A Letter From Your Birthmother

I have spoken to a lot of people over the years about adoption.  What I have heard more than anything else is a question from adoptees: "How could you give up your daughter?" It seems that, while "adoption is the loving option", there are still many challenges to being adopted, particularly in a closed adoption, as my daughter was. Questions like, "Who do I look like?" "What is my real ethnic derivation?" "Didn't you love me?" "Where do I belong?" are common and heartbreaking for a birth mother like me, who hoped that my daughter would never miss me.

I wrote her a letter, which I never let anyone else read and never sent. For the sake of so many adoptees out there, and their healing, I would like to offer this.

                                                                                                 May 28, 1984

Dear Little Darlin',

I don't know how you must feel about this imaginary person who gave birth to you.  Either anger at having abandoned you or being willing to give you to somebody else, or blessedness that I loved you enough to give you a real family.  Perhaps I should tell you the basics.  Maybe you'll understand this/me a little more.

Your father was a dear friend, not a love, but we shared many things in common, and I wouldn't have given up his friendship for the world.  I only saw him once after you were born and then we talked about how you had affected our lives.  I remember wondering, "How can a 15-second old baby look like a twenty year old man?"  Whatever, it was true.  Your birthday was six days after his.  He loved history and fantasy and when I had contemplated keeping you, he said, "Send me a picture.  I want to send it a sword on its 14th birthday." I loved him for that.

At first, he wanted me to have an abortion though he didn't even offer his opinion till he'd heard mine.  You'll no doubt be please to hear that that never even was considered.  You were starting to live, and you were going to stay that way if I had anything to say about it.

At first, I was shaky when I found out because I was afraid of disappointing my parents. But I was happy at the same time, because I'd ruptured an ovary once and I felt that God was saying, "See, you don't have anything to worry about." I have to admit, that though most people wouldn't think having an illegitimate child something to be proud of, in these days when there are so many couples incapable of having children, I couldn't help feeling a trifle smug.

My parents and I prayed about you (fortunately, they agreed with me on the no abortion) and they figured that adoption was the best thing.  I was relieved and happy for several reasons.  One of the major ones was realizing what  a child I was and how incapable of being on my own, let alone caring for a child of my own.  Another big reason was that I would be steward of a very special Christmas gift. God had an important purpose for me.

I had hard times, but overall, I loved being pregnant. It was a happy time, with not a huge amount of tears, surrounded by loving, Christian people.

One thing you should never, ever be afraid of. And that is that you weren't wanted. On the contrary, everyone wanted you. They put you on my stomach and I wanted to touch you so badly, and I had a great deal of trouble saying that I didn't want to see you. Every once in a while, I wish I had, but just because I promised God I would give you up didn't mean I had to be a martyr. The day after you were born, the lawyer called to make sure I hadn't been coerced into giving you up. He asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this. That was the hard time, but after I crossed that hurdle, God took me in His arms just as I wanted to take you.

My mom and dad looked at you and my dad said afterward, "I wouldn't have minded keeping her." It took all my strength not to say, "Neither would I."

My grandmother called to hear how it had gone and said that it was a good thing she hadn't seen you; she would have wanted to take you home.

The choir director at our church, who also taught me piano, was willing to move out of the state to have you.

Your father said to me when I last saw him, "It's hard to keep up the devil-may-care attitude I always try to come across with when there's something I do care about." I think you really made him.
 
There's an old saying, "Any woman can be a mother, but it takes someone special to be a mom." I'm your mother, not your mom, but as the lawyer told me, you're doubly blessed in having two sets of parents, all of whom love.

Lord willing, someday, I'll have other children, but I don't think any of them will be what you were, because you were mine; no one else really had a claim on you. In my mind, I always called you L.D.: Little Darlin'. I had been pretending about a someone like you since three years before you were born. I imagined traipsing around Germany with you on my back, and going for hikes in the Indiana Dunes and the Northwoods. If you love the woods, that explains it; both your father and I loved the forest.

I expect that you'll be fascinated by anything imaginary; a combination of both him and I couldn't be anything else. And thanks to the loving household that I was told about, I know that that imagination will work wonders.

Mother

How many rewrites are enough?

Let's be honest; there is no perfect work; we can always rewrite.

For my book Adopted and Restored, first, I wrote.

First rewrite: organize and fill in gaps.

Second rewrite: add 1500 words. That was actually not enough. I ended up adding 2500.

Third rewrite: remove 1500 words. I found, when rewriting magazine articles that needed to be trimmed, that removing words forces me to tighten up my writing.

Fourth rewrite: My agent/editor/friend reads my book and gives details criticism. It's okay, (sniff, sniff) I can take it. Then I work with those critiques, adding, subtracting, shifting.

Fifth rewrite: Read the whole shebang and polish, tightening the rhetoric.

My mother told me of a romance novelist who did 17 rewrites, each one on a different color paper. Sound excessive? Maybe, but she was published. Can't argue with success.

Preview of "Adopted and Restored"

Almost all of my memories of Charles are in the dark: standing backstage during our Theater Tech class, leaving Marksmanship class after sunset, meeting me at the train station, walking back to the dorm from the campus movie, walking around town discussing what we would do if I were pregnant.

That night, after Paul broke up with me, Charles met me on the train platform coming back to school after Spring Break. How did he know? I never asked, but was there something insidious telling him that now was the opportune moment? That I was at my most vulnerable? It was so dark, as I stepped down from the train, that I could hardly see him. He was just a shape in the blackness surrounded by other shapes drifting around the open train platform, waiting or descending from the humming monster that went from Chicago to the country hinterlands and back again. I had stepped down from the train depressed by the walk to come down the shadowed street, dragging my heavy suitcase, having nothing to look forward to and nothing to look back for. I would never go back home to Chicago again – my father had gotten transferred to Florida. Chicago, my dear city, my home, my lake, the air I breathed, the secret ways through the buildings and under the streets, were cut off for me. Everything was behind me and ahead of me my walk to the college was only darkness, literally and figuratively. And who should be waiting on the train platform in the dark, but Charles. How did he know? How could he know to be there? He was just there, because the train vibrated so loudly I could barely hear him.

“Charles! Are you meeting someone?”

“Yes. You.”

Humpty Dumpty

The good girlfriend

Gets taken to the doctor

By a girlfriend who knows better.

“You are pregnant.

How do you feel about that?”

“I don't know.”

Friend who knows better takes her to the mall.

“Look at the pictures in this book.

Real babies.

Aren't they great?”

A hole I have fallen into

With nothing to keep me company.

No more the good girl.

And what do I do with that?

Who will put me back together again?