May 3, 2010
Adoptive-Parents (column 3)
My adopted parents divorced when I was 18. Actually, the real story goes, that my mom was away on a business trip when my dad packed his things and left us. He called my older brother and myself into the living room to tell us that he already had an apartment and he was leaving and so he left and my brother and I had to tell my mom when she got home from her trip.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, let’s pour some salt into the open wound and tell you that he left on my birthday. He waited until I turned 18 so he wouldn’t have to pay child-support, which I guess I understand, but on the day of my birthday and when my mom was out-of-town I didn’t quite get.
But, growing up with my parents was great. I was daddy’s little girl and we had a great relationship. I guess you could say he spoiled me but that’s what daddies do. We had a very special relationship. He would take me out fishing with him, just him and me and he always had a bag of skittles hiding in the van waiting for me to eat on the drive. Even when he first moved out we still saw each other everyday or at least spoke on the phone. It wasn’t until he re-married that our relationship soured.
So we did have our problems and I guess looking back maybe I shouldn’t have been all that surprised when he walked out on my birthday, they never really seemed to take precedence over anything. He missed every one of my birthdays growing up anyway.
See, my birthday is November 8 which is the opening week of hunting season so he was always out-of-town hunting on my birthday. In fact, he was out-of-town hunting when my mom got the call from the adoption agency that I had been born and they needed to come finish the paper work and get me. So, maybe I really shouldn’t have been all that surprised.
My mom and I were and still are very close. She was like my security blanket. I had to have her with me every where I went. She was at every dance recital, band contest, choir competition, girl scout event and even school trips and she had her own full-time job.
I even dragged her to another country, twice. When I was 13 and again at 14 I went as a student exchange to Japan and managed to get my mom on the trip as a chaperone, both years.
After the divorce she and I just became closer, we were all each other had. My brother had moved to Colorado and she and I were it. It took a lot of getting used to, especially for my mom. She had to learn how to lean on her teen-aged daughter for help and support. We both had to learn to see each other more as friends as I go older and less as mother and daughter.
She is my best friend. We have helped each other through numerous occasions. She even picked up her life and moved us to Sugar Land so I could get to know my birth-family. She said it was an experience she didn’t want me to miss out on and didn’t want me to wonder the rest of my life. So, instead she quit her job and left her friends and picked up and moved three hours away from everything we had known for the unknown.
She and I have a special bond now. We know what the other is thinking and even finish each other’s sentences. My brother calls us an oddity, but we don’t see it that way. We see ourselves as being like Lorelei and Rory Gilmore, best friends and mother and daughter.
