Remembering

This time of year, when the madness of Christmas is behind me, I start to think. As painful as that is, and as much smoke as it produces, I think. What, you may ask, could make me do such a foolish thing? My children, of course.

God knew what He was doing when He gave us two children not born of my womb, just our hearts. I cannot imagine what a nightmare I would be if I could hold pregnancy & delivery guilt stories over the heads of my children. God spared them the torture. (Of course, it gave me one less excuse for the post-baby fat I carry around).

Every year I write a letter to a birth mother. I write it because I promised to. In some way it gives me peace and in a twisted way it makes me feel less guilty. I have not received a reply yet, though I stamp each envelope with a clearly marked return address. I both hope for and fear a reply.

I agonize over pictures to be sure there isn't location information in them, and I fret over sending too many close up pictures because everyone knows you will run in to everybody you know at Walmart eventually. I am careful to only use first names and birth names. I don't know if my fears of being located before they are adults is rational or not, but it is real.

On the other hand, it is a joy to me to be able to look back on the last year of their lives! I try to imagine what I would want to know if I were waiting for this letter, and I write. It is harder because my children were not given to me by the birth parents choice, but I imagine that they still love them, and I tell them how much these children are loved.

I write, edit, cry, and laugh. I do it in private, my husband has never read the letters- I am a mother writing a woman who was, for a brief moment, a mother. Her wrongs do not take that biology away.

And so, this time of year, because I think- I am more withdrawn, less creative, less lively. But give me time...the smoke will clear. Then the craziness resumes.