Web Hosting by Netfirms | Free Domain Names by Netfirms

The Mother Who Matters

    I have eyes that are said to be "cow brown," and my long blond hair is my best feature. My nose is a little too big; my face is oval shaped. I am not overweight, but I'm not skinny either. The only way to describe my height is "vertically challenged."
   

    I'm relatively happy with my appearance, but where did I get it? Do I share the same features as some unknown stranger? Oftentimes, while walking down the street, I try to pick out that stranger, imagining that one of the women I pass could possibly be my biological other.
   

    I never met my birth mother. I was adopted the moment I was born, and I was taken into a wonderful family. For a long time I wondered what life would be like with my birth other. Would I still be the same? Where would I live? Would I be happier? Who would my friends be?

    I was never dissatisfied with my life; I just never stopped wondering what it would be like to have been raised by my biological mother. And then one day, I was baby-sitting with a friend, and I came across a poem on the nursery wall. It compared adoption to a seed that has planted by one person and then taken care of by another. The second person had watered the seed and made it grow to be tall and beautiful. I found that it compared perfectly to my situation.

    I realized that my mom had made me who I am today, no matter what either of us looks like. And I started to notice that we had the same silly personality, the same outlook on life, and the same way of treating people, along with some other things. She curled my hair for my first dance. She was there for my first heartbreak. She held my hand every time I got a shot at the doctors. She'd been smiling in the crowd for my first school play. She'd been there for everything that ever mattered, and what could compare to that? She's my mom.

    Sometimes when we're out somewhere, people comment on how much we look alike, and we turn to each other and laugh, forgetting until that moment that it wasn't she who carried me in her womb for nine months.

    Though I may not know why I look the way I do, I know why I am who I am. The mom I have now is the best one I ever could have hoped for, not only because she holds a tremendous amount of unconditional love, but because she has shaped who I am today, my qualities and characteristics. She is the one who made be beautiful!

by Kristy White
Reprinted by permission of Kristy White (c) 2000, from Chicken
Soup for the Teenage Soul III by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor
Hansen and Kimberly Kirberger.

I put this story here to for my lil sister, Eunice Imanuela. Keep on growin' sis, we all love you! No matter where you came from...

back