I was reading another blog about things left unsaid and it caused me to think.
You’ve not heard the story of my adoption.
I was a wee 8 weeks old when my parents adopted me. I remember my mother telling me she didn’t sleep at all the night they got the call. They were to come pick me up the next day. Can you imagine an adoption going that way today? The cost? Nothing. I shake my head at the thought.
I grew up with another adopted brother whom I look a lot alike. Then as the old story goes my mom was pregnant with my little sister about a month after they adopted my brother.
Then there were three. My parents talked about how special we were and what a blessing adoption was to them. I almost felt sorry for people who where “just born.” I was born and then chosen.
My dad traveled quite a bit while I was growing up. I took dance lessons, knew both of my grandparents on dad’s side and my grandmother and great grandparents on my mom’s side. I swam on the swim team. I rode horses later in life until I went to college. Life was wonderful. I had a best friend. We met in 1st grade. We’d ride bikes and talk about my birthmom, imagining she was a queen of some lovely castle and would one day come and sweep us away of all that ails a 12 or 14 year old girl.
I didn’t look like anyone in my family except my also adopted brother. Which made other thinks maybe it was my sister who was adopted. As a grown up I now see so much of my mom and grandmother in her. How could she have ever been adopted?
We shared a room growing up. I was a pig and she was neat. I was mean and she was nice.
We roamed the neighborhood, rode bikes everywhere, played flash light tag and learned UNO on our neighbors back porch. We made forts by the creek, forts in the woods, we fished in the creek, lit firecrackers in the drain that led from the pond on the other side of the road to the creek. I remember it being big enough to stand upright inside. Childhood was good.
I wondered about my birth parents but always in a fantasy sort of way. I never really wondered why they gave me up. I knew enough about life as an older teenager to know there was pain in the world. I wondered if my mom had made a decision out of pain and love…one that was best for me. But I wondered if coming back into her life would bring back painful memories of a time long ago. So I let what would be be. I prayed for her at times. I wondered if I had any other brothers and sisters but it still was all in a “just wondering” sense. There was no driving force to find her and ask, “Why?” There was only a sense of wonderment (is that a word?)
Tune in for more of the story on Friday.
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