Blood Is Not Thicker Than Water

Dear 26 year old Newlywed Self:  You will become a mother someday but not the way you planned it.

While you are graduating from law school and studying for the Bar Exam, a pregnant teenager in Florida is getting ready to give birth to a daughter.  She will also be the mother of your oldest son.  Your lives will intersect in the future through adoption but you still think life will go according to your timeline and plans.  After years of painful failed infertility treatments in your early thirties, this woman will choose you and your husband to parent her unborn son and without her you would not be a mother.

You will get a call on a cold January day that she is in labor.  You and your husband will jump in your Jeep and drive to Florida to meet your son.  You will rush to the gas station to buy her cigarettes after she gives birth.  A small request she sheepishly asks for but you and your husband are more than happy to oblige.  A small gesture of thanks to the woman who just gave birth to your son.

When the nurses take your son to the nursery, you both leave the cramped hospital room for fresh air.  Warm Florida sun shines on your faces.  Her in the hospital wheelchair (required for new moms) smoking and talking.  Your banter is easy.  It always has been ever since your first meeting when she invited you to your son’s ultrasound months ago.  You both share hopes and dreams for your son’s future.  You promise he will have music lessons (she played saxophone in high school and her husband is a DJ).  You promise he will have a dog (she has two dogs and says a boy should grow up with a dog).

Your newborn son is surrounded by so much love at the hospital.  Nurses, doctors, parents, grandparents, siblings, social workers.  They all teach you how to change diapers and feed him.  All of these people from different places and walks of life brought together by the birth of this baby boy.  How could anyone describe him as unwanted?

But in all this love there is also unfathomable grief and loss.  His mom and dad will soon sign papers relinquishing their parental rights.   His older sister and brother will give him a stuffed blue teddy bear and say goodbye.  His grandmother will hold him and kiss him one last time.  It feels so final and permanent.  Your heart breaks at the thought of it.  

You don’t worry about them not signing the adoption paperwork, it’s bigger than that.  You feel their pain as much as you can.  You will tell your son this someday—how much his parents and grandmother and brother and sister loved him.  And they will be able to hug him again and tell him themselves how much they love him when your families meet in Florida to celebrate his 10th birthday at an amusement park.

And now on his 13th birthday, you look at this teenage boy in your house.  This boy who weighed 5 pounds at birth—he’s taller than you and his voice is deep.  His room is messy and he drives you nuts sometimes.  He is handsome and athletic.    Popular and confident.  He is fearless—riding rollercoasters, diving off platforms, pole vaulting.  He plays music by ear.  His good looks and musical and athletic talents inherited from his birth parents.  The polar opposite of you in so many ways.  This is a good thing.

You are not in control. You never were. Resolutions and goals and timelines are illusions.  All we have is the present.  It is a gift to be alive.  It is a gift to be married for twenty years to someone who loves you and listens to you and makes you laugh.  It is a gift to be a parent.  It is a gift to know and love your son’s birth family as they watch him grow into a young man alongside you.  Blood is not thicker than water.  Love is.