A Fun Little Coincidence
My husband is a minor gamer. One of his favorites is City of Heros. I’ve been teasing him that I want to join World of Warcraft (WOW) so we can have some bonding time. He knows I’m full of it. Gaming has never interested me. This weekend, though, I agreed to sit down and create a City of Heros character. The next day my husband went to work and I stayed home. I wanted to play my awesome new character (a Viking/Celtic 8 foot tall tanker named Sonny), but couldn’t figure out how to log on. Instead, I browsed around in my daughter’s “favorites” online and came across a pet site. There I found a beautiful female Boston Terrier. My latest obession for almost a year is to someday own a Boston Terrier. Not only was she to my perfect specifications (small, black and white, symmetrical markings, a year old, housebroken) her name was Alice!! This site was originally named Alice and Anderson after my someday Boston Terriers who would be named Alice and Anderson. Fortunately for my husand, I don’t have the $800+ it would take to adopt and ship her.
A minor but chilly coincidence
My mother, my husband and I were having a quiet 4th of July watching the fireworks televised live from the Washington Memorial. A continuous banner ran along the bottom the screen with text messages from people wishing other people a happy 4th of July. I wonder if they also wish people happiness on the 5th, 6th and 7th as well. In any event, a message scrolled across from Hannah to her family. My 17-year-old daughter’s name happens to be Hannah. She was not home because she is working out of town for the summer. Just as the message finished the telephone rang. I said “that’s probably Hannah” not thinking about the message, but thinking about the time of day. My husband answered the phone and nearly fell off his chair when he heard Hannah’s “hello.” Incidentally, my Hannah did not send that message.
A Not to so Minor Coincidence
Someone (assuming it may be God) sent me a message of comfort and love and maybe more. I just haven’t heard the whole message yet.
I’ve been struggling writing about my adoption. My last post sat in my drafts folder for 2 weeks. After a few re-writes, it turned into not much more than a dip of the toe into the proverbial water. I received a very nice comment with a video attachment that made me teary.
It’s been over a year since I read “The Girls Who Went Away.” I hadn’t heard of anyone else who had read it. As I mentioned, the post about the book was not published for 2 weeks. After church on Sunday my husband and I planned to go straight home to do some yard work, etc. We got distracted on the way.
First we decided to stop at Starbucks. We ususally get our orders to go. We decided to stay a bit.
Then we stopped at my mother’s home. She had locked her keys in her car. We waited 30 minutes for AAA to come get them out for her.
Finally, my husband agreed to go to Radio Shack to upgrade my phone on his rare day off. He works at Radio Shack. I love my husband!
Consequently, we didn’t start heading for home until almost 2:00 pm. In the car we turned on our local public radio station as we usually do on Sundays. I could not believe what I was hearing !!! The authors of “The Girls Who Went Away” and others were being interviewed about their experiences as birth mothers, adoptees and adoptive mothers. Had we gone staight home from church as planned, I would have missed this broadcast.
One thing I hadn’t considered for awhile was that while our birth mothers were mourning their loss, our adoptive mothers were also grieving their inability to bear children. It’s easy to assume that the joy of a successful adoption would fix that need. But it doesn’t. Being a mother of 2 myself, and recalling the intense and, at times, overwhelming maternal need I felt as my biological clock ticked down, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my adoptive mother when she learned she could not have her own biological children. As I write this, some clarity is forming. I need to not spend too much time dwelling on what was or what could have been and turn around and embrace the woman who raised me with unconditional love–the one I take for granted–the one who is beginning to slip away from me into old age.
