Mother and Child Reunion (Christmas surprise edition)

I typed all of this up over the break, only to find it didn’t post and my wordpress app hadn’t been saving and so I sort of gave up, which was fine. All the kids are back at school now and I’m finally back to work, though I have to take the day off tomorrow to take Mara for her four-year checkup at last, after two cancellations from the doctor’s side, and the other two to get their eyes checked, because the eye doctor will only make two appointments at a time. We’ll know more soon, but I think Val and Alex will start every-weekend visitation this weekend and we’re about two weeks away from the final transition meeting that will decide when and how quickly they’ll move to the relatives’ house where their non-incarcerated parent lives. (Before then, we’ll get to the point where they have two non-incarcerated parents, which will also be a good thing, but there are other complications there.)

For now, though, I want to tell the whole long story of Mara’s Christmas dinner. I’ll put the spoiler first by saying that when Lee was asked later in the week what her favorite Christmas present was, she didn’t hesitate before saying, “Meeting Mara’s mom.” (She may have said “birth mom” or something like that; I wasn’t there. But she speaks about Mara’s mom/birth mom/bio mom/first mom with a lot more respect than she does her own and often without any qualifier.) And yeah, that was my favorite too, and probably Mara’s.

See, Mara’s grandmother (her mom’s mom) had called me a few days before Christmas and asked us to have dinner with the family. Saying yes was a no-brainer, especially since Lee had gotten all mopey about how we weren’t going to have a traditional Christmas feast and I was not at my best in responding to that whining. But the family was going to be attending a free meal at a local convention center, complete with free toys for all the kids. Obviously this was geared at people who couldn’t afford a big celebration, which is not really a group that includes us. I got all mentally twisted up about it, whether it was us taking advantage of the system or if it was a way to do what we want to do in helping Mara learn to comfortable cross class lines. Eventually I looked up the website of the sponsoring organization and saw that it was listed as being for people who wouldn’t otherwise have a large celebration (us!) and that the main sponsor was a local grocery store, where I’d made donations toward their feeding-hungry-people programs several times already. So I felt fine justifying it and would have gone even if I’d felt a little uncomfortable just because I think it’s important for Mara to see her family, and especially good for all the kids to link that to Christmas.

We arrived a few minutes before the rest of the family, which was a group of 15 or so, her grandmother, two aunts, and their children plus Mara’s four siblings that her aunt is raising. We’d already gone through the buffet line, where I did in fact take one of the last little servings of cranberry sauce even though someone hungrier than I might have wanted one, and were trying to get a big table when the others arrived. Mara’s aunt immediately took me aside and said, “One of the kids said she saw that Mara’s mom is here.” She looked a little nervous about this, though I’m not sure if that was because this meant the kids she was raising would see their mom, which hadn’t happened since summer, or because she wasn’t sure how Mara’s mom (and let’s call her Veronica) would respond to us, or maybe just because she was trying to herd 15 kids through a lunch line.

I went back to our chair, told Lee this, and we had a second to think about what we’d say, since surely we’d end up interacting with her. Before we had a chance to do much more than take a few breaths, a woman came up to us and introduced herself as Veronica. She has Mara’s forehead and cheeks exactly, though I read a sort of slow sadness about her. She’d come with friends and was finishing her meal before dashing off to her job, but she wanted to make sure she said hi to us. She’d gotten the photos I’d sent her social worker, which was news to me, and she appreciated seeing that Mara was being cared for well. She told Mara how much she loves her, that she thinks of her every day. She told us what a relief it is to know Mara’s safe and that she got all the paperwork for the termination of her rights and knew what was going on, which tells us that as we’d suspected she didn’t want to fight the process but didn’t want to sign away her rights either. (This is sort of too bad since now the state has grounds to remove any future children at birth, but they might have anyway if she’d had another voluntary termination with Mara.)

We talked a little more, but I was amazed both that she was brave enough to come up to us and just talk to us and by how easy it was to talk to her. I told her a little about how we talk to Mara about her and she and I both cried some. Mara was mostly quiet during the whole time, but shyly and carefully watched her mother. I know she has more mixed feelings about her mom, whom she’d last seen around her second birthday and who did fail at parenting in ways that eventually got Mara removed, than the seemingly all-positive feelings for her dad, who left her life much earlier and seems to have been almost entirely a positive part of it before then. Mara wasn’t scared at all, though, and didn’t hide against one of us the way she sometimes does with strangers. She sat and looked her mother over, drinking it in. I got a great photo of Mara with Lee on one side of her and Veronica on the other where it’s clear how much she gets her looks and her smile from her mom.

Veronica went to talk to her other children, but I’d brought extra photos of Mara and her siblings from the last visit, so I gave one of those to Veronica with my phone number on the back and she gave me her number to put in my phone. We’ve been in touch since then, and I hope we’ll meet again this weekend, which should let Mara feel more comfortable with her and let all of us talk a little more. It’ll also almost certainly mean Mara will grill her about breastfeeding, which has been her most common question since we saw Veronica. I do know from medical files that Veronica breastfed Mara at least sometimes, though she was pregnant again when Mara was awfully small and so it may not have lasted long. Mara’s fascinated with this and will probably be disappointed to learn that Lee and I are right and Veronica does not in fact have milk for her anymore, but I’m sure she’s going to ask.

Veronica never seemed to talk much to the adults in her family. Mara’s grandmother insists that this was a Christmas miracle just like it was God’s plan that Samara’s brother recognized Mara and approached us almost a year ago, setting off the chain of events that let us finally reunite Mara with her siblings on her mom’s side and basically bring her back into the family socially even after she’d legally left it. Lee’s on the same page she is, seeing a divine plan in all of this. I’m not convinced, of course, and I’ve always expected that we’d run into family someday just by luck but also because I’ve put a lot of work into looking for her family members, letting them know we’re interested in contact, laying the groundwork that is helping this go smoothly.

Mara was able to celebrate Christmas with us, with her brothers and sisters and cousins, with her and aunts grandma on that side, with her mom that day and her dad a few days later, with my parents a few days before they left to visit my grandmother and again when they returned with gifts from the relatives who’d been there, with Val and Alex at our house and by phone at her request on Christmas evening, when the social worker did her monthly visit and brought donated presents for Val and Alex and I supplemented with presents I had ready so Mara would have some too, at Lee’s office where coworkers threw an adoption shower, not to mention at school with friends and probably other places I’m not thinking of now. For a little girl who came to us fifteen months ago seemingly so disconnected from everyone, that’s a lot of connection to people who love her. I’m so happy they all get to see how amazing she is and I’m grateful to have met some wonderful people I probably otherwise wouldn’t have. Last Christmas, I was connecting Mara to my extended family and grieving the absence of hers. It’s not an either/or now, just love and love and love. And that’s a gift.

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