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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781491847930 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 02/19/2014 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 506 |
| File size: | 905 KB |
About the Author
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BMom
Lovely Weeds
By Crissy Shreve
AuthorHouse LLC
Copyright © 2014 Crissy ShreveAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4918-4794-7
CHAPTER 1
Hello And Goodbye
On July 13, 1965, my son was born. My mother asked that I call him Larry, for her. Her name was Laura. A few days later, I left him in the arms of new parents I couldn't know, and with no real hope of ever seeing him again.
For forty-five years, I carried my baby boy as a scar on my heart. I could not know whether he was alive, whether he was healthy, whether he was being loved and cared for. The hardest part was not having a way to know if he needed me.
Once I was married and had a home, I wrote a letter to the attorney who'd handled the adoption, just wanting her to know how to find me if it were necessary. Sadly, she had died, and I was unable to find out whether anyone had taken over her practice or had her records.
I couldn't have kept him. I was sixteen years old when Larry was born. His father was not a bad guy, but I could see no likelihood of his being able to support us. I didn't want Larry to be raised in the same near-poverty in which I'd grown up, nor did I want to go on living in it myself. I'd seen friends who, in the same circumstances, married too young. The novelty wore off very quickly. They weren't ready to be wives and mothers; they were still children themselves. One of them, when the baby was only a few months old, was already stepping out with other guys while her husband was at work. She was still a teenager, wanting and needing to do what teenagers do.
It would have been impossible for my mother, a single mother herself, to take on another mouth to feed. She suggested putting Larry in an orphanage until I was able to take care of him. In hindsight, that day came much more quickly than I thought it would, but the idea of putting him in an orphanage, even for one day, was repulsive. All I could do was trust that Larry was safe in God's hands.
Abortion wasn't available back then. I wish I could say that I wouldn't have had one, but had it been an option, I very well might have. I'm so grateful that it wasn't.
Despite the circumstances of his conception, Larry was not an accident, nor was he a mistake—not in God's economy. Larry was fearfully and wonderfully made, knit in my womb. He was and is exactly who God intended him to be. God knew that one day Larry would find me, and that it would be right when I needed him.
As hard as the intervening years may have been, they were as nothing compared to the joy I felt when Larry found me. On the surface, it might seem that placing one's child for adoption is an impossible choice. And it is, except that with God all things are possible.
I was in eleventh grade when I was pregnant with Larry. I made it through the first six months of school without anyone noticing. At some point, my mother suspected, and wondered why I wasn't having periods. "Is your belly going to be swollen with a child?" she asked. Mostly, though, I think she didn't want to know, didn't want it to be true, and certainly hadn't a clue what to do about it if it was. It was my Spanish teacher who finally brought my "condition" to my mother's attention, and to the attention of the authorities at school, as well. In those days, pregnant teenage girls weren't permitted to parade around school with swollen bellies. One girl, a year ahead of me, had left school, married, had her baby, and then returned to school to finish.
Once my dilemma was known, I quickly blossomed. How I'd managed to get by in my normal clothes for six months, I don't know, but from one day to the next, nothing fit any longer. Of course I knew I was pregnant pretty much right from the start. A few close friends knew, as well. For the most part, though, I just went on with life as usual. There wasn't much else I could do. I'd broken up with Larry's father and was even dating other guys. Denial at its best.
I did give a lot of thought to how I was going to get myself through the predicament, though. I remember being very relieved to find a newspaper ad for the Florence Crittenden Home. At fifteen years old, I didn't know how to go about approaching them, and I wasn't ready for my secret to come out, anyway, so I just stored the information away in my brain until it came time to do something. Going there and giving the baby up for adoption made sense to me. My mother was rather surprised that I had a plan. Of course I had a plan. I'd had to figure out my life on my own all along—why should this time be any different? I don't think it ever occurred to me to seek help or counsel, and even if it had, I wouldn't have known from whom.
There was, of course, the fear of judgment, and knowing that I'd once again disappoint everyone in my family. I never perceived them to be people who would be there for me. That was, perhaps, a bit unfair to them, as I didn't give them the chance to prove otherwise, but I think it was largely true.
There were "standards" of behavior in my family. I was expected to be many things I simply didn't have the resources to be able to be. My mother didn't necessarily expect me to meet these standards; she herself couldn't meet them. I suppose I did more to make them ashamed of me than I did to make them proud. I don't remember anyone ever saying they were proud of me, despite how quick they were to point out my faults. Still, I can recognize that, in their own ways, they all loved me like crazy and wanted better for me than what I was capable of producing on my own. That was the rub. They had expectations of me, but they didn't engage in my process.
I never had any morning sickness, so it was pretty easy to pretend, even to myself for the first months, that I wasn't really pregnant. The first undeniable sign was when I felt those first "butterflies," Larry's movement inside me. I remember exactly where I was when it happened, and it was a precious moment. I realized that there really was a little somebody growing in there.
