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- - - - - - - - - - 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 | PAGE 1, 2, 3 The students I teach now in college level composition classes, even my own adolescent children, think the '60s were a time of free sex, abundant drugs and bra-burning women's libbers. But I was there, and I know that this picture isn't adequate to describe the whole decade. When I started college in 1964 at age 17, I didn't even feel tremors of the widespread social and political changes to come. The early- and mid-'60s were simply an extension of the '50s, when race, ethnic background, religion, class, breeding, grammar and table manners all mattered. Concern for keeping up appearances was pervasive, the sexual double standard taken for granted. If free sex means guilt-free, open sexuality, it was a foreign concept in my college experience. All the sex I was aware of was explored and pursued stealthily, secretly. But evidence that other students were having sex came to light: unplanned marriages, children given up for adoption and abortions sought even though they were illegal. I was just finishing my sophomore year. Disappointed in college, disappointed in my performance in college, I was on shaky ground. It had always been school that stabilized me. But those first two years --with their large classes and the impersonality of lecture and test, lecture and test -- left me feeling alienated and disconnected. I'd collected a transcript full of Bs and Cs and was wondering how I'd find a place for myself in the world. Looking for something my college experience didn't offer me, I explored my sexuality timidly. I slept with David twice. He was a premed student at CU-Boulder, someone I had wanted to be in a relationship withfor many months. The relationship was tenuous, based more on mutual attraction than a deeper sense of connection that might have anchored a lasting bond. And David's ties to his upper-middle-class family were very strong. My middle-middle-class family didn't really measure up, and his mother, who kept a close eye on her sons, must have hoped that I was just a passing fancy. I don't remember how I told David that I was pregnant. But his response was clear: My pregnancy marked the end of our relationship. I didn't see him or hear from him after that. He retreated into his family. I learned later that he did tell them about my pregnancy, but at the time I wondered whether he had the courage to do even that. I do remember telling my mother that I was pregnant. She was sitting on the couch in the living room; my older sister was hovering inthe doorway, listening. Mom cried; it was the first time I'd ever seen her cry. I remember that she said, "I'm so sorry your first child has to be born under these circumstances." I didn't have to be told that I had to get out of my parents' house and out of their community. I suggested that I go to Denver. She knew how to arrange it. And she said she'd tell my father. I was in turmoil. I knew something even worse than what I was telling people. I'd slept with someone else. It was a one-night stand with Harry, whose last name I didn't even know. I'd gone to a bar and a party with my roommate. Drunk, I'd slept with Harry. I couldn't justify that act to myself, much less tell anyone about it. It was unacceptable to be 19 and pregnant, but to be 19 and pregnant and not even know the father's last name was unspeakable. I felt I had to maintain my story that David was the father of my child with my parents, my friends, David, of course, and my social worker at Florence Crittenton. Because the social worker would see to my child's adoptive placement, I had to protect myself and my child from what I thought would be certain rejection and absolute shame by claiming that I'd at least had something of a relationship with the child's father. At least I knew his name and the particulars for an adoption study. At least I had cared for him, had been cared for. And on paper, he and I made good birth parents: Our child was considered a high-background baby, one slated for an especially good home. I went over and over my story in my head, clarifying the details I would tell, making sure I was consistent. My story was believable, and I would start to believe it myself. But then I'd rub up against the true story: that night with Harry and the fact that I really didn't know who the father of my child was. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- The Denver Florence Crittenton Home was a three-story red brick building. It looked ordinary enough from the street, but once inside there was no mistaking the purpose of the building: dorm rooms, kitchen, school, even a hospital where girls gave birth, and a nursery where the babies were housed untilthey were taken off to foster homes and adoptive homes. There were 40 girls, high school and college students primarily, most of us within a month or two of term, all of whom had somehow managed to get by in the outside world until we had to come to the institution for cover. Cover. That's a good word for what the home did; it covered us until we gave birth and could return to school, to our families, to our friends. Until then, we used no last names; I was simply C.C., even on the labor and delivery record. In the adoption study, I was reduced to: 19 year-old, green eyes, light brown hair, 5-9, fair skin, allergic to sulfa. I even relinquished rights to my child in court under an assumed name, Constance Anne Brown. To keep our secrets, our families concealed our whereabouts from extended family, even brothers and sisters, and friends who might ask questions. Mine said I was working as a nanny for a wealthy family, that I had dropped out of college after my sophomore year, needing a break. What was it like at Crittenton? On the one hand, it was a safe place designed to protect us from censure. And it was comforting to me to discover that the other residents were very ordinary girls, including the daughter of a minister, the daughter of two teachers, the daughter of a Wyoming rancher. On the other hand, we knew we had done something so terrible that it required that we be segregated. We were hiding away, putting our real lives on hold. We followed a strict, institutional schedule. Far from finding it limiting, I