It\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day, and I was going to write about my mother\u2026.but this isn\u2019t about her.
It isn\u2019t about my \u201cvolunteer\u201d mom, my mother-in-law or any of my grandmothers.\u00a0 It\u2019s about the hero who wasn\u2019t<\/i> a part of our family.\u00a0 The woman whose courage and strength leave me in awe.\u00a0 She is my hero, and I don\u2019t even know her name.<\/p>\n
My father was adopted.\u00a0 He was the child of a romantic fling between a young 20-something woman and a saxophone player at the end of World War II.\u00a0 She thought they were getting married and was in love.\u00a0 He knew they weren\u2019t because his pregnant wife and large family were at home waiting for him.<\/p>\n
When my birth-grandmother (BG)\u00a0 discovered that she was pregnant, she traveled to her sweetheart\u2019s hometown where she discovered that the woman she assumed was his landlady was his wife.\u00a0 When she told his wife that she was expecting my dad, his wife didn\u2019t go crazy.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t sob, scream or cry.\u00a0 She calmly and gently brought my birth-grandmother into her own home and helped her to understand what was going on and figure out what to do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She must have been devastated at her husband\u2019s betrayal, but she instead focused on the woman in her kitchen who so desperately needed help.\u00a0 When my BG finally made up her mind to go to a convent home for unwed mothers and place my father for adoption, it was his wife who drove her, paid all her expenses, and occasionally visited her so that she was not alone.<\/p>\n
My family talks about BG, who we were privileged to meet before she died, but no one discusses the other hero in all of this mess.\u00a0 We never talk about the wife who was deceived, betrayed and humiliated and yet found the strength and grace to find kindness, compassion, and charity for \u201cthe other woman.\u201d<\/p>\n
While I am grateful for\u00a0 all the wonderful mothers in my life, in all the roles they fulfill.\u00a0 This morning I said a prayer of thanksgiving for the nameless woman whose Christian love made all of this possible.\u00a0 Without her, who knows where we would be.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s Mother\u2019s Day, and I was going to write about my mother\u2026.but this isn\u2019t about her.It isn\u2019t about my \u201cvolunteer\u201d mom, my mother-in-law or any of my grandmothers.\u00a0 It\u2019s about the hero who wasn\u2019t a part of our family.\u00a0 The woman whose courage and strength leave me in awe.\u00a0 She is my hero, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n