Happy Birthday and Thank You

Today is a special birthday at our house. One that we acknowledge but don't really celebrate. It is the birthday of Brandi's birthmom. Now, I am not supposed to know this information. When we were at the hospital waiting for her to be born, I had to register as if I was the one giving birth. This was a fairly new hospital and their first experience with an adoption. The registrar wasn't sure how she was supposed to enter my information so that it would be on the birth certificate (it wasn't supposed to be there until the judge made it legal six months later). Anyway, she went to ask someone and left the birth mother's paperwork on the desk. Now, I had not met the birthmom and knew very little about her. I took a paper and pen from my purse and started writing.

Then about a month later this same hospital sent a bill to us instead of to the adoption agency. The adoption agency was supposed to black out any vital information pertaining to the birthmom, then send the bill to the insurance. I was supposed to never see it. But I did. I made a photo copy. Both of those papers are in a lock bock with the rest of the adoption papers.

So, I know that today is V's birthday. I mentioned it to Brandi and she just looked and me and said, "oh, ok" and went to play with her friend. But I would like to say Happy Birthday to V and thank you for my beautiful baby girl. I know that life is hard for you and that the circumstances you find yourself in are not the best, but when you made the choice to give Brandi to our family, you made my life brighter and better. So thank you for that. And I hope that today is a good day for you.

I am pretty sure that she will not see this blog. The choices she has made in her life preclude her access to a computer. And even if she had access to one, I am pretty sure that she is not spending her time looking at and mindlessly reading blogs. She has 6 kids (she gave another daughter for adoption the year before Brandi was born) and works 3 jobs and lives in a slum somewhere in Ohio. But all of that aside, I still pray for her and her other children, she did for me what I could not at that time in my life- something that I believe we all three agreed to before we came to this earth- and I love her for that.

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Indeed.