Journey to a Family

By Rosina Buddin

My story starts with my younger daughter dropping a bombshell, meaning she has the biggest decision to make of her life so far. This arouses memories for me of 21 years earlier, in the mid 1980’s.

We had recently moved to Scotland intending to turn the big old dilapidated house we’d fallen for into a B&B and a home for the three or four children we hoped to have but one day the dream was shattered.

Without any of the benefits of modern technology, we had to try to rebuild it using yellow pages, numerous telephone calls, letters, networking and a journey almost half way across the world.

It also included experimental fertility treatment, unhelpful adoption agencies, a TV programme, offers of help from dubious South American lawyers, red tape, unknown immigration issues and a number of unexpected twists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Jan 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787192690

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Chapter One

Mummy, I have a problem!

‘Mum, what’s the worst thing I could do?’ I heard my twenty-one year old daughter asking me, as she wandered into my bedroom after me and fiddled with the nail scissors on my dressing table.

Without a moment’s hesitation, knowing that she had something she thought was bad news to announce, I replied, ‘Kill yourself’, safe in the knowledge that she hadn’t done that, so she could begin to relax and tell me what the problem was.

‘No, something else . . . ‘, she demanded, starting to pin back a strand of her lovely black hair, while critically regarding herself in the dressing table mirror.

‘Kill someone else,’ I added, being fairly sure that, even in her worst moods, she wouldn’t have actually done this.

‘No, tell me all the worst things you can think of,’ she said and this time her eyes met mine in the mirror, daring me to continue with my ‘defuse the situation’ game.

‘Crash your car,’ a vehement shake of the head this time, ‘damage somebody else’s car,’ another shake, letting the strand of hair fall back across her cheek, ‘lose your job,’ (her brother had done this just a few months previously), ‘take drugs, get pregnant, have an abortion . . .’

She stopped shaking her head.

‘What would you say if I did?’ she asked, turning away from the mirror and looking down at the floor.

I felt an icy hand clutching at my stomach; at what point had she stopped shaking her head?

‘That depends . . .’ I managed to say, although the voice didn’t seem to belong to me as, somewhere, in some part of my brain, I tried to work out which would be the worst scenario and whether there was any clue in her expression, which looked mainly troubled but just a little bit defiant.

There wasn’t.

I decided to get the worst over first. ‘You’re not taking drugs, are you?’ a decided shake, ‘You’ve had an abortion,’ another shake.

‘I thought you and Dave were taking precautions.’ I realised my voice had gone up to a squeak and took a deep breath.

‘We did . . . most times . . . and I had an appointment to get back onto the pill for this week . . . I cancelled it.’

At this point a tear spilled over and ran down her cheek and a wave of tenderness engulfed me to think that my baby was unhappy and troubled. Things like this didn’t happen, except in ‘True Movies’ and Danielle Steele novels, but they do and they were.

‘Dave wants me to have a termination,’ she announced baldly, ‘and it’s booked for tomorrow.’

‘Is that what you want?’ I asked gently, as I took her into my arms. The whole family knew that I didn’t really agree with abortion as a means of birth control, but suddenly, with my own daughter in my arms, I found that I just wanted whatever was going to make her the least unhappy. I thought I could sense though that I was being let in on the secret because she wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, then added almost in a whisper, ‘Dave says we’re finished if I don’t go through with it.’

A sudden rush of anger filled me. I liked Dave but he had worked for a few years before going to university and was only in his first year. He’d said he wanted to have children with her in a few years’ time and she’d been happy to wait until he had a job and felt secure. Now all those dreams had been swept away with the cruel reality that she felt she had to choose between her baby and her love.

It also turned out that the more pressing reason I had been confided in was that Dave had been supposed to be going with her to the hospital but had just texted to say that he couldn’t make it as he had an assignment to finish and she hadn’t felt able to face it alone.

One of my first thoughts was that, if he could issue this sort of ultimatum and then back out of helping her to see it through, he couldn’t be relied upon to be around in the future anyway, whether she had the termination or not, but I hesitated to say this to her because it was too important a decision for my thoughts and wishes to be taken into consideration.

I had a close and fairly open relationship with both my daughters but this one, being the ‘baby’ of the family, had always relied on my advice and usually followed it whereas her older sister would listen but quite often go her own way.

In less time than I would have thought possible, I knew that I had to try my hardest to ensure that this was one decision she took entirely by herself.

