Living Happily Ever After
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Blog Articles

Don’t Leave Home Without Them

Date: May 10, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn’t take them along.” (Margaret Culken Banning)

When I got my job, I was a single mother. With an ex-husband in prison and my parents dead, it meant that when I wasn’t with my children, they were basically “orphans.” Thankfully, my company could not have been more understanding of that. I told them up front I couldn’t travel due to my situation and they hired me anyway, allowed me significant flexibility in my work schedule (they still do) and although many employees traveled on the company’s behalf every quarter, they never once asked me to, made me feel guilty because I didn’t travel or forced me to travel. (I work for an amazing company, by the way.)

After my marriage, they asked if I could travel to a quarterly event. My husband stayed home with the kids, I made the trip but as all mothers know, especially those who work full-time, you frequently have your children in mind. Nothing reminded me of that more than a recent business trip I made to Anaheim, Calif. for my company’s annual Global Convention.

I was gone five days. As I departed my husband commented, “Who would have imagined that, of the two of us, YOU would have the longest business trips!” True. I certainly never imagined I’d ever have a business trip much less longer ones than those of my husband.

And, wouldn’t you know, my business trip overlapped with a significant event—you guessed it—my daughter’s prom! (Talk about Proma Drama continued! If my daughter were writing this, I’m sure she’d clarify that she is also my “only” daughter. Yes, I’m a loser working mother! Out of town the weekend of my daughter’s Junior Prom!) I had no choice. But it didn’t stop my daughter from noting, “Do you realize you’ve been out of town for every single school dance I’ve had?” (Can you sense the working mother guilt oozing from me? Trust me, it is!)

But I did what I could. Despite everything I had going on at my event (including working from early morning to late at night each day with hardly time to eat) I did everything I could in advance of the big event: I helped her find the perfect dress, I paid for it, I arranged for jewelry to match her dress, I asked my sister-in-law to do my daughter’s hair (turns out, it was quite a party with my daughter and her cousin going to prom the same night resulting in an assembly line of hair and make-up artistry performed by nieces and my sister-in-law, a fun memory for all; everyone but me, that is, as I was out of town!)

I even remembered to ask my son for pictures of my daughter and her date, to text them to me so I could experience as much of the event as possible. So there I sat in my hotel room after midnight, knowing I had to wake up in five short hours, looking at pictures of my daughter heading to her prom. And I realized, again, and not for the first time, that truly, you never do quite leave your children at home, even when you don’t take them with you.

Meanwhile, it wasn’t prom, but I was having a few adventures of my own.

“My travels led me to where I am today. Sometimes these steps have felt painful, difficult, but led me to greater happiness and opportunities.” (Diana Ross)

No Refunds, No Exchanges, No Returns

Date: April 4, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“The good Lord gave me a brain that works so fast that in one moment I can worry as much as it would take others a whole year to achieve.” (Unknown)

As I drove to get a marriage license, I didn’t plan to think. But there I was, in the car, driving down the highway…it’s kind of where most of my thinking has taken place since entering my unexpected life. I just can’t seem to help myself. And wouldn’t you know it? I had some unexpected thoughts. They came, unbidden, to my mind.

First I thought, “This is kind of weird. I am driving to the very office I drove to the last time I married.” Try as I might, as focused as I attempt to be on the future and moving forward, I couldn’t help but reflect on the past experience and everything I remember about it. I remembered what I was wearing that day. I recalled how relieved I was I didn’t have to get poked with any needles (Utah doesn’t require blood tests; one of my roommates, who got married in California, said she had to get a blood test to get a marriage license and in the 1980s, that didn’t thrill me–I still had an aversion to needles back then!) I remembered how hot it was (I married in August the last time.) I recalled how nervous I was about the whole  marriage thing back then. And I remembered that I’d thought I was way too young to get married (I completed my fourth year of college, turned 22 and got married the same month–my parents had married when they were 25; one set of grandparents had married when they were 25; and the other set of grandparents had gotten married when they were in their 30s. So I was a lot younger than my family members had been.)

And then as I drove, I looked at the snow covered mountains, remembered how cold it was outside, and thought, “Everything is different this time. Last time it was hot. This time it is cold. Last time I was nervous. This time I’m not. Last time I was so young, this time I’m not. I have so much life experience behind me now, too. This is a whole different experience. Let’s not think about the past, Andrea, let’s keep pressing forward.”

