Since February is the month for love (and groundhogs), I am not going to publish a recipe and wine pairing, but rather I want to focus on a rekindled love when an adopted teenager finds her birth mother. This excerpt is from The Winning Certificate and it appeared in the literary magazine at Sylvia's old high school.
Reunited
By Sylvia Medina and Jenny Leyton
I'm the luckiest person in the whole world because, at age seventeen, I met my birth mother. Just days after I was born, two very loving people adopted me, and I grew up knowing them as my parents. When I was fourteen, my adopted mother died and through a series of events at age seventeen, I was able to meet my birth mother. We are going to share our feelings with you in the following stories.
Sylvia speaks
What's it like to be adopted? I'll tell you. It's about feeling empty. I can remember reading lots of children's books about one species of animal raising another species and then asking my parent's lots of questions. Finally, when I was ready, they told me that I was adopted. I had lots of questions about my birth parents, but it didn't become a major issue until my adopted mother died of cancer. Her death triggered everything. It happened right before I entered Central High School, and throughout the summer, my depression morphed into anger. Why had my birth mother abandoned me? Why hadn't she loved me enough to keep me?
When I entered Central High School, I had a huge chip on my shoulder. Since I wanted to feel important, I joined a crew and changed my physical look. I wore dark clothes, had a ring in my eyebrow and I streaked my hair. When I was with my crew members, I felt empowered and when someone dissed us, we would beat that person up. It's hard to believe that I took any part in that now, but I guess we felt that was the only way we could get some respect. But we never really felt as though we belonged. It was a badge of honor to fail all of our classes, and we just laughed whenever we were suspended. We always sat in the last row of the classroom pretending to be asleep. No teacher was going to tell us what to do.
Although I didn't want to hurt my father, I knew that my behavior caused him so much pain. I tried to change, but this huge hole in my heart remained unfilled. When other kids talked about their families, I felt ashamed because we really weren't a family and it was my fault.
My relationship with my friend, Rosita, helped me to come to grips with my pain, and being on the staff of the literary magazine helped me to understand that I had something to contribute to society. When students discussed my poems, I felt the loneliness subside. My grades improved and I no longer needed the crutch that the crew provided. Little by little, I was able to reach out to others. I stopped streaking my hair, took out the eyebrow ring, and started to wear colorful clothes. This was my rebirth. Rosita encouraged me every step of the way.
Then, as I said, I was able to find my birth mother, and last summer we moved to Purchase, New York to live on her farm. Everything was perfect for the first month because she let me do anything I wanted. After that, she became like my adopted parents. Clean your room. Take out the garbage. I had chores to do, and I was punished for misbehaving. I miss everyone at Central and it's been very hard getting used to the weather here in New York. I'm happy to be with my birth mother, but life is not perfect. Yet, I would not give up this life for anything in the world.
Jenny speaks
I was a very young college student at Stanford and I had no way to support my daughter so I had to give her up for adoption. But I thought about her every day of my life and I can't describe how painful it was not to know whether she was safe and well. I kept asking myself what I had done. What was she doing? Where was she living? Was she happy? I wanted to know, yet, I was afraid to find out. And there was another possibility. What if, once having found her, I discovered that she hated me for having let her go?
I married an older man, and we never had children of our own. I did take care of his sons from a previous marriage, and I didn't do a very good job. They were always in trouble with the school authorities or with the law. Even though I was a software engineer when I met my husband, I never had the confidence to go back to work.
It was a miracle that Sylvia's father and I happened to begin to correspond. As a result of that Sylvia came to visit and suddenly I had my daughter back. I remember that day so vividly. This beautiful girl arrived at my farm and told me that she was the daughter of the man I was corresponding with and as we talked, I realized that she was born on the same day as my daughter and that she was born in California. After hearing a bit more of her early history, I came to the realization that Sylvia was my daughter. All the fears that I had imagined concerning finding my daughter disappeared immediately. It was a great discovery to learn that we share so many interests and she makes me very happy. She's been here for several months and she doesn't even mind my being strict.
I've had a huge hole in my heart for such a long time. Now it's filled and I'm so happy that Sylvia and her father are living with me. Every day I give thanks because my daughter is here.
Will our relationship have a storybook ending? Probably not. My daughter and I love each other, and we will work every day to make our relationship meaningful. We don't want to lose each other again.