In case you think I’ve forgotten, I haven’t.  6 years without your mama is long enough for anyone.  Thanks to my dear friend Sarah for filling in for me behind the piano tonight.  Sometimes a soul can only take so much grief in a day.

I’ve nothing profound to say, really.  The Sunday school lesson this morning included talking about adoption.  I can never, of course, read a single word of scripture about adoption without the remembrance of Mama, who took me when no one else wanted me.  These last few months I’ve been working on dealing with all the baggage that comes from being an abandoned child.  Every child who is adopted at birth, though I know all adopted children wrestle with a sense of purpose, I rejoice for them.  No child ought to be the recipient of broken promises.  No child ought to be left behind, never to be retrieved.

I bless God, of course, for Mama.  Granted, any self-respecting citizen with a shred of human decency would take in a child known to be abandoned; that doesn’t, however, lessen the gratitude I have.

I remember begging her to adopt me, as she had done with my brother.  We share the same birth mother, my brother and I, and we share the same adoptive parents as well.  For years, I couldn’t understand why my grandma didn’t seem to want me any more than my birth mom did.  Little did I know that she was trying to get her daughter to actually care for THIS child.  She was only doing as she knew best.

I remember the conversation well.  “Jeani, your grandpa and I are old, and unable to do the things with you that other children do.  You will not have the things other children have.”

And what could I say, with the piercing reality that children see?  “At least I won’t have to worry about whether I will have a roof over my head, or food to eat tomorrow.”  Needless to say, court proceedings began.  The birth mother gave up her rights without a whimper.  There wasn’t even a discussion; she just signed her rights as a mother away as if I were nothing more than a discarded plaything she had found no more use for.  The birth father proved to be a challenge; though he had long abandoned me, and I had never knowingly even seen the man, he fought for custody in what turned out to be an overlong, grisly sort of endeavor.

I remember the day that Mama retained her rights as managing conservator.  She hadn’t even won sole custody yet–just retained the rights to let me live in her home.  I had been sent from the courtroom as details of my birth father’s past started rolling past the judge’s ears, and mine, details that sent me hiding under my coat in embarrassment.  I sat in the secretary’s office in my frilly dress, filling sheet after typing sheet with pen drawings of roses.  My big brother, all bluster and cowboy boots and terrible acid wash jeans (sorry, Jer) burst through the door, and caught me up into his arms.  “You’re still mine!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

“I know,” says I, in my little know-it sort of way.  The judge, of course, had told me already that I would live with my grandma and grandpa until further notice, while my birth father retained some sort of visitation rights.  All the proceedings had been more of a formal function.  The hug, though.  It let me knew that I was wanted.

Someone wanted me.

After all these years, someone wanted me.

Daddy has been gone for nearly 11 years.  6 years ago, yesterday, my brother called and asked to speak to my husband instead of me.  6 years ago, I made the four and a half hour drive, my husband and I, our toddler son, and my very pregnant, supposed-to-be-bedresting belly.  6 years ago today, I could not stand and watch them take Mama off of life support.  I tried.  I wanted to be brave.  I crawled up next to her in that bed with those awful tubes and pumps and put my head upon her arm as I always did.  I cried and cried and cried.  I prayed, and cried, and told Mama that she ought to go with Jesus.  Only the Lord knows of how much she was aware in that artificial state, no breath or life within her, only electrical impulse and medication induced coma.  But in the end, I left the room.  I looked at my aunt, and my uncles – her siblings – and I, ashamed, excused myself.  In tears, I said that the Lord Jesus would have to stand in my place.  I couldn’t watch as they allowed my mama to die.

We never want to let go.  There was not breathe, nor life, nor beating heart.  She was even flat-lining on the machines.  Yet I wanted it to be wrong.  I wanted her to open her eyes, to look upon my face, and to hold me again as she never would.

I felt lost in the world.  Without Mama and Daddy, I felt as an orphan would.  I felt again as I did as a child, abandoned and alone.  My poor husband has borne with me all these years, years that I’ve spent denying that my history as an abandoned child had any impact on me at all.

Well, it did.  It has.  I am that child.  I was the daughter of an addict who didn’t want me; I was adopted by a Southern Baptist queen and her king.  I was homeless, and thin, ill-dressed.  Someone had done a terrible hack-job to my hair.  I was used to making my own decisions, and caring for myself.  Mama and Daddy had their hands full with me.  Mama used to tease that I was 9 going on 21.  It wasn’t easy on any of us.  Quite frankly, trying to submit to actual parents after what I’d been through was terrible.  I can’t even tell you how many nights I spent sobbing, trying to understand why I couldn’t just obey, why I couldn’t just keep the snarky comments at bay, how many afternoons spent in Brother Dean’s office trying to understand.

Bubba and I, we refused to bury Mama on Valentine’s Day, so we insisted on having the service on the 13th.  We put pink tea roses on the casket, a tribute to the years of gardens and pruning and mulch and awkward pink granite rocks.  We sang, and we spoke.  My pastor drove from East Texas to support us for the funeral, and ended up being a pall-bearer.  Angie played with Ethan in the funeral yard so that I could participate in the service.  We buried her in Baytown, and the family met at that little Cracker Barrel on the end of the old highway.  Uncle Leonard ordered an egg and toast.  We sat around the table as and normal, happy family, telling stories about Mama (like the fact that she really was late to her own funeral).

And now I’m thirty.  I’m thirty, and I’m dealing with all the nonsense that comes with admitting that being abandoned, insulted, abused, and unwanted ACTUALLY has an effect on me. I guess I’m finally growing up.  Every moment of the first thirty years of my life was colored by the false notion that I was fatally flawed and incapable of receiving love or happiness.  Every foolish decision I have ever made was instigated by the compulsion to please others, to receive praise, to receive love.  When I realized that, I was angry.  I even called my big brother and talked his ear off for an hour or so; gratefully he’s always been tolerant of my never-ending commentary.  But thanks be unto God, who gives unto us the victory, I get a little better every day.

I hope the Lord reads a transcript to Mama, because although she didn’t necessarily agree with every turn my life has taken, I know that she would be proud to see me leaving the nonsense behind.