Dear Reader,
Today’s Honorable Mention entry from the 2022 Write a Dear Reader Contest was written by Deanna White, who was also this past year’s First Place winner. Actually after reading Deanna’s two entries--it was a tough decision deciding which one to label First Place. It may be unusual to also acknowledge someone’s second entry, but as you will see, it’s worthy.
Congratulations, Deanna on another wonderful story…
From the first moment they laid her in my arms, I knew she was mine. Just a smidge over five pounds, she nestled in my arms and cooed. I can still remember her doll-sized dress sprinkled in tiny rosebuds. As my eyes trailed her indescribable beauty--from the top of her oval shaped face, down to her pouty, pink lips, and onto her slender fingers threaded together in prayer—my heart tried to catch up with my mind. She is yours. My arms that had ached for a baby for over nine years, now held the most precious life. Her tiny body let out an audible sigh and she sank into my embrace, and tears spilled from my eyes. “She’s never done that before,” the Emergency Shelter Home (ESH) foster mom whispered, “We’ve had her for three weeks and I’ve never seen her body relax.” My heart soared with indescribable joy.
Her name was Baby Girl and my social worker assured me I could name her anything I wanted. Her birth mom had admitted using crystal meth 6 times a day, every day during the pregnancy and therefore delivered her daughter during a jail sentence without being allowed to see her. During the first month of caring for my precious baby, I wallowed in projectile vomit, doctor’s visits, and round the clock bottle feedings due to an underdeveloped sucking reflex. I survived on no sleep just so I could stare at her as she slept and observe her tummy moving up and down as she breathed in life—her long eyelashes splayed over her bubblegum pink cheeks. Her heart pounded into mine as I sang her to sleep with the rocking of the chair, while simultaneously guiding her to swallow as I kneaded the bottle back and forth between her tiny lips, praying her body would flourish and grow.
One day I received a call from Social Services with a worker that introduced herself as the birth mom's representative and informed me that monitored visits would begin the following week. “My plan is to reunify this baby with her mother as soon as possible,” she carelessly quipped on the phone. And my world spun black. At the first monitored visit, my anger toward Birthmom melted away as I saw that she herself was a baby who needed a mother to take care of her. While I wrestled at night on my knees after laying Baby Girl down in her crib, I yielded to a force stronger than myself to love unconditionally. I still remember baking chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen while tears streamed down my cheek—fully knowing that Birthmother had never had someone bake homemade cookies for her. With every monitored visit, my heart slowly changed from resistant and angry to yielding and supportive. Several months later, Birthmother was in my home for dinner, while our family demonstrated how to feed her baby, bathe her, change her diaper, and rock her to sleep. A few weeks later—exactly two weeks before Christmas and three weeks before Baby’s Girl’s first birthday—we handed our precious foster baby back into the arms of her mother never to see her again.
No words can adequately describe the heartache of loss. Yet when I look back at this moment in my life, I recognize it as the greatest privilege I have ever been given and one of the most challenging, yet beautiful gifts ever presented to me. Three months later I received a call from my social worker, “I have a special circumstance I would like your family to consider…it’s a boy and a girl; a brother and sister…and they are ready to be adopted!” And of course, we said, “yes!”
– Deanna White, Honorable Mention, 2022 Write a DearReader Contest
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
AUTHORBUZZ: Discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win.
BOND OF PASSION (Fiction) by Larissa Ione
I'm so happy to be back in the Demonica world, especially with the people and the hospital that started it all. You'll find hints of what's to come in the new series, and you'll catch up with old friends. And best of all, Tavin gets his story!
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on BOND OF PASSION to read more and to email author Larissa Ione, you'll get a reply.
* This month's Penguin Classics is The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. I have a copy of the book to share with a lucky reader, so start reading and enter for your chance to win
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