Sunday was the 5 year Anniversary of the adoption of our daughter Macy. I remember every moment of the journey to her and every moment since. For me, she was a dream come true that I did not even know I had wished for. For years (20) my husband and I felt perfectly content not being parents. Then when we adopted our son we felt wonderfully sated as far as our parenting appetite went. We had not once pondered having more than one child and our son was the moon and stars for us and we honestly could not imagine another child competing for our love and attention. We felt blissfully this way for the 14 months after we brought him home.
Then one mid January morning in 2001, I woke up with the smallest flutter of a feeling in my heart. As the morning progressed, I realized that the flutter had pink wings, girly wings , the wings of a daughter. By noon I was eating a sandwich and crunching numbers on how this could work. I had become a stay at home Mom a mere 4 months before so we were still learning how to negotiate on one salary. The more I figured we just could not swing another $25,000 for an adoption, the more I knew I would have to find a way. Some might find it a little odd that because as far as we knew we could have biological children, I never entertained that option. Just like when we became parents the first time around. Russia was our womb.
Around 2pm, Riley and I meandered down to the mailbox. Along with a bill or two and the ever present magazine was an envelope from my former employer. The hospital where I had worked for 17 years. It was a letter informing me that I needed to decide what I wanted to do with my $35,000 403B account I still had with them. Did I want to roll it over into something else or transfer it to another financial institution. I would say that it is about 150 steps from the mailbox to my house. That is how long it took me to decide just where I would roll over that money. Right into a daughter. It still gives me chills to think about how the night before ,I went to bed feeling totally fulfilled and within 24 hours I was committed to bringing home a daughter and had the cash in hand to do it. Talk about a life changing moment. No way it was mere coincidence that all of this came together in one day. I walked into my house and called the financial office at the hospital. They told me that yes, I could take the money out in cash with a penalty.
Penalty, Smenalty. My $35,000-$5000 in taxes and penalty left me $30,000 cash. Cash this time for an adoption. Cash. Cash that my employer had invested 100% in. Sorta like Found money. Now mind you this was not the IRA I had invesested personally. I had others.
I can still hear that choir singing, those angels trumpeting.
Have I mentioned that my husband was at work totally unaware at all of the earth moving that was going on at home. I had virtually made him a father again and he had no clue. We had never, not once ever talked about adopting again.
By the time he got home I had mentally turned our guest room into our little girl's room, figured out the logistics of who would care for our 2 year old so while we were gone and had started trying out girl names.
Let me say now that my Husband is one amazing guy. Incredible Father.
He walked in kissed us both Hello.
I said I wanted to go back to Russia and adopt a baby girl and I wanted to use the money from my employer IRA to fund it.
He paused. Asked was I serious. I was.
He turned around, picked up the phone and called our agency.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Our daughter was born that same week, thousands of miles across the ocean in Shahkty Russia.
On 9/11/2001 we got the call to go meet her.
On Nov. 19, 2001 She became Macy Leanna Freeman
5 years and 2 days ago.
To a mother, a daughter is unique gift. Like all mothers, I love my children passionately and equally.
But she and I have a bond that goes much farther than any genetics could build, it is hormonal.
She is a mini-Me.
We both love fashion, love to read, LOVE to talk and Really LOVE to have an opinion on everything and don't mind tellin ya whether you want to hear it or not.
Friday night is girl night in her bed that involves chick flicks or DR.90210 telethons, buttery popcorn, Real Cokes and lots of giggles and heart to heart talks. We can spend forever deciding on just the right toenail polish or hair ornament or the best flip flop for the outfit. You can find us side by side on the swing, me writing in my journal , her in her diary.
She shares my passion for swimming, for the jaccuzi tub and Sour Gummy Worms.
She will compliment me on my jewelry, my shoes and my house cleaning skills.
She will also tell me when I need to spiff up my wardrobe, my hair or my bedroom.
We can have the deepest converstions about life and death,
souls and heaven ,
tummy babies and heart babies
and McDonald's versus Chick-Fil-E
My Son Lights up my life
My Daughter adds the Technicolor.
I can literally bring myself to tears when I imagine how close we came to not being the parents of two children. How easy it would have been that January morning to have attributed my yearning for a daughter to hormones, or winter blues or baby envy. If my husband, in his right mind, would have discouraged me , I probably would have let the flutterings die away.
Maybe it was the look in my eye or the yearnng in my voice.
Maybe he also heard that day , calling from afar, Daddy's Little Girl. A sister for his son.
A daughter for his wife. A mother for a daughter.
He had 2 sisters. He knew how close their relationship was with his mother.
He knew how close I was to mine.
He had seen how I had shared my sister's bond with my niece.
Talk about high expectations.
My daughter has surpassed all of them.
All day yesterday I watched her and thanked any and everything I could for the blessing of being her mother.
5 years has gone by in the blink of an eye.
When she spontaneously tells me how much she loves me, that I am the Greatest and Bestest Mom or that she is having the best day of her Life (she seems to have a lot of these) or gives me the biggest Hug and a hundred kisses,I think how could I have missed out on this.
I think of her birth mother and wonder how she did.
She couldn't have know how amazing and wonderful this daughter would become.
Or maybe she did know. And that is the greatest gift of all.
My daughter.
It still sends a chill down my spine and I feel those butterflies all over again.
