Memory from the Heart

From the Heart

        For most of my life I have struggled to find my “niche” The place where I belong. I have always looked at the world with a different view than most of the people around me. I  have always felt my perspective on life causes folks to look at me and think what other world did she come from, or how could she think that way. I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.

      But I’ve always known I was meant to be a mother. From my earliest days I gravitated towards babies and as I grew I wanted to be with the younger children.  As an awkward, nerdy, outspoken teen who was often picked on by others, the little ones accepted me wholeheartedly and with unbiased love. I knew I was going to be a mother one day. I just didn’t realize the path my life would take in order to have those children. 

I was an adopted child, but I assumed I would become a parent by the traditional route. I would marry and my husband and I would make our babies. But no matter how hard and often we tried to make them they never came. Then came the day when the doctor looked me in the eyes and kindly said; 

“there will be no babies.” 

No babies? That couldn’t be so , I was born to have babies.  I knew that from the deepest part of me. I wanted to be a mother. I was the one others asked to baby sit, I was the favorite aunt and I was famous for saying “when I have children I WILL NEVER allow or ONLY allow.” I was called to be a mother. 
       I cried for days when the doctor told me that one. I screamed and yelled at God and was furious that he had allowed me to want something that could never be. My husband was disappointed but said he was fine if we never had children. But not me. My heart ached and yearned and needed to be filled with a mothers love.

I’m a goal oriented person and projects make me happy. If I commit to something I only know how to do it full throttle and head on and will not take no for an answer. Ever. So I went home and after a week or few of crying, eating too much chocolate ice cream and more than a bit of praying I came to the conclusion that I could and would become that mother I needed and wanted and yearned to be. 
      This was in the time before Google or internet occupied most of our daily life but I was already a frequent visitor to my local Carnegie Library and they knew me by name there. I took myself to town on a mission and found the section on Adoption in the Library. I read and plotted and schemed on how to do this right. I made reams of notes on what to do, how to do and how much it would cost.  I found a particular agency that seemed to be an almost perfect match for my husband and me based on our particular religious leanings and then I went home and announced that we would be parents. We would just adopt. 

Perhaps it was not quite that simple, but I was an adopted child and my husband knew that adopted children were “normal.”  It took a lot of persuasion and a bit of time, (I'm pretty sure my unwavering determination and obnoxiously perky attitude of YES we can do this just wore him down) but he was finally convinced that it would be the way for us to have a family.

       It was not a simple path; folks looking to adopt have to do things that birth parents never have to consider. We have to PROVE to the state and the adoption agency and the birth parents that we are suitable human beings and that we would be suitable parents. That involved in-depth financial disclosure, medical exams, police background checks and long detailed home visits with a social worker who wanted to know the inner workings of our minds. But after months of these things we were approved. 

We were told with our particular agency that it would take 9-18 months or so, we thought we had more than enough time. Six weeks after that approval we had a vacation scheduled,but my uh-oh feeling kept telling me not to go. We went on the vacation anyway, thinking we would begin to plan the nursery in the months after. Three days after arriving home from that vacation the phone rang on a Wednesday afternoon at 5:40 pm. I remember looking at the clock on the stove. It was on of those early clocks with the drop down numbers on little tiny cards and I heard it make that ka-plunk sound as I answered the phone. It was the adoption agency calling and they had a newborn boy for us if we wanted him. IF WE WANTED him????  Of course I said yes, my husband wasn’t home, but I knew we were getting this little one. The Agency director said we could pick him up the next day. 

That memories of that night remain a blur, I’m not sure of all we did do, There was no local Wal-Mart that remained open 24/7. There was an Eckerd’s Drug Store in a neighboring town that we stopped at after driving to pick up my parents and mother-in-law who were at a conference nearer to us than their home. We got a pack of disposable diapers, a couple of bottles and figured we would get the rest the next day after getting the baby. We did have a car seat, I remember that much. 
     It took a few weeks and the help of family and friends to make a room for that baby boy, but he had our hearts from our first glimpse of him and when he was place in my arms I knew it would take death to part us.

That was twenty five years ago. Last weekend I saw that tiny seven pound baby who is now 6’3” marry his beautiful lovely bride and now my children are three. The years between have been filled with the arrival of his sister four years after him, a dreadful, painful and heart-wrenching divorce seven years later that still leaves me with feelings of failure and unresolved heartache. 
      But I have cherished, loved and adored these children of mine. My heart is full and overflowing with that mothers love. My life is full in ways that are completely indescribable to those who are not parents.  

I have failed, I have fallen, I have made many mistakes in my life but I am a good, loving mother and I know I was called to do this. I believe my children know I love them unconditionally.  I would fight with the fierceness of a tiger and walk through the fires of hell for them.  I love them with all that I am and because of them I am a much better person that I could have ever become without them. My life is blessed beyond measure and my cup truly runneth over.