This I Believe

19 years ago I made the choice to have unprotected sex as for me not making a conscious choice is akin to making an affirmative one. I couldn’t abort as for me life has the right to live. It is not my life to take.

I made the choice to keep her and it took me two days after she was born to find the courage to admit what I subconsciously already knew. She was a gift and a responsability. Picking her up mean’t never putting her down, resenting my choice or avoiding my duty or love for her.

I was caught on Rt29 going 95 miles an hour in Madison County as I had been in Charlottesville for training and I was running an hour late beyond after school day care. I rollerbladed that summer with my seven year old daughter on her bike down the shoulder of Telegraph to Brown Academy then me to the metro. I dropped to 117 lbs by September when I could drive again.

After 9/11 my budding teeage went off the deep end with a pack of other Alexandrian kids and the horror and grief began. I missed the closeness we had when she was younger. She was 18 and choose “freedom”, minimum wage and finishing high school in a culture that was self-injurous. She also was too busy and poor to get into too much trouble.

She gave me a puppy for Mother’s Day and dropped by four days a week and sometimes we had dinner. Despite the tatoos, I was and am grateful for her presence and her efforts not to be contentious but mild.

She has now moved home and is eligible for Honors English at our local community college. She quit smoking and is a pleasure just to talk too.

What I am trying to say is that I can only allogorically show that despite incredible hardship, sorrow and worry I am so damn glad I have my daughter in my life. I still can not conceive that there ever was a choice to kill her through abortion. She is alive and where there is life, there is hope and she’ll come around according to God’s plan not mine.