Other Mother

I don't think I've ever written about Sarah Morgan's birth mother.  This weekend the group of couples with which we traveled to China are meeting for a 6 year reunion in Goodlettsville.  They will be coming from all around the country.  Sarah Morgan's crib mate  is coming from Dallas with her parents.  I have a love for Sarah Morgan's birth mother but also a great detachment.  I feel no anger toward her and I feel a vague love for her that is very hard to describe.  It is tinged with feelings that don't accompany any other love I feel.  In other words I feel differently about her than any other person in my life.  She is there in my life but undefined.  I think of her in the most routine of time not on Mother's Day or Chinese New Year or near Sarah Morgan's birth date.   I sometimes scan Sarah Morgan's face, her features, the speech patterns, her tendencies, her body parts-fingers and toes and wonder the features given by the other Mother.  I often tell Sarah Morgan I can't believe God put that much cute on one person-then I start at her toes and go up saying-toes-yes, cute, ankles, heels, shin-yes, all cute,  until she giggles and we hug.  Her other Mother must be beautiful.  I don't feel the same about her Father or the family-why do I put all the positives of Sarah Morgan on her Mother?  She could have been selfish, or mean, or unfeeling but I won't let her be.  I think it was how I saw women in China-at the mercy of-everything-family, men, economics, class, poverty, alienation, history, government, law, tradition.  Sarah Morgan's records only say that she was a newborn when found by a caretaker at the city gate.  They named the day they found her as her birth date.  That would mean that her other Mother had to have given birth to her and then the same day get the baby to the gate.  Could she have done this by herself?  Would she have been able?  Did someone make her do it?  Was it the plan?  Did someone else take the baby for her, from her?  It is against the law to abandon in China, of course it is against the plan of the government to have too many children-the paradox of China-believe me-not the only one.  The other Mother probably has or will have other children.  Sarah Morgan probably has siblings.  They could be anywhere in the world or in her home town or in the busy cities where families send their young to work in the urban factories that churn out our blue jeans and Christmas decorations.  Sarah Morgan would not have had enough status to even be sent to work in one of the live-in factories.  What would she have done?  I think of the female beggars who grabbed our suitcases at the Beijing airport and tried to run with them to our van to gather a few cents from us for their efforts and who had to be roughly moved away by our guide and made to let go of the luggage.  We had been only on Chinese soil a few minutes then. Sarah Morgan is a survivor, She would have made it but at what cost?  Sarah Morgan moves like my Mother and sometimes when she jokes she looks like my aunt, so I must move and look that way and not realize it.  She loves to collect rocks and build things-a very my Father's family-like thing to do.  It is like a university experiment about environment vs heredity played out each day within Sarah Morgan.  No, I don't have the answer.  It is so strange though that I know we, Jon, Sarah Morgan and I were meant to be together.  I don't know how but I KNOW it.  Why are our parents gone when she needs them so much in her life? Why this timing?  I don't know.  Do I worry about how old we will be and how young she will be?  Yes, even though you would think that after everything I would trust God to deal with that.  On Friday I will be surrounded with flowing blue black hair and smiles, and girl giggles and I will meet again the only people to have shared the same experience we did.  Who were there to hear the screams as they placed Sarah Morgan in our arms.  The bus rides, the plane trips, the food, the smells, the fear, the heat, the laughter, the awe, the miracle.  I'm sure each of us will carry some thought of the other Mothers with us.  As the world grows smaller I may one day see another face that is my daughter's and find that she is much like me.

This is a recent self-portrait completed by Sarah Morgan for her guidance class.  When she brought it home I thought , wow, that looks so much like the image of the "Other Mother" I had made.