A Beautiful Adoption Story

When I was 7 or 8 my oldest sister went away.  She had been to college for a little bit, I remember, and then for some reason she went to live with my Aunt Jackie who at that time was living in East Lansing, Michigan, at Michigan State University where she (my aunt) worked in their Labor Studies department.  I didn't understand why she (my sister) was living with Aunt Jackie but I was little and didn't think much about it.   And then my sister was back home and then she moved out and then she got married.

Years later, when I was in my teens, she told me that she had had a baby and given that baby up for adoption.  She went to live with Aunt Jackie during her pregnancy and Aunt Jackie had made the adoption arrangements.  Ever since then my oldest sister and Jackie were very close.  I always wondered why because they were as different as any two people could be!  My aunt was cultivated and academic, my sister loved country music and Harlequin romance novels.  My aunt tended toward reticence and refinement, my sister was blunt and sarcastic.  They were an odd mix. But somehow they were very close.  My sister adored my aunt.  And my aunt was always very patient with her, a patience she did not show others.  But once I heard about the baby I realize that they had really bonded.  That there was a terrible rift between my mother and my oldest sister (that much later, and very slowly, healed) and that my Aunt Jackie had been my sister's lifeline and kept her whole and sane while she went through pregnancy and childbirth. Which is funny because my mother bore 13 children and my aunt was a spinster.

My sister had two children with her husband, her now ex-husband as the marriage lasted only ten years.  She never told her own children about the baby she had had when she was 21.

Fast forward to last spring.  Someone on facebook kept trying to send messages to a niece and two of my sisters.  It's funny because my oldest sister changed her married name back to her maiden name after her divorce but they didn't find her via facebook, they found the niece and two sisters.  It turns out one of the daughters of the little baby boy my sister gave up was trying to find her long lost biological grandmother.

And so facebook brought together my sister and her son, Stephen.  A son she'd never known.  He was raised by a loving couple.  He married and had a couple children and then his wife died.  He later married again and had three more children.  On Easter Sunday 2018 my sister got to talk on the phone to her son.  She said the emotions were indescribable.  Both his adoptive parents have passed on now.  I think his youngest is in college.  My sister says his adoptive parents did a wonderful job raising him.  He's lovely.  Kind and smart and generous.

He calls her every Saturday now and for every holiday.  They got to meet in person in June when one of his children was graduating from a college in North Carolina.  They drove through Virginia on the way back up to Michigan.  My niece and nephew got to meet the older brother they never knew they had.  And guess what!   The half brothers look alike!  You can definitely see a family resemblance.

My sister says the father was a Marine she met one night while out.  They drank too much and went too far.  He was going off to Vietnam.  She never saw him again.

Pregnancy is temporary, but a life is real.  It has a lifetime.  It is so precious.  My sister has new grandchildren.  She is writing them Christmas cards this year.  She is so happy.  Her heart is full of joy.  A thing that was a terrible hardship, a crisis pregnancy, has ended, 50 years later, in joy and love and gratitude.

Choose life!