nostalgia and learning about the beginning...

so today i talked to my birthmom, linda for the first time...she found me and my parents and called them first to make sure that i knew i was adopted...then my parents called me and i called linda.

over the years i had known bits and pieces about my birthmom...i knew she was a teenager when she had me, and that she had kept me for a little while, and visited me a couple of time while i was with my foster parents.

today i learned that she turned 18 two months after i was born. my birthfather apparently wanted linda to abort me, but she lied to him and said that she was too far along. i was 10 days late in coming, and she went into labor because she slipped on the ice and fell on her bottom. she was in labor for 10 hours overnight with me, and her only wish regarding labor before that was that i wouldnt disrupt her sleep...guess i was a trouble maker from early on! lol apparently one of linda's sisters had a baby girl 2 years after i was born, and asked if she could name her angela after me...linda said yes, she would be honored. apparently i resemble this cousin of mine very much (they found my pic on facebook). linda chose not to have any other children as she didn't think it would be fair to give up one child and keep others. i lived for over a month as a baby in a tent in her friend's backyard. i am apparently 1/4 native american!!! who would have guessed? lol all in all it was an awesome conversation, but hard to try to sum up 32 years in just 40 mins...i am looking forward to us meeting on saturday for the first time, and pray that this will be a wonderful experience for both of us, and a life long friendship can form.

my mom came over with some of my childhood photos and mementos today...i had fun looking through them, and jeff got a kick out of seeing pics of me as a little kid...and we were shocked at the fact that i got my "eye" teeth before getting my top front teeth...just like willow!!! crazy!

my mom saved just about everything i ever did in kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade...then lots of stuff thereafter too. it was fun to see all this stuff and read things i wrote, and comments my teachers made. but the most priceless things in there were two small notebooks.

the first notebook i found was a dayplanner that my mom kept when i was about 3 1/2...she wrote down things we did, things i said, things she felt, etc...it was amazing to read this and have an insight into what she was feeling when she was the parent of a 3 1/2 yr old, just like i am right now...especially her honesty about arguing with me and me being a terror sometimes...i laughed and laughed at a lot of it....and now i am going to get dayplanners for my kids so i can keep "diaries" for them.

the second notebook was also a "diary" for me, but written by my foster mom, started when i was 13 months old and they got me, and went up until oct 9, 1978 when i was adopted by my parents...it was amazing to read about the milestones i hit, the trouble i caused, the joy i gave, and the time my birthmom took me for the day for mothers day...and i cried at the end of it when they were talking about the "new mommy and daddy" that i was meeting....and how they would miss me but were glad to know i was going to a good home. back in those days, once you left a foster family, you usually weren't still in contact with them...so they thought they may not ever see me grow up or anything...little did we know that we would still be friends today, and have kept in contact all these years...the debooms are wonderful wonderful people whom i love very much.

how painful it must have been for all these adults in my early life to give me up...i looked at willow today and just wanted to squeeze her so tight at the thought of giving up my daughter for adoption...i dont know how linda did it...i am glad she did, and i cant even fathom the heartbreak she felt doing it.

i am sitting here now writing this blog, finally crying after going through all that i have today...i'm in such shock and so happy and so nostalgic...and so amazed at how big God is to have coordinated all of this...and i am excited to finally be able to fill this piece of the puzzle thats been missing my whole life...its weird to learn about yourself as a baby when you are 32 years old...but i'm thankful that i finally have the opportunity.

angie