Chicken Soup for Every Mom's Soul (16 page)

At the supermarket, instead of standing pondering ice cream bars in the frozen foods aisle as usual, I stood transfixed by Ajax, Soft Scrub and Pine Sol. Mr. Clean winked seductively at me, and I fantasized about just how sparklingly clean I could get my bathroom faucet if only I brought the burly fellow home with me.

I scoured the finish off the linoleum in the kitchen one night. I washed the car every day for a week. Masked and gloved, I obsessively sprayed, spritzed, rubbed, wiped, waxed and polished my way through my last trimester.

And then I had my baby boy, and the romance was over. Whatever hormone it was that caused my sponge fetish thankfully exited my body with my son, leaving me once again a comfortable slob, unconcerned about suds and sparkling appliances. The scrub brush got tossed back under the sink with a shrug; the brigade of impulse-purchased cleaning supplies was relegated to the back of the linen closet. I stopped returning Mr. Clean’s calls. The wonder-sponge sulkily disappeared into the basement. I wondered, perplexed, just what I’d seen in the thing when I stumbled upon it about a year later. I held it in my hand and tried to rekindle the old flame. Nothing doing.

And then a couple of days ago, we were at Sam’s Club, and there it was. Another sponge. A big, meaty, make-everything-sparkling-clean yellow sponge. My heart skipped a beat. I could practically taste the bone-tingling satisfaction of a cleaning job done right. I started to drool.

And that’s when I knew.

That sponge and I were going to be very busy for the next nine months.

Karen C. Driscoll

I Am a Mother

I was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, getting my hair cut when my husband called. He didn’t even talk to me, but the message he gave to the receptionist was simple, “Stop home on your way to the dentist.” It was a beautiful day in July. I had ended work a few days before and had lined up appointments for all those things one puts off when one is working full-time.

Just the week before, we had finished our home study with the adoption agency, and we were told we probably had at least a couple of months before we would be matched up with a baby. My husband, Joe, and I had gone through eight years of medical intervention for infertility, and for much of that time I believed I could not be a mother. After much soul-searching, Joe and I realized that our goal was to become parents and that adoption was just as wonderful a way of building a family as giving birth. Our adoption counselor told me I would be a mother, but was it really true?

As I was driving down the highway after the haircut, I thought about my husband’s request to stop home. Did he have some time from work to have lunch at home with me? Then I became curious: Joe has no idea where I get my hair cut, so he must have gone to great lengths to track down the phone number. Now, why would he go through all that trouble to find me and just leave a message to stop home? Could it be we got “the call”? Was I a mother already? My heart began to race with excitement, and then I checked myself as I had a dozen times before when we were trying to get pregnant—no, it couldn’t be that.

As I pulled into the driveway, the large quilted heart flag that I had made years before as a Valentine’s present for Joe was hanging over the driveway. Where had he dug that up, and why was it hanging? As he walked out of the house with a champagne bottle in his hand, I knew.

“Joan, you’re the mother of a baby boy!” he told me. Our adoption counselor had called him at work to give him the wonderful news. He filled me in on the details and told me we could pick up our new son the next afternoon.

What should we do first? We weren’t expecting a baby for at least a few months; like a couple that is pregnant, we thought we would have time to plan and get ready. We called our parents first. “Mom, Dad, we have a baby boy!” I told my parents. “Oh, Joan, we’re so happy that you’re a mother,” they said. I didn’t feel any different than I had the day before.
When will I know I am a mother?
I wondered.

The next twenty-four hours went by quickly, yet I remember every moment in great detail. First, we had to talk with the adoption agency to receive more information and directions. They gave us the phone number of the foster mother who was taking care of our son until we picked him up the next day. We dialed the phone and waited what seemed like eternity for an answer. Mary answered. “Hello,” I said, “this is Joan and Joe. Do you have our baby?” “Oh, yes,” she said, “he’s sitting right here on my lap. Do you hear him?” We listened, and heard his voice for the first time, making his baby sounds.

The next fifteen hours were a rush to complete paperwork, get to the bank for payment to the adoption agency, and get to the mall before it closed to pick up a few basics. Although we knew an adoption would happen in the near future, up until that day I could not allow myself to buy or borrow any baby things. For years, each time I would see the grocery aisle that carries diapers and baby food, I would pass by quickly. I believed that aisle was off-limits to me; I was not a mother. It’s not a very rational feeling, but one that many infertile women experience, even when they are told a baby is coming for them through adoption.

At the department store, we ran into an old acquaintance. “Hello, what’s new?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said out of habit.

“Oh, everything!” Joe said out of excitement.

We rushed on, leaving the poor woman quite puzzled. I picked out receiving blankets, diapers, bottles, formula and socks (are baby feet really that tiny?). While I was stocking up on the practical things, Joe ran off and found our son’s first stuffed animal—Winnie the Pooh.

Around 1:00 in the morning, while we were trying to figure out how to sterilize bottles, we began to pick a name for the baby. Previously, it was too hard to look at books with baby names; what if our baby never came? Once we picked the name, we tried to get some sleep. Impossible. We had heard his voice, we had given him a name, but was he real? What did he look like? Was he truly going to be ours?

Later that morning, we went to the adoption agency for last-minute paperwork and to meet the birth mother of our son. She had made a careful adoption plan for him and had chosen us to be his parents. It was a very good and touching meeting. She was his birth mother, the one who had given him life, but I was his mother too, the one who would love and care for him every day.

We followed the directions to the foster-care home, and as we pulled up to the house my heart was racing. I don’t remember how I got to the front door. Mary opened the door, and as we walked in, she placed in my arms the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. He looked up at me, and said without words, “You are my mother.” I will never forget that moment, for that was when all my questions ended.

