Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: RELATIVES (02/15/18)
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TITLE: THE PINK TIE THAT BINDS | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lynne Eliason
02/21/18 -
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Her childhood home was selling. It made her heart ache, but Lyda’s involved content life was with her husband and children now. She’d grown up happy in this house. There were lots of family gatherings with relatives galore at this house, always love and laughter. She was raised to be a confident Christian woman. Her birthright now as an only child was to tackle disposing of the house and heirlooms, but to keep the memories. She’d do right by her upbringing.
Mama’s last words were, “In the small cedar chest, read the letter tied with the pink ribbon. You are my heart baby, always.” Lyda was curious and resolved to follow Mama’s wishes. It wasn’t easy to find that cedar box. It rested in the bottom of Grandma Sassie’s leather trunk, with some handstitched baby dresses on top. Lyda carefully untied that pink ribbon on the letter and smoothed out what seemed to be a formal document. It proclaimed an “Order of Adoption.” She read it several times and her tears fell on the paper. She was adopted and had never known. Born on the day she’d always been told was her birthday, but born to someone other than Mama. Her birth mother was actually her Aunt Mary, the one relative she had never met. In that moment, Lyda felt as though her whole life hadn't really happened.
“You are my heart baby, always.” Those words kept coming back to her. She didn’t doubt her mother’s love. But she did doubt her own identity. Why was she given up from her aunt to her mother? Aunt Mary’s life had always kind of been a mystery. She had settled in Canada somewhere and just never seemed to “come home.” Lyda struggled to even validate Aunt Mary’s existence.
She knew she must find her birth mother. Her prayer was for God to open that door. She questioned her other relatives. No one could tell her much about Aunt Mary, only that she had taken off years ago after an argument with Grandpa Tate and had never returned home. After hours of searching records, Lyda learned Mary was still alive in Quebec. She sent a letter seeking answers.
The response from Quebec came quickly. Lyda almost didn’t open it. She hadn’t really even expected a reply. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Maybe she wanted to be who she had always thought she was, her mother’s “heart baby.” Opening it with shaky hands, Lyda whispered, “God lead me beside still waters.” A piece of the same pink ribbon that had tied the adoption document fell in her lap. The handwritten message was short, but sincere:
“On the day I learned I was going to have a baby, I fell in love with you instantly. But my father, your Grandpa Tate, didn’t allow love in those circumstances and fortified that with a shotgun. Your father, Ian, was a good God-fearing man, but he feared my father more and he left. Your Grandma Sassie had distant relatives in Canada and arranged for me to go there. She loved you already, too. When you were born, she took you to my sister, your mama, who couldn’t have babies. This would be a blessing. She would have a baby to nourish and you would still grow up with the same family you were born into. Your mama kept in touch, but it was agreed to keep this secret until she felt you needed to know. I never saw your father again. I didn’t marry, but am fulfilled by running a Christian orphanage, something it seemed God had planned for me. I have always loved you and knew you had the best family a girl could ever want. Bless you, my sweet heart baby.”
Lyda smiled. She was still related to the family she had built memories with. The pink ribbon said it all . . . she was a shared heart baby, and God knew all along.
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