“I am a little old woman who lives in an assisted living facility…” her email began.
Her following message was about the length of “War and Peace.” She is a woman who is as sweet as Karo syrup. But—and I mean this respectfully—brevity is not her strong suit. Reading her email took me three or four presidential administrations.
“I had a baby when I was fourteen…” she wrote.
The 14-year-old gave birth in the singlewide trailer that belonged to an aunt. The delivery was in secret. Nobody knew her son existed. Least of all her immediate family.
Finally, the aunt put the child up for adoption. It was impractical for a girl of 14 to raise a child. This was a different era.
The goodbye between mother and son was almost too much to bear. The 14-year-old held her infant in her arms when officials came to take him away.
Over time, the girl grew into a woman. The woman grew into a wife. The wife had three kids. The wife’s husband made decent money.
She
moved into a nice house. Her children did pretty good in school. Her offspring grew up to be successful and handsome and beautiful and well-off and happy. Fill in the blank.
But the woman had a void in her heart.
“A child is a piece of you, physically. Like an organ. People who’ve never had kids can’t understand.”
She dreamed about her son. Every night. Without fail. In her dreams, she could see him. She watched him grow. She saw saw his smile. She heard him speak. Once again, she cannot explain what she means. But she tries.
“It’s like a radar,” she explains. “My soul was sending out a radar signal, and I think God was sending me radar signals back.”
I took a break from reading the email. I still had 78,000,000 words left to read before finishing her story.
So I’ll…