welcomed the structure. We woke early, had breakfast. The younger girls went to school while the older girls did their assigned jobs. Mine was to help the cooks fix lunch by cutting up fresh vegetables; preparing large bowlsof Jell-o, a different color for each day of the week; and serving bowls of cooked, limp, butter-soaked vegetables. This was one of the sought-after jobs, much better than swabbing floors or cleaning up after lunch. After our work was done, we could go out to walk or shop. Curfew was at 4:30 and lights out at 9 p.m. I don't remember how I passed the rest of the time. I don't remember what I read. Or thought. Or felt. Did my friends send letters? I think so, but I don't know how often. My mother sent letters. I remember a package with her handwriting on the label; I don't remember its contents. I can see myself in the downstairs lounge where the library cart was placed and where I took knitting lessons. I don't think I watched TV -- it was on all the time, quiz shows, as I remember, during the day. My dad came to see me once, unannounced. I'd taken up occasional smoking and was embarrassed to be carrying a pack of cigarettes, which I couldn'thide because my maternity smock had no pockets. My father didn't mention the cigarettes sitting in my lap or my prominent belly, although he must have noticed both. No one took photos. There were no autograph books, no addresses were exchanged, no one kept mementos. We would leave our maternity clothes in a community closet so the new girls could use them, just as the girls before us had left clothes behind for us. Maybe there was wisdom in the conventions. Does an experience go away if it's not mentioned? In someways, it does. Without the anchoring of words, without the repetition of a story, experiences do drift, get less distinct. Over the years I've told and retold the story of my child's birth to myself, protecting the most profound experience I'd had in my life; I was afraid that it was in danger of getting lost. In fact, for years I thought I had written the birth story over and over again. But when I looked through the boxes of journals I keep in my basement, the account wasn't there. I realized that it was an oral history, one I recited internally. My parents took me out to lunch on Easter, the only time they had taken me out since I had gotten pregnant. By that time I was about two weeks past my due date. I can't imagine what we talked about. Maybe their taking me out into public was enough. Maybe they had told themselves people might think my husband was in the Army, my hands too swollen for my wedding ring. Or perhaps people would think my husband had died and that I deserved great sympathy. Whatever they told themselves, they braved being seen with me in public, but didn't linger after lunch. At about 9 that evening, I started to have contractions. I walked up and down the hall as I'd been told to do in a birth preparation class to test whether these pains were the real thing or false labor. The contractions began to come closer and closer. When I was convinced that this was the time I'd been waiting for all those months, I walked upstairs to the third floor Mary Donaldson Hospital, where a single nurse was on duty. I was scared and excited, but for the nurse, I was just another unwed mother who'd come to term. She hurried me into a nightgown and brusquely showed me to a bed. She prepped me for delivery without speaking and then left me alone. Later, the nurse gave me Demerol, which she must have assumed would slow down labor, so I wouldn't deliver until morning. But the next time she checked me, at midnight, I was fully dilated and ready to give birth. Horrified that I'd dilated so quickly and without a doctor for the delivery, she ordered me to slow down, not to push while she summoned someone. An intern from Colorado General came just as the baby arrived.The nurse said perfunctorily, "It's a girl," and whisked the baby away as if my seeing her or touching her would harm her. I looked over my shoulder at the nurse, bundling the baby in a blanket. Captive on the delivery table, I had no choice but to lie still and quiet while the intern stitched me up. I wasn't surprised by this cold treatment in the delivery room; the people who worked in this institution simply shared the attitude of the larger culture. But I was unprepared for the incredible elation I felt, the exhilaration of having carried a child to term. Even the dreary hospital, the cold nurse, the impersonal intern couldn't dim this realization. I knew I would never be the same. It was, in fact, the very impersonality of giving birth that impressed me. I was Everywoman. It hadn't mattered what my name was, what color my hair was, what my age was, what my marital status was. I had delivered a child, a real child. Not only Everywoman -- I was for a few hours Everyparent, stepping back to consider another, putting self aside, not so much as an act of heroism or altruism or compassion, but bowing to procreation, the beat of life expressed in a new person, separate, marvelous. The exhilaration was short-lived. In the midst of enormous hormonal shifts and all too aware of my raw emotions, I found the days after my daughter's birth difficult. I took pills to stem the flow of milk in my breasts and more pills, green ones, to stop the tears that flowed after I saw my child. We were allowed to see our children and hold them, even nurse them if we chose. They were, after all, legally our babies. I opted not to hold or nurse my child on the advice of other mothers, who said it only made relinquishment more difficult. I did pin my hospital gown together with a clothespin and shuffle down the hall to see my daughter in the nursery. Outside the glass, I looked closely at her, tracing her head, her ears, hernose, her mouth with my eyes. I must have visited three or four times. When it came to the nurses' attention that I was crying after each visit, they told me I must stop because I was upsetting the other girls. Several days after I gave birth, my social worker drove me to the Denver City and County Building, where I gave up my child and promised never to attempt to contact her or learn her whereabouts. N E X T_ P A G E: Is something wrong with me? |
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