I wasn’t thinking about the date this morning as I stood in front of the wardrobe, absently fingering the fabrics inside and staring out beyond the rows of chimneys stretching from here to Vauxhall Bridge Road. The sky was a clear blue sheet, marked only by a wide white contrail. I let my mind drift as I watched it slowly erase itself before turning to the task of choosing something to wear.

I am the type of person who pulls out my summer clothes at the first hint of a crescendo in temperatures (a vestigial habit picked up by growing up in North Dakota, where the winters are fierce and every warm day must be treasured and celebrated). Since Spring has been teasing us here in London for the past couple months—two days ago, on a long walk through the countryside, I felt chilled wearing black jeans, a flannel and a rain jacket; yesterday I wrote my morning pages on the balcony in a slip dress—my closet currently holds a mixture of multi-colored skirts and dark turtlenecks. Without bothering to check the forecast for today, but feeling optimistic because of the blue-and-white sky, I decided to give my blue-and-white gingham dress its inaugural wear for the year. After zipping it, tying a bow around my waist and shaving my legs in the bathroom sink, I hurried through the rest of my pre-commute rituals.

Just before heading out the door, I pushed my headphones into my ears and pressed Play on a “Hidden Brain” podcast episode called “For Sale, By Owner,” about “repugnant transactions,” a term coined by the economist Alvin Roth to describe “taboo exchanges” ranging from the sale of one’s organs to the attempt to pay a host of a dinner party what the provided meal would have cost in a restaurant. Midway through my sideways ride along the underground rails, the discussion turned to surrogacy, and I heard the voice of Mary Beth Whitehead, a woman who, in the mid-1980s, entered into a surrogacy contract with Mr. and Mrs. Stern, a couple for whom a traditional pregnancy was medically discouraged. Ms. Whitehead was inseminated with Mr. Stern’s sperm and carried the pregnancy to term before releasing the newborn into the couple’s care. Shortly after giving birth, the mother changed her mind, and a custody battle ensued. Known as the “Baby M case,” the litigation surrounding the custody of the child influenced the invalidation of surrogacy contracts in New Jersey and a number of other states.

Making my way up the stairs to street level, I wondered what that experience must have been like for Ms. Whitehead, for Baby M and for the couple. It seemed the quintessential example of a no-win situation—if custody was given to the biological mother, the biological father would be separated from his offspring and the woman whose motherhood wasn’t genetically sourced would also suffer a deep loss. If the court granted custody to the couple, the unique bond between the woman whose body provided the child’s first home and the child would be severed, causing both of them pain. It seemed like a mess they’d gotten themselves into, and it was tempting to think they shouldn’t have done it, but there were questions and rebuttals that nipped at the heels of that idea—if they hadn’t been able to pursue this nontraditional route to parenthood, would the couple’s sorrow about not being able to have a child be any less severe than this pain? If the couple and the woman hadn’t entered into this contract, a real, live human who has surely contributed something to society wouldn’t exist—didn’t that make it all worth it? Does the fact that love is always more complex than we anticipate mean we shouldn’t pursue it?

I was still ruminating about the lack of easy answers for other people, while somehow not registering the parallels with my own non-traditional family and adoption, when I found myself in the sunlight again. I caught my reflection in a shop window, and at the sight of my dress, my mind opened a flip-book of memories, stretching back to the day I bought it—May 12, 2017.

The only thing I remember about that morning was that it was uneventful. I must have woken up on my mattress on the floor in my DC apartment before dressing in something conducive to the spring weather and riding the N4 bus down Massachusetts Avenue, past all the embassies, and disembarking just south of Dupont Circle. I must have walked east for several blocks before arriving at the office building where I worked, passing through the granite lobby and riding the mirrored elevator upstairs. I must have sat at my desk, alternating between reviewing the documents on the computer screens in front of me and the phone screen in my hand. I must have taken a lunch break.

I think I was probably conscious of the fact that the next day was the first day I would be eligible to use my newly-minted UK Ancestry Visa, for which I was eligible through my Canadian biological mother and her Scottish mother. When I applied for the visa, I was asked for a preferred start date. I could choose any date and I chose May 13, 2017, because I mistakenly calculated (I was a year off) that as the date I would be exactly the same age as my biological mother had been on the day I was born, and I’d given myself the arbitrary deadline of completing the third draft of my book before then. I had been working towards obtaining the right to live and work in the UK for several years at that point, but when I chose that date, it was more about matriarchal symbolism and arbitrary writing deadlines than any firm intention to uproot my life that spring.

Around midday, I refreshed my email inbox and found an offer to join a project as a contract lawyer in London, beginning the following Monday. It took me all of ten minutes to run around to my bosses (who knew I’d been waiting for an opportunity like this) to ask for and receive their permission to leave my project and the office—possibly for good. Soon, I was clocking out and hopping into the backseat of a cab, searching for same-day transatlantic flights on my phone and making a mental checklist of all the things I needed to do before I left. I cleared my desk at the co-working space where I’d worked towards my writing goals, stopped by my friend/landlord’s office to tell her I would be gone for I-wasn’t-sure-how-long and took another cab up to Friendship Heights to collect a bridesmaid’s dress I’d had altered for another friend’s upcoming October wedding. While I was in that area, I slipped into a few stores and broke my self-imposed clothing ban, buying several new spring pieces, including the blue-and-white gingham dress and the silk robe that has now become my most-used item of clothing. I hurried home, changed into the dress, threw a few other things into a suitcase and got into the back of another taxi—this one headed towards Dulles Airport. I posted a photo to my Instagram account of a wall of suitcases inside the terminal’s Starbucks and noted that the wall had become a sort of touchstone where I paused to take stock of my life and reflect on everything that had happened since I last saw the suitcases.

Today marks two years since the morning I landed at Heathrow and activated my visa. Today is also the day on which I am exactly one year older than my biological mother was when she gave me life.

When I gave myself the May 12, 2017 writing deadline, I was searching for an ending. I think I hoped that by reaching the age she was when she had me, I would understand my birth mother better, thereby potentially understanding myself. Our relationship has matured over the past two years and I feel grateful to have deep and unique relationships with all three of my moms, but what has helped me make the most sense of my childhood and the choices of the adults who shaped it is being a twenty-nine year old without any answers, because from here, I’m able to look at her twenty-eight year old self and understand that she couldn’t see any farther ahead of herself than I can. The only conclusion I’ve reached is that it is impossible to see into the future and futile to judge the past.