Chapter 14 - The Letter With My Son’s Handwriting
Five weeks after I sent my letter, an envelope arrived.
Not an email.
An actual envelope.
The adoption agency’s address was printed in the corner.
My name was handwritten across the front.
The writing belonged to a child.
I sat at the kitchen table and stared at it for almost ten minutes.
Daniel came home and found me still holding it.
“Is that from him?”
“I think so.”
“Want me to open it?”
“No.”
“Want me to leave?”
“No.”
So he sat beside me.
Emma played on a blanket near our feet.
I opened the envelope.
One page.
Blue ink.
Owen wrote that he liked baseball, science and scary movies his mom thought were too old for him.
He hated mushrooms.
He played catcher.
He had broken his wrist falling off a bike when he was nine.
Ordinary details.
I cried harder at those than I had at anything else.
Then came the part I feared.
He wrote:
Mom and Dad told me you thought they stopped writing. They told me they thought you wanted them to stop. I don’t really understand how both things can be true.
I covered my mouth.
Neither did he.
Not yet.
His next sentence hurt differently.
I used to wonder if you ever remembered my birthday.
I had written to him on every birthday until he turned seven.
Those letters had sat in someone else’s box.
Daniel rubbed my back.
I kept reading.
I’m not mad at you because I don’t know you enough to be mad at you. I don’t know if I’m ready to meet you either. But I would like another letter.
That was all.
No dramatic reunion.
No instant “Mom.”
No miracle.
Just permission for one more letter.
It was more than I had expected.
At the bottom, Owen had added a final question.
Do I have any brothers or sisters?
I looked toward Emma.
For twelve years, I had feared the day my two children might somehow exist in the same story.
May you like
Now Owen was asking me to connect them.
And this time, nobody else would write the answer for me.
