She started looking into open adoption when the birthfather, a one-night stand that happened more than once, wouldn’t help pay for the abortion. She realized his lack of moral fiber when he promised to bring the money on a Wednesday, the day of the scheduled abortion. Wednesday came and went. Melissa*, thank God, didn’t have the money and the birthfather never called her again.
Melissa, being computer-savvy and desperate for a solution to her growing belly, began searching the Internet for adoptive couples. She e-mailed us the first week of December and I responded quickly to her. No reply. Anxiously I waited for her to write back and because I worried about appearing desperate, I didn’t want to write to her without some sort of response. A week later, I sent another message to her and her response was, “What e-mail?” My initial e-mail was lost somewhere in cyberspace. So began our long dance of e-mails, with Melissa the reluctant partner and me the eager suitor. The e-mailing was cold and impersonal and I knew that if I was to make any connection with Melissa, it would have to begin with a phone call. I nearly begged her to call us, and a couple of weeks later, she did.
We talked for an hour that first time. I was on Christmas vacation from my job as a teacher. It was hard to keep the conversation flowing and so I did an imitation of my mother-in-law, who is a master at filling dead air. I kept up a constant banter of light questions, to which Melissa often provided one-word answers. I dreaded those awkward seconds of silence, my stomach clenching when she was quiet. She’s got to think I’m the biggest dork on the planet, I would say to myself, then I would rush forward with another comment about where we lived, or worse, I would tell her about the weather. I worked hard every time we talked to make connections between her life and ours. Lucky for me, I had a lot in common with
this young woman who had walked a rough road in life.
I realized that we were being interviewed for the job of parents and the stress of those first phone calls was incredible. I worried about saying the wrong
thing or giving the wrong answer. When ending a call, I would immediately call my husband and replay the conversation. That’s when the self-doubting began.
Did she like the fact that I would be a working mom? Did she want a family who was more religious? Did I tell her too much?
That last question is the one that haunted me the most. In my heart, I knew that only complete honesty would work with open adoption. That’s why we chose
openness when looking at the myriad of choices hopeful adoptive parents face. I had spent a lifetime, it seemed, trying to come to terms with the emotional
aftermath of being raised by self-centered, emotionally crippled parents. Years of therapy helped me to understand that all of their character flaws had twisted my self-image like a pretzel and that my mistakes as a teenager were, for the most part, completely predictable and most importantly, not my fault.
So I was brutally honest with Melissa. When she asked about my family I relayed to her in the simplest of terms how difficult my childhood was and how I
struggled with drugs and alcohol as a teenager. Self-medication was my goal, I explained, as I was in constant psychic pain. The only time I could stand my
life was when I was high or drunk. Lucky for me, my parents began to realize that their 13 year old child was completely out of control. It took them a while,
but eventually they saw that things were not improving with this angry, rebellious kid and it didn’t seem like it was just a stage. They didn’t even know about the seriousness of the drugs until I was 16. That’s when they put me into a drug rehab, I told Melissa, and that’s when I began to find a way to heal.
I didn’t tell her about all the sad parts of my life in one phone call, or even two. Slowly, when we talked about the struggles we both faced, I would add a little more to my life story. She would share the problems of her family life with me and I would take opportunities to reveal more and more about myself. We spent hours on the phone, building what I hoped would be a solid foundation for this adoption to happen.
I somehow sensed, and now I know for certain, that my openness about my less than idyllic past was what caused Melissa to choose us over the 9 other couples
she was considering. She knew that I wasn’t perfect. Slowly, Melissa began to open up to me. She told me about her family’s struggles with alcoholism and
unemployment. She told me about how she and her mother went without electricity in the mobile home in the weeks before they were evicted, during the cold winter of Northern Ohio. She shared what she went through as a teenage mother and the reasons why she couldn’t be a parent to another child. Melissa opened up her life story to me and I treated her with kid gloves, never criticizing or judging, trying my best to understand and empathize.
The third week in January confirmed my leap of faith. Melissa flew from Ohio to meet us and if all went well, we would have our match meeting. I was beyond
nervous as I stood outside the gate at LAX, waiting for my first glance at the woman who would quite possibly bear my child. We hadn’t talked about how to
find each other and my heart was racing. Would she even get off the plane? She knew what I looked like, but I didn’t have a clue about her other than that she
was Caucasian and had brown eyes, brown hair.
Not to worry, Melissa knew me right away. I’d never been a physically affectionate person with acquaintances and usually I would give a hug only if
absolutely necessary. When looking at Melissa’s lovely, smooth face, I felt the strongest urge to hug her and not let go.
We spent the next few days traveling around southern California, looking for fun things to do to entertain our guest of honor while getting to know each other.
Melissa wanted to go to the amusement parks that are so well-known in California, but realized it would be a risk to the baby if she rode the roller coasters. We chose our activities carefully and spent our time together talking, laughing, shopping and eating. I even gave Melissa lessons on how to drive a 5 speed car. Later, she remarked that she knew I would be patient with a child because of how calm I was when the car would buck and then stall, over and over
again, until Melissa got the feel for the clutch.
Our relationship began to feel like something completely new to me. Melissa wasn’t like anyone else in my life. She wasn’t related to me by blood, although she seemed to be like a kid sister. She wasn’t really a friend, either. She was more than that. I think I trusted her with more information than I ever did with any other “friend.” It was like we both knew that we needed to get this right, that we
were about to do something that would have lifelong consequences. We had to trust in one another because we were going to be bound to each other for life.
Melissa and I were moving in the right direction, I sensed, and the match meeting that took place during her visit confirmed my instincts. Melissa wasn’t a
perfect person. Neither was I. We knew that even though we had imperfect resumes, we were both right for the job.