On Having a Viewpoint and a Story

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My dad had been dead only a week or two. My brother slouched in the gold fake-Americana rocker and said to me, “Want to hear a family secret?” And that’s how I learned that my great-aunt was not who she seemed to be. She was really my aunt–my dad’s older sister.

Until then, here’s what I believed: My dad, the oldest child, had a younger brother and a younger sister. His mother, Jeanette, had three sisters, Aunt Petranella, Aunt Constance and Aunt Lucille. As it turned out, Aunt Lucille was actually the first child of my grandmother, Jeanette, who’d been a pregnant teenager at age 14 in 1938. Her parents raised the child as their own. My dad’s mother, Jeanette, was not Aunt Lucille’s sister, but Aunt Lucille’s mother, too.

My brother once saw my dad’s birth certificate and noticed that it indicated the mother had a previous living child. How could this be if my father was the oldest kid in his family? Now we know.

That explains why my dad was so close to his “aunt.”

Here’s another story.

Back at the beginning of 1971, a marriage was in deep doo-doo. (That’s a technical term.) The husband and his wife had three small children and money was scarce. They barely spoke to each other, yet one night things happened and the wife became pregnant.

The husband was livid and accused her of getting pregnant on purpose. She pointed out that it took two people to produce the problem they faced. She went to her obstetrician for prenatal care, but her husband refused to allow her to give birth in the hospital. Their insurance didn’t cover it and he was still furious at this development.

She checked out the only book about childbirth she could find from the library and prepared to give birth at home. One October night, she put her three kids to bed and closed herself into her bedroom where she labored throughout the night. Her husband came into the room in time to don rubber gloves, catch the baby, tie off the umbilical cord with a sterilized shoelace and cut the cord. The only existing picture from that night shows him holding a coffee cup, grinning from ear to ear, still wearing his rubber gloves.

The birth of that child changed him in a deep, fundamental way. She lit up his life and even though his marriage ended a few years later, the birth of his unexpected youngest daughter transformed him, redeemed him. It was as if he had been the one who was born that night.

He ended up with full custody of the children and spent his remaining years shoring up the family that he’d earlier eschewed.

That man was my dad. That unwanted, unplanned, inconvenient baby was my baby sister.

Here’s another story.

Way back in 1960, a preacher’s wife became pregnant by the youth pastor. Her husband was not the youth pastor, so you can see that this was problematic. What’s a woman to do when she already has five children and is pregnant by an inappropriate man, a man who is not her husband? The marriage ended, but thankfully, the life of that baby was spared. That infant grew up to be my husband. And despite the circumstances of his conception, he was loved by everyone who knew him, both his mother, his biological father and the father who took him in and raised him as the most beloved son. This is the truest picture of forgiveness and redemptive love that I know.

You see, we all have a point of view which has been colored by our personal experiences. As an adoptive mother, as a relative of more than one “unintended” people, as the daughter of parents who embraced a baby at the worst possible time, as the wife of a man who should never have been conceived, let alone born, I have a particular perspective. So do you.

We all have a story. And in light of the stories I know, I believe in good coming from bad, in hope coming from hopeless situation, in strength coming from hardship, in redemption showing up when you least expect it. You can’t argue with my stories any more than I can argue with yours. But I do know for sure that we can’t possibly know the future. What seems inevitable at this exact moment–an impossible situation, impassable obstacles, insurmountable troubles looming ahead–may turn out to be only a mirage when we get closer. You just never know.

That’s why I believe in erring on the side of life. With life comes hope. I can’t see it any other way.

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Published by Mel

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22 thoughts on “On Having a Viewpoint and a Story”

  1. Hi Mel,

    I discovered your blog via the qc report. QC has put up a wonderful post about your blog. I must say that I admire you for your honesty and I am grateful for the stuff I picked up from your experiences. I hope a lot of folks out there can benefit from reading you. More power.

    P.S. Be-lated Happy Birthday!