To save myself from my thoughts, I turned the radio on. I never listen to the radio. But I couldn’t believe what I heard.

First up? A commercial. For…DIVORCE INSURANCE! I didn’t even know there was such a thing, but there I was, heading to get a marriage license, listening to everything I never wanted to know about divorce insurance and how it can help you when wedlock goes awry. The commercial even touted that divorce insurance will pay all of your attorney fees AND the deposit on a new place to live when you’re newly single again!

What are the odds I’d hear a commercial for that on the way to doing what I was going to do? So despite my best efforts, I arrived at my destination, thanks to my thoughts and the commercials I heard, a little…unsettled. But least it didn’t show. Or so I thought.

However, you have to love #5. He took one look at me as I stepped out of my car to greet him and asked me if I was ok. It freaks me out how in tune he is with what I think and feel without me ever having to say a thing. I told him I was fine. He searched my eyes and asked again, “Are you sure?” I assured him I was fine (and attempted to keep breathing and not think about what I was doing) as we rode the elevator up to the third floor.

But instead, I thought, “Am I REALLY doing this? Is this really real? I sure hope I know what I’m doing. Why didn’t I worry about all of this before–the previous 9 months?” Suddenly, I was scared. I considered turning. And running. Yet then I’d look over at #5 and realize I couldn’t do that. I was looking at the only man who has ever made me throw up (and more than once!) I was looking at the only man I’d ever thought I couldn’t live without. And my children loved him, too.

We stepped out of the elevator and walked into the office to obtain a marriage license.

And there it was.

Staring me in the face.

A lovely sign, prominently displayed, and the first thing you see when you walk into the office: “No refunds. No exchanges. No warranties.”

That’s when I  knew I had to get out of there. Maybe the state of Utah finds their sign funny, or maybe it is simply a way to legally protect themselves from frivilous lawsuits, but I wasn’t laughing. I was getting more and more nervous, bordering on terrified, and struggling to breathe.

“I have the right to breathe; everything else is a bonus.” (Unknown)

Weather

Date: December 30, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

I was born in a land of palm trees (California) in the summertime and I’ve always loved warmth. Count me absolutely willing to live in a climate that doesn’t snow, yet I have lived most of my life in climates that snow. (My mom loved the change of seasons, so our family eventually settled in Colorado; my first husband hated hot weather and loved autumn so I lived in Colorado as an adult, too.) I guess you don’t always get to choose the environment you have the opportunity to bloom in.

Lately I’ve experienced not just cold, but some very unusual winter weather. Sure, Utah’s had snow, but I’ve been amazed at the rain! SO MUCH rain. The other day I walked out my front door to a giant puddle of slush (literally) that was my front yard. Today everything is icy—the trunk of my car is frozen shut, I can scrape ice off the inside of my car windows and the ground is icy underneath fresh snow. You never know what you’re going to get for weather in the Rocky Mountains.

Kind of like life.

“Weather is a great metaphor for life. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and there’s nothing much you can do about it but carry an umbrella.” (Terri Guillemets) The umbrella of optimism and a positive attitude, to be exact.

I’ve learned for myself that every life, every difficulty, every type of “weather,” has it’s own unique opportunities.

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” (John Ruskin)

It’s all in how you choose to look at it. And it’s about what you do with it—what you choose to create out of the challenges you’re blessed to weather in your unexpected life.

“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.” (Mark Twain)

An Impulse

Date: August 5, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

In December of 2009, I was checking my email before heading to the office when I had an unexpected thought.

“You should find out your medical history. As the sole parent and support of your four children, you need to know all you can to make sure you’re here for your children as long as you can be. How irresponsible of you if there is something you should know that might help you (or save your life) and you don’t bother to at least TRY to discover it!”

I had a brief debate with myself.

I had been adopted as an infant; blessed with wonderful parents and an amazing family. My childhood was fairy tale-esque…until my dad died unexpectedly in a plane crash when I was a teenager, and the family I grew up in entered its unexpected life. It was another riches to rags story, in a way, but it prepared me better than I could have imagined for real life, especially for the the huge, terrible situation I would face as an adult.

My debate: was it right to disrupt someone else’s life just for a chance at obtaining a medical history for me?

