Today is my birthday. A day I look forward to all year. And I thought it would be the perfect occasion to write this post of the 30 day writing challenge: a short biography, real or imagined, or your mother.
I have my mother who has raised me, and I thought I could write about her, but it seems very factual. Another post soon will deal with my parents, but I thought the bigger, and more challenging post would be about my birth mother.
When I was younger, I had a more pessimistic idea of my birth mother. I felt betrayed and left alone. I felt unwanted and wondered if anything I ever did would ever make me feel enough or wanted. More than that I had questions and wondered why. Why I was ever abandoned?
So today I’ll write about a more optimistic, perhaps idealistic, version. More sophisticated, more understanding, more mature, but also equally as fictional.
Whatever story I write will always be a story, never more than that and I shouldn’t delude myself into believing my own tapestry of a story.
So I’ll start my story with this:
Perhaps one day my birth mother found out she was pregnant. Perhaps she had other children. So she decided to give birth to the baby, not to terminate it. Perhaps she was worried and scared, afraid of being caught, but also having to give up her child. Perhaps she told the father and they decided together to keep it. Perhaps the father was not in the picture and keeping the baby was not an option. But she gave birth to a baby girl. She took care of this baby girl until she couldn’t conceal the baby anymore and then dropped it in a way that the baby would be found, taken, and cared for. Perhaps she cried. Perhaps she waited and watched to make sure the baby was found. Perhaps she even thinks about the baby now.
If she does, did, will, then I would hope to send this message out to her: I am doing well, and giving me up was a strong decision that resulted in a better future for me. And if you wanted or felt you needed my forgiveness, you have it.
I am older, wiser, and more mature now, more understanding of people’s limitations and faults. Realizing that decisions are gray, never black and white, that people have to make horrible decisions. That sometimes you have to do something that hurts.
What truly marks this birthday is that I have changed. Each year I become more and more who I think I was meant to be.
I have grown up, one more year older, and more understanding and forgiving of her than I ever was before.