Friday's Child Redux

I love to read, and I belong to a couple of local book groups. I love them because I end up reading books I probably wouldn’t have chosen on my own. The book we read for this month’s meeting was definitely one that was not on my radar, but I enjoyed it and it inspired a lively discussion.

The book was “The Names,” by Florence Knapp. The premise of the book is that a woman in an abusive marriage has to register her newborn’s name, and what happens when she chooses each of the 3 names she considers— 3 different outcomes, based on her decision. I highly recommend it.

Our group discussion revolved around several topics, but the one I found most intriguing was a theme I’ve thought a lot about, and have written about before. (The Life I’m Not Living). We talked a lot about the names we’re given and how, in some ways, they shape the way people relate to us, and so change the course of our lives to some extent. I would expand that to all of the decisions in our lives.

Some are really big, some really small. I think of them as doors—rows of doors for each choice—when you choose one, all of the others close immediately. You make your decision, open the door, walk through, and encounter whatever path your choice has put you on. You don’t know what’s behind the door until you open it. There is no way to know what was behind the other doors.

I was put up for adoption immediately after birth, and placed in foster care. My name was Sandra, and I didn’t have a family. I didn’t belong anywhere yet. I was in limbo for 3 weeks, The choices surrounding my birth and adoption were not choices I made, of course; they were made for me by lots of other people, most of whom I’ve never met.

My birthparents made the choice to relinquish me. My adoptive parents made the choice to adopt. I was chosen from a bunch of babies in cribs in a room in an adoption agency. My mother said she chose me because of my eyes. My name was put on a new birth certificate—Wendi—and, just like that, Sandra was gone. That life was over and a new one began.

What if my mother had picked another baby? What if my birthmother had decided to keep me? What if… I’ll never know. All of the decisions we make in our lives are not of that magnitude, of course, but there are a few like that in every life. Some decisions set us on a new path, whether we meant for that to happen, or not.

Even the small decisions, like deciding to take an alternate route one day could change everything, for better or worse. I think sometimes about a young couple I read about several years ago who followed their GPS down a road they had never taken before on the way home from a trip, They got stuck in the snow on what turned out to be a rarely travelled two-track,. They couldn’t get a cell signal, and ultimately they starved/froze to death.

Or the women who was walking the Appalachian Trail and stepped off to go to the bathroom, without marking her trail because she was sure she would remember how to get back to the trail. She didn’t, and she died in her tent.

I can think of at least two times in my life that I made a decision that could have cost me my life, but that didn’t. I was given a reprieve. I was lucky, and I didn’t push my luck in those ways ever again.

As a young woman, I made the decision to get involved with a man who ultimately changed the course of my life by being mentally abusive. I felt lucky to survive that situation. I never really made the actual choice to be alone after that experience, but I kept making the choice not to trust anyone that completely, or be that vulnerable, ever again, and that has determined my path. I did consciously, emphatically make the choice not to have children at a very young age, and that has impacted my life in many ways, also.

I made a decision to start a business, and 5 years later I made a decision to close the business and take a job, which I had for the next 24 years. Both decisions changed my life dramatically. I bought a house, and less than 4 years later my father died, and I became the caregiver for my mother, and moved in with her.

Few decisions are all good or all bad. Lots of doors opening and closing all through my life, as in all lives. When I look back, I feel that I have been on the right path for me–that I always chose the right door, even if I didn’t think so at the time. I’ve learned from the bad decisions, and benefitted from the good ones. I’ve survived, and that’s what seems important to me. The stupid decisions didn’t cost me my life, and the others were true to my sense of who I am and who I want to be.

My “faint tracings” in this life will not be remembered, or ever matter very much to anyone but me. I’m fine with that. For the most part I have lived in a way that was true to my soul, and I have no regrets. I no longer care what anyone thinks of me or my choices. I’m grateful for my life and I think I’ve been exactly where and who I needed to be throughout.

Knowing that makes me happy, and I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Photo by Filip Kominik on Unsplash