Dear Kiddo,
I almost wrote to you on your birthday, but I decided that the day might be too overwhelming for you. This year, I didn’t struggle nearly as much as I have in the past. I suspect that means that I’ve grown? Maybe it means that next year will be easier? Or maybe it just means that this year was just easy. I hope you had a good day. I found a picture of you on your parent’s profiles. They made it public, so I won’t be ashamed to admit I took it. You look so grown up. What am I saying? You are grown up now. Ten is a huge number.
Ten years ago, today, was the final day I had to redact my signature. There were days in those ten where I sat on my parents bed, while everyone was at work, and wondered what would happen if I made that one call. I dialed the number more than a dozen times. The propaganda of the agency was heavy inside my head, loud and verbose. They’d had you longer, but had they? You had lived within me for nine whole months. I knew when you would wake up, when you would fall asleep. You knew the sound of my voice, and my heart. Yet, none of that seemed to matter to anyone else. So, it was me, the bed, and the telephone, for hours, and hours.
I want you to know, I wanted to make that call. I wanted to pick up the phone, and dial the number and demand that they bring you back to me. I tried to make plans, I tried to figure out how you and I would make it together. I knew we could, I wanted us to, but there was no support to do so. Why I didn’t call on that old rebellious spirit that lives within me, I’ll never know.
Someone yesterday told me that despite everything that has happened, it has been for the best. Do you know how much I hate that phrase? I don’t hate it because it’s trite and condescending. I hate it because no one knows yet, if this is for the best. No one knows if staying with me would have been better, because we were never given a chance. I wonder, especially after my last interaction with your adoptive parents, if you are being treated with the same kindness you would have been treated with in my home. I don’t know that you are better, or worse because, no one wants me to see you. Or know about you. That’s hard, but none of this has ever been for the best. It’s been only for lack of other choices. I had no other choice.
Your brother and sister have been talking about you lately. Especially on your birthday. We’d made your cake, as we always do, and it always sparks conversations of some sorts. While I was cleaning up the kitchen from dinner, Girlie and Potato began discussing you, mostly because they were excited to have cake. It wasn’t until Potato, your brother, said, “I wish we could see him for his birthday, but we aren’t allowed to”, that I felt my heart stop. You see, when I was eighteen, no one told me how far spread family was. I didn’t come from a family that focused on relatives. When I had Potato, we had relatives from far and wide, on my husband’s side celebrating Potato’s adventure to our family. I never had the baby shower, or the overwhelming shower of love, excitement shone from others. Little did I know, that one day, I would have two more children, and I would have to explain you, who you are to me, and importantly, who you are to them.
They know you. I often hear them pretend playing with you in the games throughout the day. Potato asks me why we’re not allowed to see you, and I can never find the right answers for him. I don’t why we can’t know each other. Why you can’t be a part of my family the same way that I believed your family was a part of mine. I don’t have all the answers.
Your brother and sister, they love you. They miss you, which is peculiar to me, because other than a picture or two around the house, they don’t know you. Yet, they do, and they wish you were in their life as often as they are in each others. Is this all really for the best? I don’t know.
I hope you had a wonderful birthday. My thoughts were with you the entire day, and I hope one day, I’ll be able to give you all the presents that you have here for all the years we’ve missed together.
As always, I love you. You are beautiful, intelligent, and strong. You can do anything in this world if you put your mind to it, I know this.
Until next month,
Love,
Mom xoxo