But because if anything happens to me my four children will be orphaned until their other parent is released from his incarceration, I pushed the question of right or wrong out of my mind. I owed it to my children to at least try to find something out.

But how?

Although I was adopted in the 1960s, and adoptions were very private and secretive back then, I had an unusual situtation. Mine was private. And thanks to my mom, I had more information than most adopted children at the time.

My parents had been married nearly five years and were unable to have children. They had checked into adoption and even had the chance to adopt a baby boy prior to my birth, but when they went to see the baby my mom didn’t have a good feeling about it. She felt that baby wasn’t her baby. So she walked away from the opportunity to get the baby she had dreamed of.

In the meantime, my dad graduated from dental school at Marquette University in Wisconsin, moved to Phoenix, AZ, and opened a dental practice–in the course of three weeks. And then, unexpectedly, they got a phone call about me. Some friends of theirs from dental school had graduated ahead of them and moved to Southern California to practice dentistry. They became acquainted with an obstetrician, and at a dinner party, the doctor told them of a good, talented, beautiful woman who was placing a baby for adoption–and of his quest to find a good family for the baby. The doctor said he and his wife thought so highly of the woman that they’d considered taking the baby themselves, but in the end, decided they were too close to the situation.

My parents’ friends said, “We know someone to adopt that baby!” and put my parents in touch with the doctor. And within that same three week time period of major life changes, unexpectedly my parents were in the car driving to California to pick me up from the hospital. My mom said she walked into the hospital, heard a baby cry, and knew instantly it was her baby. She asked a nurse if it was her baby crying, and the nurse confirmed it. (I had just been given my PKU test.)

While waiting for my discharge, my mom asked the nurses everything she could about my birth mother. They told her the woman’s name, where she attended college, a general description of her appearance, and what they knew of her talents (that she was smart, athletic, and a dancer.) My mom committed it all to memory and I grew up knowing all of the information my mom had been able to uncover.

My parents took me home from the hospital when I was two days old–with a day at Disneyland before driving back to Arizona!

I grew up feeling very special because I had been adopted. In fact, I felt bad for children who hadn’t had that opportunity and privilege. I was happy, whole and complete. I had amazing parents and four siblings (all adopted after me). So although my mom always offered to help me find my birth mother if I had the need, I didn’t really feel the need for that. I had everything, and more, that I needed. I was happy. And grateful every day for adoption and the family I was blessed with.

As the only tall, blonde member of my family however, (everyone else, including my parents, is short and dark haired) if I had any unfulfilled desire relating to my adoption it was simply a curiosity about who, if anyone, I looked like. But seeing if I resembled another person on the planet wasn’t worth the risk of rejection OR disrupting someone else’s life to satisfy a question like that. So that’s as far as I ever went in the quest for a birth mother.

I looked so different from the rest of my immediate family, though, that in college when they came to visit me, a boy friend met them and said, “I bet you forgot to tell Andrea she’s adopted, didn’t you?” My mom replied, “No, I’m pretty sure I told her!” and he blushed like college men usually don’t–never dreaming I actually had been adopted. We all had a good laugh over that one!

Thanks to my mom’s detective skills at the hospital prior to taking me home, we had quite a bit of information about my birth mother. My mom discovered she and my parents had attended the same university in Utah, so one year, while visiting my dad’s younger sister in Salt Lake City, we took a peek at my aunt’s college yearbooks and found my birth mother. I then knew what she looked like.

Later, when I was married, I met a friend who was very curious about the whole process of adoption. She asked me about my story and, small world, found out her parents had gone to college with my birth mother! Her parents cut up their yearbooks and sent me every picture they had of my birth mother so not only had I seen what she looked like, I had pictures too.

The university produced an alumni directory listing names, addresses and brief bios of its graduates. Thanks to that, my mom and I knew my birth mother’s address too! NOT very typical of a private adoption situation that took place in the 1960s, for sure.

And then “suddenly” I felt the need to obtain my medical history for the sake of my children.

I decided that if I’d given a child up for adoption and if I wanted to be found (or was open to being found) I would put my name out there everywhere I could think of. Impulsively, I typed the name of my birth mother into Facebook. It was the only directory I knew of to begin the search. Up she popped. Full name, picture and everything. There was no mistaking it was her.

I wasn’t expecting it to be that easy or to happen that fast.

Now what?

What would you do?