By SQuire Rushnell
The popular appeal of Facebook and Twitter underscores our innate desire to remain connected. There’s a comfort in reconnecting with old friends and distant family. Yet some of us desire to connect with family we never had, always wanted, and wondered about.
Danella Hoff, dressed in a starch-white nurses uniform, looked intently at the crying young woman. Through tears, she pleaded, “Can I hold my baby for just a minute.” Danella knew hospital policy. St. Margaret’s manual says, if the mother is giving the baby up for adoption, avoid bonding. But this young girl was breaking her heart. She decided to break the rules. She watched as the mother tenderly placed her lips on the forehead of the baby, quietly saying, “I’ll love you forever.” Then before another torrent of tears she handed the child back to Danella. This was a scene, in her nursing career, she’d never forget.
Twenty years later Danella had experienced her own worry as a mother. And when her daughter Amanda came home to announce, ”This is the man I’m going to marry, Mom”, Danella reserved judgment. “What’s his name?"
“Chad.”
“All right, when do I meet him.”
“Tomorrow” said Amanda, gaily.
As Danella came into the living room, her mother’s antenna went up. The young man was nervous but also had a chip on his shoulder. Danella asked a few questions about where he grew up. “I was born here in Montgomery, Jackson Hospital. But my mother gave me a away the night I was born.” Chad nearly spit the words out. That’s it, thought Danella. This kid is carrying around resentment for his birth mother. The image reentered her mind from years before, when she witnessed the gut-wrenching decision by a young girl to give up her baby, for the sake of the baby.
“Wait just a minute Chad, let me tell you a story. "You should know the love and sacrifice a mother feels when she gives up a baby for adoption.” But as she began telling the story, looking deeply into Chad’s now attentive, compassionate eyes, she began to wonder, Could this be? No.
“Are you sure you were born in Jackson Hospital?” “Yes.” She shrugged.
After they were married, Amanda started thinking that Chad should try to find out about his birth parents. He was now 21 and could legally request the information from the state. Danella was sitting at the kitchen table the day Chad sat down with Amanda to open the envelop containing his records. Chat read his mother’s name and that he was born, not at Jackson but at St Margaret’s hospital. He looked up at Danella whose eyes were already filling with tears. “I held you as a baby,” she said to Chad, “and I want you to know that nobody ever loved you more than your mother did.” Wow, some godwinks can be tearjerkers.
After a long search Chad Brooks was reunited with his birth parents, found living on a military base in Alaska.
When you reconnect with loved ones and friends, godwinks are like the invisible threads that have held you together all along. Suddenly they become visible. And give you feelings of hope. I’m SQuire Rushnell, good wishes and godwinks.
