13th March 2016
My darling GBG
Twenty-two years ago today, your dad and I shared our first kiss. I know I said I'd never tie the knot, but when he proposed to me on our ten-year 'going out' anniversary, I said yes. And on 11th June 2015, we celebrated our first decade of marriage.
I know I also said I never wanted children, but when I accidentally fell pregnant with you at the age of thirty-six, I was at a completely different place in my life, and the prospect of parenthood turned out to be a lot less daunting than it had been twenty years prior.
Although I had been toying with the idea of writing an adoption memoir for many years, it was only after I became a mom myself that I developed the kind of empathy needed to do justice to such an emotionally complex story. So thank you for that gift!
I hope this book clarifies for you, and your own family one day, exactly who's who in our big, complicated family zoo. Like Terry Pratchett, who died exactly a year ago yesterday, wrote in one of his award-winning Discworld novels: 'If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going.'
I also want you to know there is no one grandparent or aunt or uncle or cousin who is any more or less of a relative to you than another. We are all family, inextricably bound, by blood ties or otherwise.
It blows my mind that this journey of motherhood, this whirlwind ride I've been on for the past five years, is something I so very nearly missed out on. You truly are the best thing that ever happened to me. I adore you with all my heart, and I cannot wait to see what our future holds.
Yours forever
Mom
YOU ARE READING
Umbilicus: An autobiographical novel
General FictionCharlotte van Katwijk guards herself like a secret. Kids are cruel, and she knows if they find out she's adopted, she'll be a bully's easy target. When they are fourteen, Charlotte's best friend's mom commits suicide. It triggers in Charlotte a se...
