From Hello to Goodbye

The add in the magazine continued to draw my attention, month after month.  Each month I would dismiss it...until I couldn't anymore.  I acted...pages and pages of paperwork...appointments and tests followed.

It was a fall afternoon as I was walking across campus, just before my 44th birthday.  The wind was blowing, and the colors were popping, oranges, yellows and reds.

"Your pregnant! " she squealed!.  "I wish I was there to hug you and kiss you and squeeze you right now!". The excitement in her voice was contagious..  My heart jumped...I was thrilled....we actually did it, I am pregnant.

The ultrasound tech announced," there are two embryos!"...Twins...wow...

9 months, growing belly, swollen feet, saltines, breathlessness.  The gift of life to a couple who could not do it on thier own.

People would ask  "Isn't it going to be hard to give them up?"

I would say. "Of course not, they are not mine.  I am just the oven doing the baking...a temporary apartment"

Empty space inside, broken heart, crying spells...the sadness hung on my heart, like a lonely and empty swing that was waiting patiently for a child.

I couldn't get it.  How could my birth mother have done it? Given me away like that...or is that just it? Was I given life, so thar I could give life in return?