For My Son’s First Mom

To the Woman Who Gave my Son Life,

This week we celebrate the sixth birthday of the little boy you gave birth to and who made me a mother.  Last night he and I sat cuddled on the couch and looked at the one picture we have of you and talked about how you might be feeling when you remember the day of this boy’s birth.

If you could see him, you would be so proud.  He just loves life.  He runs and jumps and spins and smiles and never NEVER stops talking unless he’s asleep.  He’s bright and he loves people and he loves God.  He is a joy to be around if you can just keep up with him.

And sometimes in his quieter moments, he asks about you.  He said he wants to go to Liberia to meet you.  He said he wants to bring you flowers and thank you for being his mom.  I love that his heart has room for both of us to be loved and cherished as his mom.  He prays for you and hopes to see you someday in heaven if he doesn’t get to meet you on earth.

There’s so much we don’t know.   We don’t know what your hopes and dreams were for your child or for yourself.  We don’t know how you survived a war and a climate of fear that I can only imagine.  We don’t know if the birthday we have is even the actual day you gave birth, or just the closest guess by the orphanage or doctors or you.  We don’t know if you liked to sing and dance as a child.  If Josh gets his speed from your fast feet or his gentle spirit from your sweet heart.  We don’t know if you have family that loves you or if you feel alone.  We don’t even know if you can read the letters we send or if you go to the orphanage office to see the pictures.  We don’t know what circumstances brought you to that orphanage door with a starving baby in your arms.

Because we don’t know, we fill in the blanks with answers that affirm to our son that you were good.  We want him to know he was loved- first by you, then by his precious nannies, and then by us.  And always by God.  We imagine with Josh about how you must have agonized over your decision and how at some point you knew you wanted him to be healthy and safe even if that meant he had to go to America without you.  We tell him about our trip to the Embassy and how many, MANY Liberians were waiting in lines to try and convince the American representatives that they should be allowed to travel to the US.  We tell him how a man we never met before stopped us while we prepared to board the plane out of Liberia and told us if you were smart, you’d never come back.  And how sad that made us.

We know the truth is probably different than we think or different than we explain it.  I imagine you made an adoption plan for a lot of the same reasons women in America do- you weren’t in a position to raise a child.  The paperwork implies maybe it wasn’t as noble as we want to believe.  There may have been unwise choices that left you alone and unsupported during a time when you desperately needed help.  Maybe adoption was a choice made out of self preservation instead of the selfless choice we want to believe it was.  International adoption allows us the ability to put rose colored glasses over a situation that probably wasn’t nearly as rosey as we tell ourselves.  We’ll let Josh handle that information in whatever way he wants, but there’s one thing I want you to know-

I love you.

I love you without conditions or expectations.  I love you because I love your son.  Whatever your motivations were, you did the right thing for this boy who has grown and blossomed into a young man we can all be proud to know.  I love you for giving life to him in spite of the pressures around you.  I love you for nursing him from your own breasts until your body just couldn’t sustain his life any longer.  I love you with the gratitude of someone who has been given a great and precious gift.  And I promise I’ll teach this son of ours to love you, too.

Love,

Maralee