I am spending a lot of my time thinking of L’s other mother. Tomorrow is L’s birthday. If the information we have is correct (and I have some reason to believe to at least some of it may be accurate) two years ago, L’s mother was spending her last day (or days?) with L.
In my mind, I can walk backward through L’s life before us. I have seen enough pictures of the inside of her orphanage and of the ayis to imagine some of her day-to-day life. I can imagine her there at 9 months, at 6 months, at 3 months. I can imagine her as the teeny, tiny newborn she was when she was brought there. I can imagine the moments when she was found (if the finding location we were given was accurate). I have seen these places, touched the ground there, breathed the air.
But it is almost as if that moment of being found (if indeed L was found, which we do not know for sure), was the like the Big Bang. My imagination can’t go any farther. What happened in the seconds before? The minutes before? The hours before?
What was that person thinking when he or she walked away from L that day? Did her mother have a chance to look at her? To say hello and goodbye? Are her parents younger than me? Was L their first child? Were they married? In love? In trouble?
While I know logically that there is a person who gave birth to L who is most likely alive, it is like she is a ghost. My mind doesn’t want to believe she exists and I can not think of her as a concrete, real person. I can’t really imagine the person who would look at my lovely little L and not see that she is the most special and most wonderful girl in the world. Did she know and leave her anyway? Who is this person? How could she make that choice? Did she have a choice?
I think of that day 2 years ago, when L was safe and warm with her mother. Then, only a short time later she was left alone, set adrift to find her own future without a family. My heart breaks for that baby who is now my L.
My mind can’t resolve the conflicted feelings I have about L’s mother. Part of me is angry that she left L alone in the world. I think about what it would take for me to make that decision. In my privileged position, I can’t imagine anything short of my own death or a serious threat of physical harm of to my children that could make me make that choice. But it is easy to say that in the life I am living now–without laws or finances or social stigmas influencing my perspective. And rationally, I know that my life and L’s mother’s life are worlds apart but I can’t help but feel angry sometimes.
When I am not thinking with my mother-heart (feeling protective of L), I just feel heartbroken for this woman. There are too many variables for me to know why she couldn’t keep L. I can not imagine her life or who she is. The only thing I know about her is that she is L’s mother. She is a mother without her child. I can’t imagine many things that could be more painful.
Is she thinking about L today? Is L’s mother wondering about L the way I wonder about her? Does her imagination try to make sense of L’s life after that Big Bang moment the way I try to make sense of L’s life before?
We will probably never know the answers to these questions. I just wish she knew that L is happy and healthy and loved.
Thank you, thank you for writing this. I can relate so well and find comfort in knowing I’m not the only one out there with these thoughts and feelings. Sharing with my family and friends has proven to be unfufulling…so I appreciate your post more than you know.
Happy birthday L!
I have friends who just met their daughter in Guangzhou yesterday, and that, combined with your lovely post, is bringing a lot of emotions to the surface.
Here’s wishing the very happy, healthy and loved L a very wonderful birthday!
This is an incredible and beautiful post. Thank you so much for sharing it and for giving voice to the very thoughts I (and my guess is many of us) have had about my/our daughter’s beginnings-though could not have expressed as elequently. Happy birthday to L and may she have a brilliant year!
Thanks for the thoughtful post.
I found it particularly interesting because my daughter will also be turning 2 tomorrow. We adopted her from Vietnam in August.
Happy birthday to L!
She’s less than two weeks older than my young’un so I’m thinking back two years and my heart is breaking at the situation.
Thank you. I relate so much to this. My daughter turned 4 last month, so we are starting to talk now about feelings about her first mother, first mother’s about her. I too, feel conflicting thoughts. I don’t feel angry, exactly, but just… mystified… as to how any mother could have left my wonderful daughter, even in a place she was sure to be found. And yet I have no idea of the actual situation. All I can do is ask why, and hold my daughter as she asks why (not yet, but maybe not too far away?). And my heart just aches with sadness for this mother who will not know this wonderful child and watch her growing up.
The comments and the post are beautiful. Again I am glad others share the thoughts and felling I have. Sometimes it is just good to know you are not alone.
