I’ll call her Melinda. Melinda is 77 years young, the mother of two. She is your typical American grandma.
She helps arrange flowers at her Methodist church. She belongs to a bridge group. She has two very spoiled lap dogs with double first names. She has been married for over half a century.
Last month Melinda and her husband drove from Florida to California. Her Toyota traversed 2,676 miles across the American interstate system for a very important meeting.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Melinda’s story starts about 60 years ago, when she was 16 years old.
It was a different age. Kennedy was president. Gas was 31 cents per gallon. She was pretty, brunette, innocent, and aimless. She had a relationship with the son of a prominent man in town.
Melinda believed she was in love, but teenage romances between rich boys and blue-collar girls are not bound to last. Melinda was in way over her head and social rank, but too naive to know it.
When her family doctor told her she was
with child, it came as devastating news. This was 1961. Rich boys did not father the children of working-class girls. And if they did, the girls were taken away and dealt with.
As I say, different times.
No sooner had her belly began to show than she was whisked out of town. A cock-and-bull story was invented to keep everyone from wondering where she had gone.
“She’s helping at a church camp,” was one rumor going around.
“She’s attending a prestigious school up north,” was another story.
“I heard she became a nun.”
“Didn’t she join the Peace Corps?”
The girl was strongly advised by adults in her life to give her child up for adoption. And by “strongly advised,” I mean she had almost no choice.
This wasn’t what she wanted to do, mind you. But she was 16 years old, so she…