The Hardest Thing

Okay people, here's another not funny post. I am sorry to dismay all you loyal readers looking for Chicken stories or penile adventures. This post is about something that happened in 1994 and is both the hardest thing I've ever encountered in my life and an illustration of my parents. For some of you, it will partially explain my feelings about both my mother and my father.

I'm not going to bore you with background details of this story, because I'd still be typing away on Thursday instead of celebrating HNT. I know the kind of grief I'd get from skipping HNT again! In the January of 1994 I was 19 years old, living on my own in an apartment and working full time managing a small retail store. I was having an on/off relationship with a guy (we'll call him JD) that I dated seriously in high school. I ended up pregnant.

Now I'm going to break my promise about background information, but it is relevant to the story. I had known several girls in high school that had gotten abortions. One of them I took to the clinic to have it done. I believed that abortion was a choice, and although some used it as birth control (BAD!!) I never felt strongly about it one way or another.

Back to January 1994. The instant the test came up positive I knew that I couldn't terminate this pregnancy. To me, this bundle of cells was a baby, created with someone that I loved at one time in my life. JD was freaked out. He wanted me to get an abortion NOW. I just couldn't do it. I also knew that I did not want to raise a child without a father at my age and with my salary. The child would live in perpetual child care, while I worked two jobs to make ends meet. I wanted more for this baby. So I decided to give it up for adoption.

Here's where my parents come into the story. When I was about 4 months along, I wrote my mother a letter telling her about the situation and my decision. I knew better than to call her and listen to her berate me. Weeks passed, and finally one day she called me and was very angry. She was pissed off that it was too late at that point to get an abortion, that I was taking away her grandchild, and that I would not give her the child to raise. I did not want any other child to experience the childhood that I did with my mother. My mother essentially banned me from her life until the end of my pregnancy. She never told her friends, her family or allowed me to come near her church. I was in labor in the hospital over 25 hours after my water broke, and she showed up to the hospital to see me only in the last few hours. She refused to hold my son when he was born, and did not allow my step-father to hold him either. The next day, before I gave up my son she finally came back to the hospital and held him. We never talk about him. Ever.

I was scared to tell my dad about my pregnancy. As he lived over an hour away, I was able to put off telling him for a long, long time. I was about 8 months along when I finally wrote him a letter. A couple of days later he called me. He had gone to the post office, picked up the letter, rushed home and called me that moment. He supported my decision and invited me to come visit him. When I got there, he took me to the VFW (his hangout) and took me around to see his buddies with my belly as big as a house. He wasn't ashamed of me, he never got mad at me. He just loved me and told me that I was doing the right thing. Thank you DAD!!

After I spent a day in the hospital with my son, I gave him to parents that I had selected from an adoption agency. They were wonderful people who had already adopted a girl that was five years old at the time. I became very close to them during my pregnancy, and they still update me with letters and pictures. Giving up my son was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life, but I have never regretted it. His 11th birthday is this week.