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  3. Love, love, love, love hearing stories like these…and wouldn’t it make life easier for everyone if every family didn’t keep these secrets secrets?? My extended family is made up of about 50% illigitimate children yet it is a big, huge, scandal every single time it happens to this day. I, myself, was born in secret at a home for unwed mothers, given up for adoption and somehow my parents got me back a few months later. Only my parents and my maternal grandparents knew I existed up til’ then. Big mess, every time.

    In any case, I heard from my sister’s Irish boyfriend’s mom that it is quite common for women from her generation to have an “oopsie doopsie baby”…much, much younger than the rest of her kids, who is in fact actually her granddaughter. How do they actually pull this off, is what I wonder? Do the neighbors just keep their mouth shuts and do a lot of gossiping? Does the child eventually know that her sister is actually her mom? (this is starting to sound like an episode of Springer)

    My dad was recently telling me a story about my aunt–his older sister by 15 years or so, who never married and is completely crazy in only the way a 60-something-year-old woman with already very poor social skills who has lived all alone her entire life can be. She has been a nurse all her life. She worked right in our hometown in Minnesota. Except for this one time back in the 70’s when she absolutely had to accept this fabulous nursing position somewhere in southern Illinois. The position was so great, it even came with an on-site apartment, so all mail was to be sent to something along the lines of “Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy and Asylum”. She was there only seven months before deciding the position wasn’t as fabulous as she thought and returned to Minnesota, miraculously getting her job back, just as though it had been on hold for her all that time.

    So I have another cousin out there somewhere…what I find strange is that she would’ve been in her 30’s at this time–definitely old enough to stand up to the social stigma (which makes me wonder who the father is),and that all of my aunts and uncles joke about it in a very “you’re goin’ straight to hell” sort of way behind her back…like at Christmas, they’ll be complaining about how much money they’ve spent on gifts and say, “Well…at least we didn’t have spend anything on toys for Rita’s baby!” But they never confront her about it. I know it has to do with social conventions changing…but I could not imagine suspecting my sister was pregnant and not confronting her about it. Insane!

    Anyway, fantastic post, and hooray for happy endings….which, I believe come for everyone except for those too scared to deal with all of the bad stuff that happens before the happy ending.

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  15. Actually, my youngest son was not “intended” but we saw him as a gift from God – something that we did not know we needed. Your stories were wonderful and so poignant. Thank you for sharing them.

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  17. AMEN! My husband was born in May of 1970. Everytime the subject of abortion comes up, I wonder if his biological mother would have aborted him if he had been conceived three years later. THANK GOD for his birth mother’s wisdom, and for my wonderful husband.

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  18. My sister was born in 1970, and my parents adopted her because they were told they could never have children. They went back to the agency a few years later to get a second child, but becasue of Roe v. Wade, no children were available.

    When I was concieved 10 years later (surprise!) the VERY FIRST THING the doctor asked my mother was “do you intend to maintain the pregnancy?”

    Thank God she said yes, even though I was unplanned and inconvenient. She was 38 and had finally gone back to school.

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  19. I am 48, have three wonderful sons and a secret. I fell in love at 17 but was very insecure. When I found out I was pregnant I was terrified my mom would kill me. I never dared stand up to her when she insisted that I have an abortion. We drove 3 hours to a different city and in minutes it was over. Little did I know that it would haunt me the rest of my life. Later as a young married, we tried for years and years to have a child and when it didn’t happen I thought I was being punished for what I did at 17. In a strange twist of fate, another 17 year old girl became pregnant and refused to have the pregnancy terminated. Long story but suffice to say, we adopted that baby. He is an amazing young man now and I hope that someday his birth mom can meet him and see that she did make the best decision.

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  20. That second to last paragraph reduced me to tears. Truer words couldn’t have come to me right now. It was a bit of the buouy I’ve needed. Glad I decided to catch up on some blog reading today.

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