I don't remember being particularly scared. As I think back to that time, that surprises me. It was something I'd have to face, to deal with, but not in fear. I don't really know why that was true—perhaps I was so numbed by life by then that I wasn't feeling anything. Maybe it was because I had a plan, a way through it, and ultimately, out of it. Perhaps I simply didn't have enough sense to be afraid. I know now that God was with me in it, even though I didn't know Him then. After all, He knew who was growing inside me.
My memories of my time at the Florence Crittenden Home, affectionately known to its denizens as "Flo's," come to me in bits and pieces. My Uncle Austin drove me there. We entered through the front door, which is only remarkable because, in my several months there, I never again used the front door until the day I left. There was a side door that we girls used.
Uncle Austin had apparently been a supporter of Flo's for some time, which may have been a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy on his part. He saw me to some degree as a daughter. I wish I could say he'd seen himself as a dad and, maybe he even did, at least in his own way. In any case, I think he was afraid that one day I'd need Flo's. I did. It may even be that his being a supporter helped me get in on short notice. When he checked me into Flo's, he was mortified, and very angry with me. I'd disappointed him, and he never forgave me. He was still cordial to me after that, but it was clear that I'd lost my status as his pride and joy.
I didn't have many maternity clothes, just a few cheap items my mother had picked up for me at the dime store. It didn't matter, though; there were plenty of leftover items at Flo's. Obviously no one saw any reason to take their maternity clothes along when they left. The food was great, and nutritious. Four older girls, who'd come in early in their pregnancies, and hence would be there a while, were the cooks. They planned our meals, shopped for food, and prepared it all—three meals a day. The rest of us took turns washing the dishes and scrubbing the pots.
There were several young women who had already finished school and started working. I remember one in particular who spent hours composing fictional letters to her parents and friends, telling them about her happy life in another city. She'd copy these letters for herself before sending them, so as not to contradict herself in a later letter. There was a lot of shame in unwed pregnancy in those days.
Mornings we had chores. My job was to sweep down the back stairs with a brush and dustpan. On my first day, I hadn't yet been assigned a duty, and I was feeling like I didn't belong, so I bugged someone to give me a job to do. For some reason, I was initially afraid of the staff woman who was in charge of cleaning. She had something of a brusque voice and came off as a tough cookie. Ironically, I wound up really liking and trusting her, and it was to her that I complained several times when I felt the headmistress had treated me unfairly.
When I first arrived, there was no headmistress; the head nurse, Mrs. M., was in charge. Before long, though, we got a new headmistress. She was a bear. Shepherding a flock of unwed mothers was obviously not her gift. We all hated her.
Many of us had nicknames; I was "Knish." A friend of mine had observed one time that with my long, straight hair and my, let's say, prominent nose, I looked just like "Knish," a puppet in a children's TV show. He, well, I guess he was a he, had a darning knob for a nose and it stuck out the front of his mop head hair. "Knish" is a Yiddish word for a kind of bun or dumpling, and derives from the Russian "knysh." You pronounce the k. The new headmistress couldn't seem to say "Knish." She always said "Gnish."
In the afternoons and evenings, we congregated in a large dayroom on the second floor. We were allowed to smoke in the dayroom, and most of us did. We read or watched soap operas. I don't remember there ever being much argument about what to watch. "Peyton Place" was on twice, or perhaps even three times a week, and we were all hooked on it.
And the weather was hot. There was no air-conditioning then, and most of us slept up on the third floor, which was one big room, set up as a dormitory. I don't remember exactly, but there were at least fifteen and maybe as many as twenty of us at Flo's when I was there.
Some of us knitted or sewed clothing. I made myself a lightweight nightgown that was cool enough to help me survive the third floor, and a reversible wrap-around skirt that was a dark maroon on one side and madras on the other. I wore that skirt home the day I left and for some time afterwards. I'd actually read the instructions that came with the pattern, something I seldom do, and it turned out remarkably well.
Often in the afternoon, we'd go out walking around the area, just to get out and have something to do. There were no particular boundaries, but we weren't supposed to leave the immediate area. Mostly, we went up to W Street, a few blocks away. We had to travel in twos, and on any given afternoon, pairs of pregnant girls could be seen wandering around the neighborhood. W Street was great; one long block of trendy boutiques, a drugstore, an upscale butcher shop, that sort of thing.
A few of the older girls had cars stashed nearby. They must have used them for grocery shopping. I wasn't a cook then and I'm not a cook now, so I wasn't paying much attention, but thinking back, I realize that they must have gone to the store nearly every day. They had a lot of mouths to feed.
The night Larry decided to be born, the moon was full, and several of us went into labor at the same time. I was up most of the night, sitting in the dayroom, just feeling uncomfortable, nothing major. When Mrs. M. finally came in, I thought she'd just noticed me, but she'd known even before she went to bed that I was close to ready to go. She and I walked across the street to the hospital. I'd sort of thought we'd go in a cab, so I was surprised when we walked. It was fine, though.
Mrs. M. didn't stay with me; she had several others in various stages of labor, and I know she made at least three trips across the street that night. My mother came to the hospital, but I didn't see her until after I'd delivered.
