Unchosen

The first part is a mystery. I was there, but the memories are inaccessible, like a dream I know I had but can’t remember. We are not built to remember those months in the womb, that first explosion of light and the beautiful warmth of our mother’s body when we are placed upon her chest. Those memories we don’t get to keep, but they are all I have of her, so I imagine them.

It is an early evening in February. There is a waning crescent moon, low in the sky. Outside, rush hour traffic makes a trail of headlights and tail lights and she thinks about a runway. She wishes for a plane ride. She hates this city.

She is in the living room of the apartment she shared with my father. He is there, but they are so distant with one another that she still feels alone. Worse, she feels trespassed on.

She is confused. She loves me (though she has tried not to) and the tightening she keeps feeling in her abdomen is telling her that our time together is almost over. She is nervous. She thinks about how this is supposed to be a joyful time, but there is no joy.

At the hospital, my father nervously paces the room. He is white as a ghost as my mother battles her way through each contraction. A nurse offers him an out and he takes it. He is ushered to the waiting room. My mother feels both relieved and let down, all at once. She wishes her own mother was there. Her own mother has no idea.

When it is time to push, the strength just comes. All of a sudden, none of the sadness or burden matter anymore. There is no room for heartache. In that moment, I am still hers. She is still mine.

And then, I am out. They take me away from her to clean me. I just want to be back inside. I want my mother. They take me to her. She tries so hard not to love me. Within a day, her milk comes in and she feels betrayed by her body’s motherly response. She is despondent on the outside, but inside there is love and I feel it.

She finds a way to stay with me for longer than she intends. She nurses me. When no one is looking, she talks to me. She knows that I have no idea that I am about to lose her, and the heartache of that costs her something that she is too young to understand.

When the time comes to leave the hospital, she doesn’t sign the adoption papers. She doesn’t know why. She isn’t going to keep me, she knows that much. But signing papers to give me up is too much. She can’t take anymore, not yet.

* * *

They have to give her a nudge, I am a month old and she has not signed. My adoptive parents wait on pins and needles. She still has time to change her mind, but she doesn’t. She signs the papers. It is easier now that she can’t smell me on her clothes. Now that her breasts no longer engorge to feed me. She has allowed a part of herself to drain completely empty, in order to hold that pen. The ink on the page numbs her.

And then I am gone. The sound of the door closing on her way out, echoes for years.

I dream of her throughout childhood. It is always the same. She is standing in a forest, holding me on her hip. I am an infant, naked. My small hands hold onto her, lightly, as though I don’t need to worry. She has a look of peace, sunlight filtering through the trees.

As I get older, I want to search for her. I have little to go on, besides a scant list of information that my adoptive mother had written on a notepad and kept in my baby book. Mother - 18 years old, 5'3", Irish descent, from Montreal.

Lost on my own, I hire a private investigator. What he finds, comes as a surprise.

“I was not successful in finding your mother” he starts. “But when I went to pick up the non-identifying information we had requested though the adoption agency, I lucked out. I asked them if they could pull your file one last time to confirm that nothing had been missed. When she opened the file, I was able to see one name that had not been redacted. It was your mother's emergency contact, a woman by the name of Grace Wilson. I believe I have located her. I have reached out to her by email. Now, we wait.”

The days are long as I wait for him to get back to me with Grace’s response. When he does, I am crushed. “You are a secret,” he tells me. “Your mother’s family don’t know about you and your mother does not want any contact. That’s all I was able to find out. Grace isn’t willing to share your mother’s identity. I am so sorry.”

I thank him, numb. I ask him to make sure Grace has my contact information, in case my mother ever has a change of heart. I reserve some hope that she might come around, but I grieve her all the same. I grieve the wish I have carried around, so faithfully. I was uninvited. Then, and still now.

Months later, I am surprised by a package on my front step. It is an unusually warm fall day, a welcome gift before the long winter ahead. The package is small, wrapped in brown paper and tied with white yarn. I unwrap it to find a small black book. The cover is soft, an elastic wraps around to keep it closed. I slip the elastic off and flip though the blank pages. Toward the middle, the pages part and I see a photograph. It is of me, but I don’t recall it being taken. I turn it over, and see a date written. I am confused for a moment, it can’t be me. And then I realize, it’s her. My eyes fill with tears. As disappointed as I had been to hear that my mother did not want contact, I had not given up hope. I search the book for more information, and see a piece of paper with a passage written onto it, pasted onto the first page. It is followed by a short letter from Grace.

Becoming a mother is not a passing season, a leaf falling, a wave crashing. It is not a bridge that easily burns. It is a heartbeat beneath a heartbeat. It is life, giving life. It is heartbreak. It is impossible to undo. – Katherine O’Connor

- I am sorry for your mother’s non-disclosure. You have a sister, and you both deserve to know about one another. Your mother’s name is Katherine O’Connor. She is a lovely, but very private woman. I am hoping if she hears from you personally, she may have a change of heart. She used to write in a little black book similar to this one when she was pregnant with you. Feeling you grow inside of her for all those months and then giving you up was unspeakably difficult for her. I was her only friend here, your father was not much of a support and she did not tell anyone back home. After you were born, she refused to speak of it. When I saw this little book at a gift shop not long after the private detective contacted me, I thought of your mother’s old journal and the passage she had written. She left that single page with me when she moved away and I thought you should have it. If you share her love for writing, maybe you can use this book to document your own journey. Your mother loved you, I know that. I wish you luck - and peace with whatever you find. Yours, Grace.

Beneath, she had written my mother’s home address.

I pen my letter to her, heart on my sleeve and take it to the post office, before I have a chance to talk myself out of it. I can think of a million reasons not to send it. What if her husband opens it? What if she is upset with me? What if she doesn’t respond? As the door of the mailbox closes with a clunk, dropping the letter inside, my heart skips a beat. A tiny jolt.

* * *

The fallen leaves have long been covered in snow, the days shorter now. Her response comes by registered mail. At the post office, my hand shakes as I sign for it. I walk home, clutching the letter. The winter sky is clear and intense. The trees make long shadows in the snow from the late afternoon sun. When I get home, I steady myself. I open the thick cardboard envelope to find a thin envelope inside. My heart falls when I see that it is from a law firm. The letter is brief, but direct. My birth mother does not want me disrupting her life. She has planned for the day when I would come looking for her. She has kept a private savings account since the time I was born. The letter says that while it may not be what I am wanting from her, it is what she can give. It goes on to say that a contact veto has been registered through the adoption agency and that if I contact her or anyone from her family, she will take legal action against me. A cheque for $20,000 falls to the ground.

I sit down, shattered. Pain springs from somewhere primal. My subconscious remembers the loss and takes me back to the beginning. I cry until there is nothing left and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.

As time passes, I begin to accept that I will never meet my mother, or my sister. For the first time, I begin to understand that the change my mother underwent when she gave me up was irreversible. She couldn’t keep me, even in spirit. It was because she did once love me, that survival had meant letting go. It is time for me to let go, too.

I finally cash the cheque and donate it to a local shelter for pregnant women in need. I quietly hope it can help some other young mother, who doesn’t think she can do it on her own. I am overcome with compassion for Katherine, as I walk out of the shelter and pass a pregnant girl, who is holding back tears. I barely make it to my car before my own tears begin to fall.

That night, I dream of her one last time. This time, she looks right at me, infant still in her arms. Then she let’s go. Time slows, making my legs feel like they are under water trying to run, reaching forward, forward. The infant falls in slow motion. I reach her in time, and pull her close. I sit on the forest floor, weeping and holding her, as my mother walks away. She turns before she is out of earshot and speaks, for the first time. “I’m sorry.”