My thoughts this Saturday.

 

Today is the first Saturday in July. The picture above is one of the views from my study over my side garden. It is beautiful if not a bit late and I never tire of looking out of my windows at the wonders of Mother Nature.

Saturday was for me a day to catch up on housework, plan the week a heads menus and later,cook a stir fry for myself and my husband. Some afternoons, when the weather permits, I sit and write in the garden, with my dogs at my feet and our ponies in the fields. A peaceful restful day after a sometimes hectic and also of late, worrying and upsetting week.

It is busier here now as my youngest daughter and her husband are here all weekend re building our holiday home, to live in when completed. My husband is helping and organizing the work but I am not yet involved. When it comes to choosing colours etc, I will chip in.

One of the things I looked forward to on a Saturday, was my weekly, sometimes bi-weekly chat to my brother Tony. When we lived closer, in Hampshire I visited and sometimes took him out as he is not able to drive now and doesn’t walk well. Because of distance, ill-health and commitments here,8 hours away, this is now not possible so our chats were important. ‘Family’ have stopped that now. How others, those who say they care about him, can stop calls to someone who has loved him all of his life, is beyond me. That is not loving someone.

So today this is one of the reasons for my sadness , the other being something I was sent, as an author, a chance to enter a letter to a competition. A letter to someone lost and/or estranged from you.I don’t enter writing competitions but sat and read many of the letters submitted and one was from a daughter to the mother who ‘left her in a hedge’ when she was a baby. I admit to reading this with some trepidation but read it through to the end. It was a beautiful letter, no blame, no recriminations, just a lot of confusion and non understanding. Lots of questions , not why’s; but had her Mum ever thought about her? Had she remembered birthdays etc?  Did she wonder what she looked like at different stages of her life? etc. etc.

This letter stirred a lot for me. I wondered how the mum, if she ever could, would reply. What if she actually didn’t want her daughter? I find that hard to believe, I always think that circumstances must have been so, that her Mum had no or little choice. I found myself wishing they could meet, could answer each others questions because I know her mum would have so many.

How do I know? I sadly had a baby adopted many years ago. Not out of choice but because I had no choice. To have kept him would eventually,have meant losing my little girl of 3 and him, to Social Services as I couldn’t provide for them. Life was so different back then. You didn’t get any help as you do, thankfully today. I had a mother who showed me nothing but loathing and a ‘family’ who were controlled by her. So, no choice and it broke my heart.

For the first 5 years of his life, I wrote to the Adoption agency and sent cards on his birthday and at Christmas, sometimes they replied saying they would keep the everything and let him have it all when he was 18 if he asked. I continued to write until after receiving no replies I stopped when he was a little older.I now know that he was given nothing and so what I was told,was not true.

If this young lady’s mum ever read her letter or was able to talk to her daughter, she would, I am sure, tell her this. If,like me, a day doesn’t and never has, gone by without my thinking of him, her Mum would tell her that. She would say, that at every milestone that she would see in other people’s children; thoughts of her lost child would surface. She would tell this young woman, that often looking at her other child, or looking in the mirror, she would try to imagine what her child now looked like. How she wore her hair. What colours she liked. What was her favourite food. What music did she like. Every-time she heard the name, called to another child, that was her own baby’s name, she would rush to look and the wave of sadness and loss would envelop her. She would  lose her baby all over again. Christmas’s and family gatherings, she would be thinking… if only things had been different.These are some of the things that hurt a mum who has lost a child to adoption. There are many more. I know.

I was fortunate enough to be reunited with my son when he was 22 years old. It as been rocky but we now have a loving relationship and one I treasure. I wish his older sister could be part of that but she isn’t at her own choice. I answered all of his questions over the past few years and he is as understanding as he can be. He bears me no ill will.

So I won’t be entering this completion but I will continue to write my book, already half done, which is already  titled ‘Hello J”. One day he will read it.

I hope this young woman finds some answers. If not, I hope she continues to bear her birth mum no malice. She doesn’t know the whys and can only imagine.

So Saturdays were harder today for me but my future here is looking better. I have to respect my brother’s position, even though I know it was not what he wanted. I could ring him, I might ring him. I don’t know. I miss him and I know he will miss me, but this is how it is. I don’t like it but have to accept it.

My son may be visiting this year and then we can spend some quality time together. My youngest daughter will be living back here as she wants to and life will get better. I will make sure of that.

Thank you for reading this x