Once at the hospital, I had maybe three hours of twingey labor, nothing too hard. They gave me something called "twilight sleep," which, as I remember it, made me sleep deeply between contractions, and I didn't even remember having them. Then, in the delivery room, I was put completely under. I remember the mask being placed over my nose and mouth, then ... nothing. The next thing I knew, Larry was there.
There was a nurse from my hometown in the delivery room, and just as I was coming out of the anesthesia, she asked me where I was from and what my name was. I was groggy, so I told her. Afterwards, I lived in terror that she'd tell people at home about me.
My best friend from Flo's, who was only fourteen, spent nearly two days in hard labor before her little girl was born. I was lucky. The worst I remember was dealing with the stitches.
Once a girl had given birth, she typically moved downstairs to the mothers' room, which was on the second floor next to the nursery. Because so many of us had given birth at the same time, I never made it to the mothers' room, but Larry stayed in the nursery. I had to go up and down the stairs a lot. We brought our babies "home" to Flo's and took care of them ourselves for a few days. I fed Larry, burped him, changed his pants, and powdered his tiny bottom.
I suspect that this arrangement was intentional, so that we could be absolutely certain what we wanted to do, and probably so that any immediate medical problems might be identified prior to the baby's placement. Typically, back then, a baby was taken from the mother immediately after the birth, and usually the mother never saw the child, sometimes didn't even know whether she'd had a boy or a girl. They did it differently at Flo's.
Adoptions were final and records were sealed. The adoptive parents arrived at the home several hours after the mother had left. I was told that my baby was going to a certain town, but it wasn't true. Larry was actually raised only about five miles from where I lived at that time.
It may seem a cruelty, my having had to care for Larry, getting to know and love him, only to hand him away. It wasn't. It was, instead, perhaps the dearest of God's blessings in my life, right up until the moment He brought us back together. For those few days, I absorbed Larry's sweetness, counted his fingers and toes, smelled that wonderful baby head nectar, and cherished the tiny hand clutching my finger. He was magnificent.
These things I carried in my heart as I walked away from him and out of Flo's for the last time. These things, and the last line of a poem written by one of the girls:
"But, God, be kind, and let her know, her mother loves her, too."
And then it was all over ... except for the stretch marks.
The Hardest Thing
This is the worst part of it all, and the hardest thing for me to admit. Right about the time I felt the first flutters of life inside me, I took a lot of aspirin in an attempt to kill myself.
It was absolutely not an attempt to end the pregnancy. It was because, as a loopy fifteen-year-old, I was feeling sorry for myself over some boy who'd broken up with me. You'd think that being pregnant would have been my biggest problem, but in my mind, it wasn't. In my fifteen-year-old stupidity, all I cared about was getting this boy back. It wasn't even any real desire to die. I was simply trying to manipulate him into coming back to me.
It never even occurred to that loopy fifteen-year-old girl that taking the aspirin might harm the baby. It didn't occur to me until many years later. I'd never told anyone about this part of it, had in fact completely forgotten about it, and once I realized what I'd done, I was horrified, and terrified for Larry. I don't know that anyone had ever heard of Reye's Syndrome in the 60's, or its link to aspirin. Certainly I hadn't.
I remember exactly where I was when I finally connected those particular dots and realized what I'd done. It was an ordinary day some thirty years later. I was driving home from the grocery store, and for some reason, suddenly it hit me like a sledgehammer. I might have damaged my baby! I had to pull over to the side of the road. I couldn't bear it.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from BMom by Crissy Shreve. Copyright © 2014 Crissy Shreve. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Dedication, xi,Lovely Weeds, xii,
Illustrations, xiii,
The Cast, xiv,
Introduction, xv,
Rosebud On The Altar, xvi,
Chapter One, 1,
Chapter Two, 11,
Chapter Three, 32,
Chapter Four, 44,
Chapter Five, 50,
Chapter Six, 66,
Chapter Seven, 75,
Chapter Eight, 87,
Chapter Nine, 93,
Chapter Ten, 100,
Chapter Eleven, 106,
Chapter Twelve, 115,
Chapter Thirteen, 130,
Chapter Fourteen, 139,
Chapter Fifteen, 149,
Chapter Sixteen, 162,
Chapter Seventeen, 173,
Chapter Eighteen, 187,
Chapter Nineteen, 205,
Chapter Twenty, 218,
Chapter Twenty-One, 227,
Chapter Twenty-Two, 244,
Chapter Twenty-Three, 258,
Chapter Twenty-Four, 278,
Chapter Twenty-Five, 295,
Chapter Twenty-Six, 311,
Chapter Twenty-Seven, 327,
Chapter Twenty-Eight, 335,
Chapter Twenty-Nine, 352,
Chapter Thirty, 362,
Chapter Thirty-One, 368,
Chapter Thirty-Two, 382,
Chapter Thirty-Three, 390,
Chapter Thirty-Four, 402,
Chapter Thirty-Five, 409,
Chapter Thirty-Six, 418,
Chapter Thirty-Seven, 427,
Chapter Thirty-Eight, 434,
Chapter Thirty-Nine, 448,
Chapter Forty, 459,
Chapter Forty-One, 476,
Acknowledgements, 489,