I felt that the first important thing to establish was whether the decision had to be taken by the following day, when the appointment was booked for, or whether she had time to think it over some more. Careful questioning elicited the response that she could have the termination at the clinic up to nine weeks so, since she had said that she was six or seven weeks now and obviously didn’t want to do it the next day, I suggested that she phone them straight away and remake the appointment for two weeks’ time when, if she decided to go ahead with it, Dave would have the chance to support her through it.

Up to this point, I had been ‘winging it,’ acting on instinct without really taking in the consequences of the situation but I’d succeeded in lifting the strained expression from my daughter’s face and that was enough for now. While she went away to phone the hospital, I had a chance to start sorting out my own thoughts. There were a dozen questions I wanted the answers to and I felt almost as confused as she had obviously been feeling for several days.

I castigated myself for not having noticed that she had been distressed, since this obviously hadn’t just happened today, but overwhelmingly I wanted her to be happy while knowing that, whatever her final decision was, there would be many problems to overcome.

***

Sitting on my bed, with my arm around my daughter once more, there was an air of unreality about the setting. The room looked as it always did, with its magnolia painted woodchip, its pink carpet, still with the coffee stain by my left foot, where Alex, my husband, had brought me an early morning cup of coffee a few days before. I’d meant to clean it but kept forgetting when I got downstairs and only remembering again when I came up to bed and saw it.

Then there was the old-fashioned dressing table that had belonged to my own mother, whose drawers had smelt of the L’Aimant perfume she always wore for several years after it had become mine. Its large oval mirror had so often reflected back her serene face and I could now see it reflecting my drooping daughter’s exotic loveliness and my own similar to my mother’s, but not at the moment very serene reflection.

The long velvet curtains, inherited from the previous owners of the house, were the same; as were the built-in wardrobes, maximising the storage space, yet still with suitcases, flight bags and an old sailing bag of Alex’s piled on top . . . but nothing would be the same again.

‘What will Dad say?’ she asked and I knew, without thinking about it because Alex and I were two different but complementary halves of a whole, that he would feel the hurt for his daughter, would be a little exasperated that she hadn’t been more careful, a little annoyed with Dave, who he also liked, but would stand squarely behind her and support her in any way he could.

Whatever her decision was, he would do this in the same way that he had combed the local newspapers and searched the internet for jobs that he thought our son could do, when Nick had argued with his manager and walked out of a good, steady job a few months ago.

‘I don’t know, darling, but he won’t be cross,’ I soothed, although this was hardly necessary, because Alex was so rarely angry with any of the children. They all respected him because he didn’t shout at them as (if they were to be believed) many of their friends’ dads did. He was more likely to blame himself if their behaviour fell short of what he would have liked to see and I knew a moment’s relief that I wouldn’t have to hesitate before telling him the news and would, in fact, find some relief from being able to share it.

She seemed calmer, having taken the decision to cancel the next morning’s appointment, and started telling me about her fear of losing Dave but she had already worked out for herself that this could happen with or without a termination. Her forehead wrinkled with the effort of putting her half-formed thoughts into words, she managed to express her hardly-recognised anger against him for his assumption that she would abort and that she could get it done without his physical support. She had obviously been thinking hard and, uncharacteristically for her, quite clear-headedly about the possibilities of any future relationship with him. With tears sliding down her softly-rounded cheeks, she put into words my own fears that she might have the termination in order to keep him and then lose him anyway.

Even more tellingly, she had worked out that she might resent the fact that he had forced the termination on her so much that she wouldn’t want to continue the relationship, the idea of which brought the tears even faster and, as I passed her tissue after tissue, I ached to be able to stop the pain that she was feeling, while recognising that one of these two possibilities could easily be the outcome.

Beside me, on the edge of my bed, pulling the most recent damp tissue to pieces between her fingers, she raised tear-drenched eyes, with the preposterously long lashes clumped together in damp spikes, and asked the question I’d been dreading.

‘What should I do?’

For reasons of my own, I knew that my gut instinct was never to kill a life that had been started but my gynaecological history mustn’t be allowed to interfere with this most important decision of Anna’s short life.

By this time, she’d told me about her first visit to the clinic in the big hospital twelve miles from where we lived and explained that the next morning’s appointment would have been for the first part of a clinical abortion and that she would then have had to go back two days later and stay in for the day until it was completed. Dave had taken her for the booking session and had been supposed to be going with her for the other two visits, but she had felt his reluctance to be there and wasn’t really surprised, although hurt, that he’d backed out of the rest of the procedure.

‘You have to decide for yourself, darling,’ I said, ‘but you know your dad and I are here for you, if you want to talk it through with us. ‘What did they say at the hospital, did you talk it over with someone there?’

