 | ||||||
 |   |  |  |  |   | |
| ||||||
| | | | | | |
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_T A L K Stepparents discuss the benefits and costs of shaping new families in the Mothers area of Table Talk ___________________ Search barnesandnoble.com for books about parenting and the family
R E C E N T L Y Millennial family values The last waltz Forever young Star quality Forever young BROWSE THE MOTHERS WHO THINK FEATURE ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - | ____THE baby girl I GAVE AWAY
Editors' Note: This is the first in a trilogy of stories by three women whose lives were changed forever by adoption -- a teenager who gave birth alone in a home for unwed mothers in 1967, the baby girl who grew up to wonder who her real parents were and the woman who became a mother when that baby girl was placed in her arms. BY CEIL MALEK | At a poetry reading, I sit next to a woman I have known since our daughters, who are now finishing high school, were small. Between poems, myfriend says, "I read your article about Florence Crittenton." I'm taken back. She's referring to an article I wrote 10 years ago for a local parenting magazine. After the reading, she says, "We should have lunch sometime. I was there too." We're in our early 50s, but talking about where we were 30 years earlier makes us both look around to see who might overhear. "You were there?" I say. She seems so well adjusted that she's the last person I would have expected to have relinquished a child after a stay in a maternity home. "I was there in 1965," she says. "I was 18, just starting college. I went to Rush Week at Colorado University and then I found out that I was pregnant,so I had to leave before my first semester even started." "I know." "I hated the lies. We told everybody I was in California working as a nanny for a rich family." "It was the same kind of thing for me. Did you think about abortion?" "It wasn't legal. Was it?" "No, it wasn't." "I just went along with it. All of it. What else was there to do? My mom took care of all the details. My family told people I couldn't handle school. I would rather have told them I was pregnant." The crowd has thinned by now. Her husband is looking at books. "What was it like for you at Crittenton?" I ask. "Full of shame and fear." "I no longer remember that so fully. Meeting my daughter a few years ago softened my memories. Have you met your child?" "No, I don't think boys are as interested in searching as girls are." She adds, "I'm RH negative, and that first delivery was the only normal one I had. After I got married, I lost my first child. We tried again. I had a very anxious pregnancy with lots of amniocentesis. There were complications, and I had to have a C-section. Then it was hard for me to connect with my daughter. My husband had to tell me to go down to the nursery and see her." "I went the other way. I was overprotective, afraid of separations. My daughter had complications at birth too, and I had to leave the hospital without her. It was harder than it should have been." I feel my friend's assent. She must understand this better than anyone. "I've worked on my grief," she says. "I've worked in therapy, I've written, I've done body work." "I have too. But the grief doesn't go away entirely. I didn't grieve then. Did you?" "Oh no. I just put it all away and went on with my life." Before the 1970s, most unmarried teenage mothers put their babies up for adoption. A 1993 New York Times article recalled that pregnant teenagers were treated as "pariahs, banished from schools, ostracized by their peers or scurried out of town to give birth in secret." Their secrecy was protected in unwed mothers' homes; the most familiar of these, Florence Crittenton Homes, offered sanctuary to unmarried mothers in most major cities for decades. Twenty-five years after I gave birth to a daughter at Denver's Florence Crittenton home, my out-of-wedlock pregnancy was redeemed by meeting my daughter -- an intelligent, intense, warm, amazingly verbal young woman, obviously cherished by an adoptive family well equipped to care for her. Yet I still think about that pregnancy. A woman I know asked me recently, "Why not just focus on the good that came out of your pregnancy? The birth was good, after all." She's right, of course. The birth was good, the child I gave birth to a blessing for her family and for me. Why not leave it at that? I don't seem to be able to; somehow, I resist telling myself or anyone else the easy story -- the story of my child's birth and my reunion with her, the story that ends simply and happily. At 19, I couldn't face the enormity of what was happening or understand what relinquishing my child would mean for me or for her. For a long time, I was afraid to acknowledge how complex my feelings were about the decision I made. But I've come to realize that giving up a child for adoption was the first act of my adult life. That means I need to get the story straight for myself, to tell the whole truth about the experience. I need to tell the whole story to honor the young woman I was.
N E X T_ P A G E: An even deeper, darker secret - - - - - - - - - - - -ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE JOHNSON AND LOU FANCHER |
|
