A brief history of my last 20 years

How we got here
Why we got here
What we’re doing here

Book One

Big Ass Belle posted a very personal account back in January on the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade decision that led to legal abortions in the US. I direct you there for her story, but say here that it really made me think.

I guess it begins with the essence of me. I don’t know how to put that into words, but I’ll try. I am a gentle soul. A peacemaker. Sympathetic to a fault. As long as I can remember I’ve been concerned about the welfare of others. Usually if I have something and someone else needs it, I’ll share or give it way. I draw the line at chocolate, though. I’m reluctant to share my chocolate.

The Christian faith appeals to my nature. The Bible teaches love, grace, compassion, and such. It also teaches judgment and condemnation, but as do all Christians I know, to some extent I just skim over those parts I don’t like. I have been a member of a church almost constantly since I was 13 years old.

One tends to pick up the ideas and philosophies of those with whom one associates. In my mid-twenties Superman and I joined a very conservative congregation. We had been somewhat conservative before that, but we became even more so in that church. As we have moved with his new jobs we joined churches of the same denomination and held firm to those ideologies.

I believe in the right to life. I have been against abortion for a long time, but recently have softened my stance there. I still don’t like the idea, but am no longer willing to dictate or judge someone else’s decision about it. But I still consider myself to be pro-life. Semantics is tricky with this subject, as it has been so politicized over the years. Can I claim to be pro-life but not anti-abortion? Tricky.

Beliefs come alive with action. I do what I can under the circumstances, but the point is that I do. This is passion. In the late 1980s when Superman and I first joined the church I was compelled to put action to my pro-life beliefs. He was at the very least supportive if not a driving force in this decision. I can’t recall exactly who decided or how it was done, but the outcome is that we worked with a local adoption agency as foster parents. This agency helped women in “crisis pregnancies” to make plans for their babies. Some women (and sometimes with their partners) chose to parent their children, others awarded custody of the child to a relative, and others chose to release the child for adoption.

We lived in Macon, Georgia. In those days the laws in Georgia allowed a 10 day grace period for parents to change their minds after signing the papers relinquishing parental rights. A child was considered to be in foster care for those ten days even if he was in the custody of the family who was to adopt him. Sometimes these young birth parents changed their minds, taking the baby back to raise themselves. You can imagine how traumatic that is for an adoptive family. The agency we worked with tried to put the babies in one of their foster homes rather than with an adoptive family for that waiting period.

Many of the clients were carrying minority or mixed race babies. Those are the little ones we cared for. These precious babies often have such vivacious personalities even in the first few weeks and months of life. It breaks my heart that it was (and still is) sometimes hard to find adoptive homes for these children.

We wanted to be parents, wanted to be responsible for our own children. Adoption was always a probable part of that plan, but we chose to try to have biological children first. I always said “Let’s have one, see how it goes, then decide what to do next.” I knew I didn’t want to have only one child, but beyond that I was open to many options. In 1989 I gave birth to Light. When she was about 8 or 9 months old we decided to try for another one. Twitch was born 19 months after Light, on Valentine’s Day 1991.

Pregnancy wasn’t nice to me. I didn’t have too much trouble physically; they weren’t high risk pregnancies from that perspective. The problem was with my hormone balance and the emotional turmoil I experienced. Part of the problem was that I was clinically depressed but undiagnosed, therefore untreated. After Twitch was born I suffered nasty post-partum depression that hung on for I don’t know how long. Years. Superman didn’t want me to go through any more pregnancies, and I suspect he didn’t want to suffer through another one of my pregnancies. He figured this out early. He scheduled a vasectomy before Twitch was even born, and had the procedure when Twitch was 3 weeks old.

Neither of us wanted to stop at only 2 children, though. As I mentioned, adoption was always something we’d planned to consider in the future. A major motivation for adoption was our pro-life belief. If we believe that unwanted pregnancies shouldn’t be terminated, we should be willing to want, to love the “unwanted” children. It makes perfect sense to me and always has. Frankly I have always felt that way, even when I was a young child myself. I remember figuring that out when I was about 12 or 13 years old, and wanting to someday adopt.

Stay tuned for Book Two, in which our family increases asexually (after a fashion)

Where were you in 1988?

Remember my post yesterday about my clean bus? When I got back to work for the afternoon run my bus was gone. In its place was this nasty old bucket of bolts I call the Kidney Shaker.
OK, I suspected they might have to take my bus to the shop, so I wasn't surprised to see the Kidney Shaker. This old bus is one of the few spare buses we have in this district. It was new in April of 1988.

In 1988 I lived in Macon, GA. I'd been married for 5 years, and was 26 years old. Superman had a job in a small machine shop close to our apartment. I wasn't working outside the home, and we were foster parents with an adoption agency. That year we had a bunch of newborn babies at home, usually only one at a time. I didn't get much sleep, but I had a lot of fun (no, not on Grandma's feather bed) taking care of sweet little bundles of baby.

In August of 1988 Superman was fired from his job, ( a true blessing, really) and we had to leave Macon because he couldn't find another job before the end of August when rent was due again. We moved to Ringgold, GA into his parents' house. They were in exile in Houston TX at the time. Superman's baby brother was a senior in high school, living at home while his folks were in Texas.

Superman spent lots of time and effort looking for a job in that area, to no avail. But that didn't take up all his time. I became pregnant in October. He found a job in New Bern, NC in November, and moved there in December. I was left in Ringgold with my teenage brother-in-law and morning sickness. Not the best autumn of my life. Superman came home for Christmas, then I moved the rest of our junk to New Bern in early January. 1988 was a busy year for me.

Where were you? What were you doing in 1988?