every time you try to save a patient.

Modest beginnings can give rise to extraordinary beings. Maybe it's the circumstances – maybe it's the treatment. But there comes a time in your life where you accept what you're given or you push so hard against it that you fall out on the top of the world. You either sit and cry about losing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or you run until you find it again.

Thank God that you decided to be a chaser of rainbows.