The Braid

When one could not, the other one could

When one would not, the other one would

When one did not, the other one did.

When one mother gave up her child, the other one took her in

When one mother gave up this earth, the other one returned.

Locked together forever,

two mothers

who ever knew each other

not their names or their faces

not their backgrounds or their dreams

for the daughter they shared.

The story books

from the 60s are wrong.

The little house that found happiness

didn't choose anything or anyone.

The little family in the little house

that found happiness

had to find pain, tragedy and despair first,

through the loss of another daughter,

the one who never had a chance

at one mother, let alone two.

The family didn't choose me,

but my souls,

looking down at what was in store

chose Mom.

I chose her,

not the other way around.

I was never her gift;

she was mine.

The stories from the Baby Snatch Era

of the 1960s sought to make

the unnatural seem natural.

Sought to make it seem

like a wonderful choice,

yet those of us

who are in the know

know that no one opts

for this arrangement first.

No one chooses social engineering

to make a family.

Why, most families just happen,

the quick arrival of offspring

a little too soon,

causing eyebrows to raise,

but only for a moment,

until the baby steals everyone's heart,

and when conception happened

becomes less important than it did happen.

It's no one's first choice to be infertile.

It's no one's first choice to lose

an infant daughter overseas

It's no one's first choice to go

to a far away city to deliver alone

It's no one's first choice

to leave a baby behind,

to leave it for others,

to turn and walk away

and hope for the best.

It's no one's first choice

to be the second choice,

the daughter they had after

the daughter they didn't have.

My mother recently passed,

shockingly unexpectedly,

44 years after I met her.

My other mother recently surfaced,

13 years after I found her,

11 years after I met her

Icy, cool, paralyzed

with fear and secrets.

Grown women are not secrets.

My mother lost a baby,

and raised a baby

into a grown woman.

My other mother lost a baby,

and in its place

returned a grown woman

Strangely familiar, a familiar stranger,

entirely her,

entirely him,

and entirely someone else.

My mother passed, and my mother returned.

My mother was never pregnant with me.

I have an opportunity to share my mother with my mother.

Say that out loud and have it be true; I dare you.