Exactly one year ago today, we received our first email from Meredith. Rob and I had taken a drive out to Pt. Reyes with Chelsea. There was some kind of bike race going on, which meant not only traffic, but Chelsea barking at every single biker that we passed. In other words, it wasn’t as relaxing as we had hoped. When we got home, a snooze on the couch wasn’t good enough and I went up to take a real nap in bed. At some point Rob woke me from a deep sleep, holding the laptop in his hand, and what I thought he said was, ‘We got an email from your Mother’. I sprang out of bed in a concerned daze because I couldn’t figure out why Rob would be waking me up to tell me that my Mom had written us an email. When I finally realized that what he actually said was, “We got an email from a birthmother”, I was happy that he woke me. We didn’t just casually sit down and read it because this was an important event. I think I made a cup of tea and we planted ourselves under a blanket on the big red chair in the front room while Chelsea sat in the window seat. We took a deep breath and started to read. Half way through I was in tears. Rob reminded me not to get my hopes up, but I knew. It is such a strange experience to look back at the mail now. We didn’t know Meredith. But somehow I knew that this was the person we had been waiting for all our lives. I knew that this wasn’t just a mail, it was the start of something big. We never did take an email from Meredith for granted – we always made time to read it together.
I can remember how carefully we crafted our response. We wanted to just be ourselves – but how do you start a casual conversation with someone when there are such big premises behind the communication? I laugh at how my personality came through in ways I never intended. I told Rob that we had to be 100% honest – and that I needed to tell her that I was a breast cancer survivor – because maybe that would scare her off – and she needed to know before we got too far along. I don’t think Rob thought that was something we needed to drop on her in the very first mail, but he let me do it. Then he watched as I checked mail 100 times an hour until we heard back. And until I breathed a sigh of relief when Meredith didn’t flinch, but only congratulated me on getting through it. Whew. Maybe I was crazy for laying that on her so soon, but at that point she knew the thing I most feared would change her mind, and then I could just be myself.
I know I’ve talked about what happened from there a million times. How I quickly realized that as much as we were in this process to find our baby – that I truly cared about Meredith. I wanted the very best for her, whatever that meant. And now it’s hard to remember a day when Meredith wasn’t part of our lives.
I was just in Brendan’s room, puttering around in there while he naps. I was doing one of my least favorite chores (along with cutting his fingernails… which is getting a little easier), swapping out his 3-6 month clothes for 6-9 month clothes. I was sitting in the almost dark, with soothing ocean wave sounds coming from the little lamb in his crib – and I remembered sitting in this same room before Brendan was born. I would fold and re-fold his clothes, arrange the toys on his shelf – sit and rock in the rocker surrounded by the soft glow of his spinning light. That seems like a million years ago. In a way, being a Mother is nothing like I pictured it would be when I was sitting in his empty room – it is so much more than I ever imagined. I can’t really remember what it was like to not have Brendan in this room. I can’t remember what this room looked like before it was a nursery. Did we really have a queen sized bed in here? The other day we were looking at pictures of a vacation and I couldn’t figure out why Brendan wasn’t in the photos. It feels like he has always been part of our lives.
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I guess this is the joy of being where we are supposed to be, and I’m just so happy to be in this moment. To be here, one year from when the magic started.
Now lets just hope the magic can continue with a 49er/Patriot Superbowl…