Ah the bitter with the sweet. It’s always there. Happy Birthday Dear L!
Today is the 5th anniversary of receiving our daughter’s referral. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her birth family and wonder about the reasons she was abandoned. I’ve read that many times it is the paternal grandmother who makes the decision to abandon a child and the mother may have no say in this matter. I wish there was a way for her birth family to know what happened to her. I would imagine that she is like a ghost to them – always there, but not there.
And my 11 year old has been doing a genetics unit in Science….and today’s homework was to compare/contrast yourself to one parent for dominant/recessive traits. I try to use these situations to talk about her birth family and told her she had more info about what they may have looked like and been able to do (for ex. curling your tongue).
I am there with you right now. M is going to be four in two weeks and it is really hitting home with me. She came to our family at 25 months, last year I thought of her foster mother and really could not process her birthmother at that time. This year I think of her birthparents often, I talk with her foster mother through email and now phone so I am at peace with her loss, so is she. It has left me facing these same questions. It is interesting you post this today, I received information from her first orphanage just days ago and the translation this morning about that day almost four years ago. The information is informative and concrete, but also so telling. I feel for them more and more and since learning what I have my emotions have shifted drastically from the anger I used to harbor so close. I needed proof for me–maybe that is not PC, but it is the truth–that she was not carelessly disgarded and I received that peace. I only hope her birth parents have found their own.
Thank you for sharing.
The day after you posted this, I was weeping in my therapist’s office over pictures of what we believe may be my daughter’s finding location. DD recently turned 4 and I’m trying to write her effing lifebook. Argh.
I just never understand those AP’s who say they forget that their daughter is Chinese. Huh?? How can you forget? Every day as I look at my daughter’s beautiful features and experience her infectious love of life, I think and wonder about the woman who carried and gave birth to her. My heart breaks over and over thinking about the unimaginable and horrific social pressures that caused someone, maybe my daughter’s Chinese mother, to leave XXXX in the place where she was found (assuming she was, in fact, found and was not in some way procured by her orphanage). It’s just such an effed up system, and yet without it I would not be XXXX’s mother and you wouldn’t be L’s. Happy birthday, dear sweet L. I can’t help but think that many if not most of our children’s birthmoms think of them on these days.
My 5 yr old son is “worried” about his birth mother. He’s been with us for almost 2 yrs (adopted from Ethiopia) and his mom gave him up for adoption as she couldn’t care for him. He knows this and asked why his birthmother couldn’t be adopted too by a new family.
Last month he told me was sad because he missed his birthmother as she was always kind and nice to him and asked if we could adopt her into our family. When I told him that for now the judge only finds new families for children and not adults, he asked if we could visit her when he is big.
it breaks my heart to see him sad and worried like this…he is very emotional lately and even his kindergarten teachers think that he is working through these emotions as he is very reactive emotionally if he is yelled at.
My son was left at the children’s home when he was about 2 1/2 – 3 years old and remembers being breastfed by his birthmother. He remembers the day he arrived to the family and told us in detail how he arrived, etc.
I wish there was something else I could do to help him through – telling him his birthmother did this out of love for him doesn’t seem to be enough.
thanks for listening,
Anna
I completely relate. Both of my kids’ birthdays are this week – April 5th – and I find myself in a very strange emotional zone. I’m so happy for them, they are turning 19 and 17 and are incredible young people. But I fear that opportunities to find their Korean families are slipping away, and it breaks my heart. That, plus the fact that I really cannot be a part of their decision to search unless they invite me is very hard, because I’ve dreamed for so long that they would both find and meet and know their families.
If it’s this hard for me, it is so much harder for them. Thank you for putting your feelings in words, it helps knowing I’m not alone.
As a birthmom myself I can tell you that for sure this chinese women thinks about your little girl everyday, not just her birthdate. The system of adoption in china is very unkind to birthmothers, mostly. The social pressure of family is like, do or die, seriously. A friend of mine told me this. Its good that you try and think about her(birthmom). I can promise you she is probably thinking of you, just hoping you love the little baby she gave birth too, thats the best thing you can do. Just love your little girl.