ESSAY CONTEST RUNNER-UP
"Nothing to Worry About"
Catherine Anderson
My son was three months old when the call came from Boston; "You don’t know me, but you will depend on me over the next few months…" Although her voice did not sound threatening, I sensed that her words would have a far reaching impact on our family. What I couldn’t realize then, was how the very
real threat of losing Sam, would be the event that cemented his place in my heart instead.
Sammy was first placed in my arms by his birth mother when he was 36 hours old. She chose me to be his adoptive mother, two weeks before his birth. We met at 4:00 am on December 24th, in her hospital room in North Carolina. It had taken almost 24 hours to arrive from Maine, due to storms that had paralyzed travel across the country. On phone conversations from airport waiting rooms, we decided on his name (she wanted Joshua, I didn’t, we agreed on Samuel),
not to circumcise him, and thus begun our open adoption relationship. She was a God fearing African American single mother of three, fifteen years my junior with a large family support network, no current employment, and very little money. She chose me, a 37-year-old, white, non religious, educator, and writer to be his single mother by choice because, I was "the most like her" she said.
After the voice introduced herself as the director of the agency that had originally located the birth mother, she explained that due to a miscommunication, my son’s birth father had just now learned of his son’s existence, and wanted to get him back.
My friend Ronda arrived at our house minutes later. I asked her to get him when he woke up from nap. I was afraid that he might sense something was dreadfully wrong, and that my heart had begun to go into a holding pattern to prevent me from a collapse should the courts decide to take him from me.
Seven months later I was in a hotel room in North Carolina trying to pull on stockings with trembling hands. Sammy’s birth mother, my father and brother were also there. We were headed for the termination hearing in Raleigh, as Hurricane Katrina was making her way to the Gulf. Sammy, a chubby, smiling eight-month-old laughing on the bed was completely oblivious of the power the next five hours would hold over his future. I held him, and felt God in his sturdy and trusting little body. Me, the non-religious one, felt something I had never known until now; that I
am his mother. He is my son. "Please God," I whispered into Sam’s ear, "keep us together."
Sammy’s birth father never showed up. The hearing took place, and several hours later, his parental rights were terminated. When the judge declared Sammy my son from that moment forth I let out a stunted wail. His birth mother released my hand while saying, "I told you you had nothing to worry about girl."
OTHER RUNNERS-UP
Michelle Collins Anderson
Kirsten Brunner
Maureen Murov
Judy Nugent
Kathleen Peters
Suzanne Scanlon
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