Looking into his eyes, I knew for certain that I had become a mother.

Joan Sedita

I’ll Do It

L
ife is a journey . . . taken one step at a time.

Anonymous

Finally,
I thought as I tallied up the grade on the last test paper. I jotted the score in my grade book, and was just about to leave my office at the college where I taught math when the telephone rang. It was a social service caseworker from New Jersey, and though I’d been half-expecting her call it still took me by surprise.

“Your sister’s condition is getting worse,” the woman told me. “You said I should let you know. . . .”

“Thank you,” I said, and my heart ached for my big sister, Pam, who had battled schizophrenia for years—and even more for her three-year-old daughter, Scarlett, whom I’d never even met. “How can I help?” I asked, and when the caseworker answered I knew there was no way I could agree to her request . . . and no way I could refuse.

Growing up Pam and I shared a bedroom and played on the same community league softball team. But after high school I went to college to get my engineering degree. I got married, moved to Florida and looked forward to starting a family. “I can’t imagine a life without children to raise,” I told my husband. But things didn’t work out—the kids, or the marriage.

Newly divorced, I enrolled in grad school and earned an M.S. in math. I spent a year as a volunteer teacher in Haiti, then moved to South Carolina to work on a Ph.D. in medical statistics. But the teaching bug had bitten, and before long I put my Ph.D. on hold and began teaching part-time at three different local colleges.

I filled my spare time snorkeling and sailing with friends from a church singles group, but I knew I was just filling time to fight loneliness. I dated occasionally, but there were never any sparks, and by the time I turned forty I could almost feel the ticking of my biological clock.

I began to dread friends’ baby showers, and every Mother’s Day tears coursed down my cheeks when the pastor asked the moms to stand and be recognized. “Dear God, why not me, too?” I prayed, and I was so frantic, I even considered artificial insemination. I backed out at the last minute, though, and I never seriously considered adoption. Raising a child on my own seemed like such a daunting responsibility. Marriage and then a baby—that’s the way the world was supposed to work.

But then with a single phone call my whole world was turned upside down.

For years Pam had drifted in and out of contact, and these days she lived in an Atlantic City rooming house with no phone, so I rarely got to talk to her. But recently when I learned Pam’s illness was getting worse I called her social worker and gave her my number—just in case.

“Pam can’t care for Scarlett anymore, and we need to put her in foster care,” the woman told me now. “Can you take her?” she asked. Gripping the phone, my brain reeled dizzily with a dozen reasons why I couldn’t possibly.

I was single and living in a one-bedroom apartment. I didn’t have medical insurance, or even a full-time job.
What do I know about raising a three-year-old?
I asked myself. But no matter how many reasons my brain listed why I couldn’t do this, my heart disagreed.

Pam is my sister, and her little girl needed a loving home. Maybe this was God’s way of answeringmy prayers. Maybe he never gave me children because he was saving me just for this.

“I’ll do it,” I said, knowing those few simple words would change my life forever.

There were many arrangements to be made, and Scarlett was placed with a temporary foster mom in New Jersey while I filled out reams of paperwork and applied for my foster-home license. I convinced one of my bosses to hire me full-time, and then I went house hunting.

When Scarlet’s caseworker sent me her picture I carried it everywhere. But as the magic day grew near I began to panic.
What does a three-year-old eat? What should her bedtime
be? What do I do with her when I need to take a shower?

One day riding with colleagues to a conference I sat in the backseat poring through a parenting book searching for answers. “You’re going to do fine, Barbara,” my friend Steve told me. “And not because of anything you read in that book, but because you care enough to read it.”

Steve’s words gave me confidence. But my heart was pounding a few days later when Scarlett’s caseworker and I pulled up in front of her foster home. “Hi, I’m your Aunt Barbara,” I introduced myself to a gorgeous little girl who was still blinking away sleep from her nap. I stooped and nervously held out my arms . . . and the moment Scarlett hugged me back I could feel the family bond and somehow, I knew we’d be okay.

Scarlett and I were embarking on a wonderful adventure together, but at first the ride wasn’t very smooth. I wasn’t prepared for the time and energy it takes to care for a toddler. There simply weren’t enough hours in the day.

How do other single moms manage?
I wondered, dropping into bed exhausted and overwhelmed.

Scarlett had just turned four, but she was developmentally delayed. At day care when she wanted another child’s toy she scratched and bit. And there were times I couldn’t understand a word she said. “Ma-che?” she asked one night again and again, growing visibly frustrated until finally I got it: She wants macaroni and cheese.

Another night Scarlett refused to leave our cat Zoomer alone. “Let go!” I ordered, snatching away the cat. Scarlett shrieked and stamped her feet, until finally I told her, “Into your room for a time out.” But as Scarlett slammed the door behind her I was riddled with doubt.

“How should I have handled it?” I asked a friend from church.

“Exactly the way you did,” she told me. “You have good instincts—learn to trust them,” she said, and it was the best advice anyone could have given me.

I enrolled Scarlett in speech therapy, and the next time I didn’t understand something she said I asked questions until I did. I also told her there would be no more biting or scratching at day care. “If you misbehave we won’t go to any of your play dates on Saturday, and on Sunday you’ll have to sit with me in church instead of joining the play group,” I explained. It was tough, but I held my ground, and after a few weeks Scarlett’s behavior slowly improved.

Scarlett and I have been together four years now, and every day I still wake up looking forward to the adventures, joy, laughter and even the challenges of being a mom. Like racing from the university to pick up Scarlett at school so she can do her homework in my office until the end of my next class when it’s time for her gymnastics. Or sitting up half the night sewing a Pocahontas costume for a school play, or teaching her to ride a two-wheeler in the park.