Katy’s Family Forest, part 7

Geez, I can't believe we're at part 7 already—I didn't even know there were 7 parts to this story! J Actually, that's not true. There's still a lot to come…!

Yes, once my parents had officially adopted me and had been given the she's-fully-your-responsibility-no-matter-what speech, I came down with pneumonia. I was hospitalized and put in a tent where they used cold mist on me. My mom said it was torture to watch, because as a parent you always want to keep your baby dry and warm—this completely went against her instincts! But they survived, and so did I. J

And we also all survived that summer, when I was at a picnic with my family and poured a thermos of hot coffee on myself, prompting another trip to the hospital. Apparently my current state of clumsiness is nothing new.

As for my adoption, I'm a little fuzzy on the timeline of what happened next. But basically… well, first let me give you some background.

My mom (my mom, not my biological mother) was the youngest of six children, and her family lived on a farm in a small Ohio town. Unfortunately, her mother died of complications from childbirth just a few days after my mom was born. Her father suddenly found himself dealing with the loss of a spouse, raising his older five children, raising a newborn, and still trying to maintain the farm to provide for his family. He soon realized that he couldn't do it all, and he asked his sister and her husband to take care of the baby for a few months. A few months turned into years, and my mom never returned to her biological father and siblings. She was raised close to them geographically and knew them, but the people that she called her parents and siblings were biologically her aunt, uncle, and cousins.

Are you confused? J

I believe that her own situation is at least part of the reason my mom had wanted to adopt a child in the first place. And now that she had me, she thought again about her life growing up, and the fact that she had never known her biological mother. She wanted me to have that opportunity.

She called my aunt, the one who had connected my parents with my birth mom in the first place, and asked if my birth mom might be interested in being a part of my life. Up to this point, they had never met—the court hearings, the attorney meetings, even my parents' arrival at the hospital, had all been timed so that my parents and my birth mom didn't ever see each other. But now they were reaching out, willing to meet.

But would she want to meet them? Would she be able to handle seeing this child that she had given up? Could she be a part of her life knowing that she couldn't be the mother she wanted for her child?