Not just a fluttering. But a strong loud beating of my heart for this blond haired blue eyed child that was sent straight from heaven into my life.
I can not fathom what the next 5 years will bring.
A son and a daughter.
The Moon and the Stars and Heaven and Earth.
Happy Anniversary Macy, we've come along way Baby.
Then one mid January morning in 2001, I woke up with the smallest flutter of a feeling in my heart. As the morning progressed, I realized that the flutter had pink wings, girly wings , the wings of a daughter. By noon I was eating a sandwich and crunching numbers on how this could work. I had become a stay at home Mom a mere 4 months before so we were still learning how to negotiate on one salary. The more I figured we just could not swing another $25,000 for an adoption, the more I knew I would have to find a way. Some might find it a little odd that because as far as we knew we could have biological children, I never entertained that option. Just like when we became parents the first time around. Russia was our womb.
Around 2pm, Riley and I meandered down to the mailbox. Along with a bill or two and the ever present magazine was an envelope from my former employer. The hospital where I had worked for 17 years. It was a letter informing me that I needed to decide what I wanted to do with my $35,000 403B account I still had with them. Did I want to roll it over into something else or transfer it to another financial institution. I would say that it is about 150 steps from the mailbox to my house. That is how long it took me to decide just where I would roll over that money. Right into a daughter. It still gives me chills to think about how the night before ,I went to bed feeling totally fulfilled and within 24 hours I was committed to bringing home a daughter and had the cash in hand to do it. Talk about a life changing moment. No way it was mere coincidence that all of this came together in one day. I walked into my house and called the financial office at the hospital. They told me that yes, I could take the money out in cash with a penalty.
Penalty, Smenalty. My $35,000-$5000 in taxes and penalty left me $30,000 cash. Cash this time for an adoption. Cash. Cash that my employer had invested 100% in. Sorta like Found money. Now mind you this was not the IRA I had invesested personally. I had others.
I can still hear that choir singing, those angels trumpeting.
Have I mentioned that my husband was at work totally unaware at all of the earth moving that was going on at home. I had virtually made him a father again and he had no clue. We had never, not once ever talked about adopting again.
By the time he got home I had mentally turned our guest room into our little girl's room, figured out the logistics of who would care for our 2 year old so while we were gone and had started trying out girl names.
Let me say now that my Husband is one amazing guy. Incredible Father.
He walked in kissed us both Hello.
I said I wanted to go back to Russia and adopt a baby girl and I wanted to use the money from my employer IRA to fund it.
He paused. Asked was I serious. I was.
He turned around, picked up the phone and called our agency.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Our daughter was born that same week, thousands of miles across the ocean in Shahkty Russia.
On 9/11/2001 we got the call to go meet her.
On Nov. 19, 2001 She became Macy Leanna Freeman
5 years and 2 days ago.
To a mother, a daughter is unique gift. Like all mothers, I love my children passionately and equally.
But she and I have a bond that goes much farther than any genetics could build, it is hormonal.
She is a mini-Me.
We both love fashion, love to read, LOVE to talk and Really LOVE to have an opinion on everything and don't mind tellin ya whether you want to hear it or not.
Friday night is girl night in her bed that involves chick flicks or DR.90210 telethons, buttery popcorn, Real Cokes and lots of giggles and heart to heart talks. We can spend forever deciding on just the right toenail polish or hair ornament or the best flip flop for the outfit. You can find us side by side on the swing, me writing in my journal , her in her diary.
She shares my passion for swimming, for the jaccuzi tub and Sour Gummy Worms.
She will compliment me on my jewelry, my shoes and my house cleaning skills.
She will also tell me when I need to spiff up my wardrobe, my hair or my bedroom.
We can have the deepest converstions about life and death,
souls and heaven ,
tummy babies and heart babies
and McDonald's versus Chick-Fil-E
My Son Lights up my life
My Daughter adds the Technicolor.
I can literally bring myself to tears when I imagine how close we came to not being the parents of two children. How easy it would have been that January morning to have attributed my yearning for a daughter to hormones, or winter blues or baby envy. If my husband, in his right mind, would have discouraged me , I probably would have let the flutterings die away.
Maybe it was the look in my eye or the yearnng in my voice.
Maybe he also heard that day , calling from afar, Daddy's Little Girl. A sister for his son.
A daughter for his wife. A mother for a daughter.
He had 2 sisters. He knew how close their relationship was with his mother.
He knew how close I was to mine.
He had seen how I had shared my sister's bond with my niece.
Talk about high expectations.
My daughter has surpassed all of them.
All day yesterday I watched her and thanked any and everything I could for the blessing of being her mother.
5 years has gone by in the blink of an eye.
When she spontaneously tells me how much she loves me, that I am the Greatest and Bestest Mom or that she is having the best day of her Life (she seems to have a lot of these) or gives me the biggest Hug and a hundred kisses,I think how could I have missed out on this.
I think of her birth mother and wonder how she did.
She couldn't have know how amazing and wonderful this daughter would become.
Or maybe she did know. And that is the greatest gift of all.
My daughter.
It still sends a chill down my spine and I feel those butterflies all over again.
Not just a fluttering. But a strong loud beating of my heart for this blond haired blue eyed child that was sent straight from heaven into my life.
I can not fathom what the next 5 years will bring.
A son and a daughter.
The Moon and the Stars and Heaven and Earth.
Happy Anniversary Macy, we've come along way Baby.
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