Part I: How she found out

In later posts, I'll fill you in on "the showdown", but for now I'll skip to the part that I know you're most interested in: how and when she was actually told.

We were in WalMart and Andrea and I, who had been talking privately (ie, the showdown) while Mom occupied Amanda and her younger brother, Abel, called them back over. Amanda (as she had been saying all day) said, "I know what you guys are talking about. That I'm adopted."

"And?" asked Andrea. (Our conversation had included the fact that Andrea didn't know exactly how much of the truth Amanda knew or suspected, so I "encouraged" her to start by finding out what Amanda knew.)

"And what?" Amanda asked, looking genuinely confused.

"Who do you think your birthparents are?" Andrea asked.

"I don't know," said Amanda. "And I don't care."

Now, if Andrea had stopped right there and just left it at that--if she had simply said, "Yes, Amanda, you are adopted," I would have understood. As I've said, I just want what's best for AMANDA. Finding out that you're adopted--even if it's something you've suspected all along--is a lot to take in on its own. So if Amanda genuinely didn't feel the need to know about her birth family yet, then fine.

However, SOMEONE--I thought it was Andrea, but later on Mom said that maybe it WAS her (which clearly would be bad and may screw us, because it was supposed to be ANDREA'S job to tell her, Mother, and not ours. That's overstepping our boundaries and is the exact kind of justification they could use in the future now for stopping the visits...but I digress)--said, "What if it's someone you know?"

I don't remember exactly what Amanda said or did at this point, because this is when I got that "oh shit, this might actually happen RIGHT NOW," and I was just so frozen and panicked and shocked that all I could do was just stare at the floor with a somewhat uneasy smile on my face (yes, this is what I've wanted for the last 13 years, but now that it was happening I was suddenly terrified of Amanda's reaction. Would she be mad? Upset? Sad? Disappointed?).

All I remember next is Andrea pointing at me and saying, "Look next to you, Amanda." This is when I did my dorky Miss Birthmother USA-type wave.

Amanda laughed, because she thought it was a joke. Then she saw that Mom, of course, was crying.

Then she said, "Wait, how do you spell your name?" I was like, WHAT? That was not exactly the question I was expecting at that point.

"Jennifer?" I asked.

"No, Jenny," she said. I spelled it for her and she said, "Oh, okay. Because once I found a card to my mom asking her to take care of 'someone I love very much,' but it was from a Jenni with an i."

"That's how I used to spell my name when I was younger," I said quietly.

"Shut UP," she said.

That's when Mom says HER thing that I can't tell you about yet because I have to tell you the backstory on it first, but needless to say I could tell that it didn't make Andrea very happy. Come to think of it, this whole damn thing would have gone a lot more smoothly if Mom wasn't there. I was just standing there, not saying anything, letting Andrea handle everything, and Mom was the one who kept butting in. Nice, Mom.

Anyway, Mom then goes on to say, "And I'm the one who made her do it. I just didn't think that you could have the kind of life you deserved if Jenny had kept you."

(Um, HELLO? That was part of MY speech! Mind you, *I*, the BIRTHMOTHER, still hadn't said anything.)

Then Mom gave Amanda a hug (when they pulled apart, Amanda was crying a little but she was also smiling. Then she gave me a hug, too, and then Mom hugged Andrea (who by now was bawling).

And yes, ladies and gentlemen, we're still IN THE MIDDLE OF WALMART. (We were at WalMart because Andrea had taken some pictures on her digital camera, and she wanted to make some prints for us before we went home. This is just where everything happened to go down. It SHOULD have happened at the Chinese place, for reasons you'll understand later.)

As Mom was hugging Andrea, I kind of sidled next to Amanda and whispered, "Make sure to give your mom a hug. She's been really scared to tell you the truth."

(Side note: sometime in the middle of all of this, Abel--who, even though Andrea had asked him to look at a nearby display, had overhead some of this and was TOTALLY confused, exclaimed, "Man, how many grandmas do we HAVE?", which made everyone laugh.)

It may have been here that I asked her what she thought about all this, which is when she answered, "I think it's awesome!"

Amanda, who was clearly shocked about this Jenny-as-birthmother twist, said (at some point) "But I don't look like you at all!" I said that I didn't really think so, either, but that some people thought we did. I also said, later, that we were alike in a lot of other ways, including some of our mannerisms and interests.

So that was basically it. We asked her if she had any questions, but you could tell the poor girl's head was spinning and she said no--although, during the rest of our visit, she'd periodically pop out with a couple. Once, she said, "So if I don't look like YOU, does that mean I look like my birthfather?" I told her yes, she most definitely took after him. She asked if she had ever met him, and I told her no. Andrea popped in with some derogatory comment about him, which kind of pissed me off, but whatever. I told Amanda briefly the history with M. and I--that he left when I got pregnant, came back, we dated on and off for a while, he proposed when I was in college but by then it was too late, and that we still kept in touch now. She asked if I had a picture of him and I said that I could get her one, but then hastily added, "But you'll have to talk to your mom about that," since Andrea was absolutely vehement in assisting that Amanda would have NO contact with him or his family until she turned 18. I didn't know if that included pictures. The only other comment about him during the evening was prior to that, when Amanda held her arm next to mine to compare skin tones and she commented that she was darker than I was, and I told her, "Yes, but I'm white and your birthfather is Hispanic, which is why you're darker."

We kept shopping (there were some more items that Andrea had to get, including--at this point--alcohol, LOL). Later on, while we were walking around (Andrea was shopping and we were entertaining the kids), I asked Amanda if she truly understood why I did it and she said, "Yeah, cuz you were really young." (When she first heard how old I was at the time, she said, "That's only a few years older than ME!") At another point, she said, "I feel kind of weird calling you guys Jenny and Deb now!"

So...that's about it. Amanda did ask a few more questions and make a couple other comments As I told Anna in an email (when she commented that I didn't seem as happy as she thought I'd be), I told her that I was concerned about the possible fallout/aftermath. First of all, if Mom WAS the one who pushed the issue by saying "What if it's someone you know?", that could come back to bite us in the ass, since 1) it was ANDREA'S job to tell her and 2) if Amanda had said she didn't care, it should have been left alone--or at least left up to Andrea as to how to proceed. (Once Amanda found out that *I* was the birthmom, though, I really think she's glad she was told everything, though.)

Secondly, Juan, the adoptive father, wasn't there, and he had made it clear (via phone call earlier in the evening) that he didn't want her to know yet, either, and that he wanted to be there when she WAS told. So depending on how angry he is about that (although in the end it WAS Andrea who told her), and depending on how Andrea retells the story (if she makes it sound like we pushed the issue until she had no choice BUT to tell her), Juan and Andrea could get so angry that they decide, "Okay, the overstepped their boundaries, they went too far, no more visits." That's what I'm most worried about right now, which is why I told Mom to LEAVE THEM ALONE. That's what we usually do after a visit--we just go back to our lives, they go back to theirs and we contact them again a few months later (usually when I'm in town or when Christmas/her birthday is coming up). This is a critical point and after I spent so much time assuring Andrea that nothing would change once Amanda knew the truth, we HAVE to live up to that. We can't act any differently than we did before. We need to step aside and let THEM be a family now.

I'm going to email her now with my Florida address and some more pictures from our visit, so when/if I hear back from her, I'll let you know how she "sounded." She seemed fine--shocked but almost HAPPY--when we said goodbye last night, but I could tell that a lot of it really hadn't sunk in yet. I really, really hope that this is good news to her--that, if she has to be adopted, at least she knows her birthmom already.....but we'll see how she takes it once she has time to process everything.