Posts Tagged ‘motherhood’

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Last night, we became Grandparents.

It definitely wasn’t the way we’d have planned it.  It’s not our oldest, who has been married for a while now.  It was the youngest, who is still in high school.

She called and told me she was pregnant around the time we got back together.  I haven’t pretended to be happy about it, but it’s important that we be in the baby’s life regardless of the circumstances.

He was born last night in the same hospital his mother was born in, and they named him Carter.  My wife made a baby blanket and we sent it, but we didn’t go out there to western Kansas for the birth.

Advertisement

Friday, April 1, 2011

Taylor graduated from tech school yesterday.  We didn’t go down to visit, like we did when he finished basic, but it’s still kind of a big deal.  It means he’ll be leaving the US soon and heading for Korea.

Today, my wife was taken by surprise when a group from the army ran by our parking lot and it brought her to tears thinking about Taylor.  That was no April fool’s gag, it really hit her hard.  They say it’s much harder on Moms that it is on Dads and I suppose that’s true.

It’s also true that a lot of marriages struggle when the nest becomes empty.  I don’t know how much of a factor that was in our situation, but it definitely couldn’t have helped.  I’m so thankful to be where we are now.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Our marriage had so many great moments during the years before I began to fall apart. One theme that was pretty constant was my attempting, and often succeeding, in making Ceecee’s dreams come true. There have been many small ones and a few big ones.

One that happened recently had nothing to do with me. Well, not on the surface anyway. Ceecee had put a baby up for adoption long ago and had set it up to be an open adoption. She had always kept in touch with the lawyer and made sure he had her current address and contact information at all times.

The parents were supposed to have agreed that whenever the child asked about her biological parents, she would be told and that it would be her choice to initiate contact, if she wanted to. Ceecee often talked about her and wondered when that contact would occur.

When the time came that the girl would be turning sixteen, we believed that maybe it would be soon, but nothing happened. Again, around and following her 18th birthday, we anticipated that we would hear something. No contact was made again.

We knew what her adopted name was and had made small attempts to see if there were any public records or a Facebook page that would allow us to simply see how she seemed to be growing up, but there was never anything that we found that told us anything. Our oldest daughter had tried to find her more than once, but everything had proven to be false trails.

Then, one day recently, Angie called and said that she thought this time she had really found her on Facebook. Ceecee wasn’t allowed to initiate contact, but there was nothing preventing Angie from messaging her. She sent a friend request, which was accepted.

About this time, Ceecee came up to me one evening, held out her phone and said, “Look at this.” She was showing me a picture and I said, “Why are you showing me a picture of Kasey?” (Kasey is our middle daughter.) Ceecee said, “That’s not Kasey.” I looked again and just said, “Wow!” The family resemblance was uncanny. There was no doubt she was a sister.

Finally, it got to where everything was out in the open and Ceecee and her long ago adopted daughter got to speak on the phone briefly the other night. It’s just been one more amazing highlight in this magical time of our lives. While I had no direct impact on this taking place, we’ve talked about how much different this might be if we hadn’t worked our marriage out.

They would still be biological mother and daughter, regardless. The fact that Ceecee is now stable, happy, and in a good place is so much better than the alternative, though. This isn’t going to change anyone’s life, but we anticipate visits and the building of some amount of relationship as time goes by. I can’t be happier to be a part of it