I had never thought too much about abortion clinics, but I’d assumed that they always discussed the options with girls before actually doing anything, and suddenly I saw what might be the best way forward; an experienced counsellor, who could allow Anna to come to the right decision for herself; someone who didn’t have an axe to grind, but would listen sympathetically and help her to understand what she wanted.

‘No,’ she said, with the most forlorn look on her face.

‘But they must have talked to you about it . . . made sure it was what you wanted . . .’ my voice dried up.

‘No,’ she repeated. ‘Darling, they wouldn’t just have booked you in without some sort of talk beforehand . . .’

She shook her head and the tears started to flow again.

‘They did . . . we only saw the doctor for a few minutes after my name was called and I had the scan. They made the appointments and gave me a card with the telephone number on to call if I couldn’t get the time off work. They said it was important to let them know straight away so someone else could have the slot. . .’

For the second time, I felt a wave of anger. This time against a system that could treat the ending of a potential human life with so little humanity.

‘There must be some sort of counselling,’ I insisted. ‘Perhaps they didn’t think you needed it, but you do, so we’ll have to organise it.’

I suddenly realised that my anger was making me take charge of the situation in a way that might not reflect my daughter’s wishes. ‘That’s if you think it would help . . .’ I added in a milder tone.

She’d stopped crying again and nodded.

‘You’re sure?’ I checked.

‘Yes . . . I just didn’t feel ready to do it tomorrow, but if I can talk it over with someone . . . and if Dave can come with me . . . I might . . .’ she trailed off and the tears started again.

‘OK, if it’s what you want, I’ll make an appointment for you with the doctor tomorrow and she’ll be able to refer you to a counsellor,’ I said, and, taking her into my arms again and smoothing the hair back from her brow, added, ‘Don’t worry, darling, we’ll sort it out somehow . . . and it’s not the worst thing that could happen.’

‘You do still love me, don’t you?’ she raised her tear-stained face to me, not really in enquiry, as she knew the answer.

‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘And Dad, will he . . .?’

‘Of course.’

Chapter Two

Counselling surprises

Sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, I looked around at the posters on the wall, telling you not to smoke, not to drink, not to have unprotected sex, with hideously suggestive silhouettes of people sprawled on the ground, discarded syringes, police cars and ambulances.

As if to counteract all these prohibitions and lighten the atmosphere there were also copies of children’s paintings, their brightly daubed colours and childish writing warning of childhood dangers: ‘Don’t walk out behind parked cars!’, ‘Don’t touch hot things!’ and I thought back to the days when the latter were all I had to worry about with my children.

Although I had made this appointment with the doctor, I had also trawled the internet for counselling services but was hoping that the doctor would have all the information to hand since all the services I’d found seemed to be slanted strongly either towards abortion or equally strongly against it, depending on who was funding them. I didn’t feel this would be helpful to Anna, who I knew could quite easily be persuaded by a stronger will. I wanted her to be allowed to make her own choice, having been shown the disadvantages and possible benefits of both options.

The intercom system buzzed and summoned somebody else into the doctor’s surgery. Along with half the people in the waiting room, I consulted my watch, although I already knew that the doctors, as usual, were running late. My gaze fell on the receptionists, those recipients at second hand of all our health worries and medications and I wondered whether one of them had known of my daughter’s pregnancy before me. Then I remembered that she hadn’t come to the family doctor, she’d gone to the clinic at the hospital so it was those nameless, faceless women who’d heard about it first. Somehow that felt easier to live with.

I looked at Anna, sitting beside me, leafing through a months-out-of-date copy of a teen magazine and knew it was a pretence from the fact that she wasn’t actually reading anything. I unobtrusively slipped my hand into hers and stroked the back of her hand with my thumb. She glanced up at me and gave a quick, slightly embarrassed grin, but she didn’t take her hand away.

I looked around again, still holding onto her hand, and saw a woman who was probably in her eighties escorted into the room by another woman, in her late-fifties. There was enough resemblance between them to show that this was a mother and daughter. The younger woman’s rather strident voice addressed the receptionist.

‘Mrs Baxter to see Dr Cox about her prolapse,’ she said and I wondered if mine and Anna’s roles would be reversed one day and it would be her taking me to the doctors’. I hoped if so that she would speak a little more quietly or show a little more reticence in announcing my medical problems to the whole room. However, Mrs Baxter didn’t seem to mind and was more preoccupied in finding a seat and somewhere to put her walking stick down while she waited.

The daughter solved both these problems by asking someone else if they’d mind moving up a seat, so that, as she loudly announced, she could, ‘. .