After they got home from church and put Esther to bed, Matt and Maddie exchanged a look and waited for Walter in the kitchen. Walter was becoming comfortable with their lifestyle, enjoying Webelos and asking more questions about the Church. But one thing Walter had no respect for was a shirt and tie. They could count on the fact that Walter would be free from the confines of his church clothes as soon as possible every Sunday. Once he was changed into jeans and a T-shirt, he would come looking for food.
“Something was delivered on Friday,” Matt said when Walter came upstairs. “We waited until things died down a little before showing it to you.”
“What is it?” Walter asked with curiosity.
“Let’s go see,” Maddie suggested and led the way to the garage. Walter hadn’t seemed to notice that they didn’t use the garage all weekend, which was just as well, because there was nowhere else to hide the surprise. When Walter entered the garage, he stopped, staring at the loom with confusion for several seconds before turning to look at Maddie with questioning eyes.
“Grandmother’s loom?” he asked.
“Grandmother told Anna that it would be hers once she had a home of her own,” Maddie said.
“Yeah?” Walter said, still looking confused.
“Well,” Maddie said with a smile. She exchanged a quick glance with Matt, who was looking mighty pleased with himself. “Anna turned eighteen years old last week, which means she can leave the Reservation if she chooses. She’s considered an adult now.”
A glimmer of hopefulness shone in Walter’s eyes, but he was cautious. Maddie couldn’t blame him. They had not included him in their discussions with Anna, not wanting to get his hopes up. Leaving the Reservation was a big decision for Anna to make. It was difficult enough for her to decide to finish her senior year of high school in a new city; they didn’t want to force it by having Walter beg. Matt and Maddie had been ecstatic when she had called two weeks ago, after having a lengthy discussion with Grandmother, and accepted their offer. Matt had arranged for a shipping company to transport the loom with all the tender loving care he could afford.
“Anna flies in on Saturday,” Matt said.
“And she’ll live here?” Walter asked, his eyes wide.
Matt nodded. “She’s your family, Walter, and that makes her our family too.”
Walter erupted in hugs and laughter before he ran inside to call Anna. She’d been staying with Skye, and Walter knew the number by heart.
Maddie walked over to her husband and wrapped her arms around his waist. He drew her in close, and they stood there, swaying slightly. Maddie stared at the loom, considering all the aspects of life she had never imagined would become so familiar. Just like the rugs that Anna wove, their lives were toiled over, tightly knit, creating a pattern all their own.
“Who’d have thunk it,” she whispered, pondering on all the twists and turns of their lives.
Matt kissed her, his lips lingering a breath from her own. “Who indeed.”
****
Later that evening, Maddie left Matt and Walter to their chess game—Walter had beat Matt the previous week, and it had increased the level of competition to a fever pitch—and went to the grocery store with Esther in tow. The baby was getting a tooth and was a royal pain, initiating a last-minute run back inside for some children’s Motrin, which she administered before starting the car. As she headed toward home, she thought of something, and on an impulse she turned east. Several minutes later she was winding up the side of the mountain. It had been almost a year since she had come to her cul-de-sac; the last time had been when the first birth mother they’d met with had chosen another couple. As she pulled in, she smiled at a newly poured foundation at the far side of the circle—it looked as if someone was trying to get their house up before the winter snows began. It was only fitting that someone else should find comfort here, now that she didn’t need it.
She got out of the car, wrapped her arms around herself, and stared across the Salt Lake Valley below her. For perhaps the first time ever, she hadn’t come here to cry. Rather, she took inventory of her life and deemed that things had, in fact, turned out better than if she’d have planned them herself. There was a purpose far greater than her vantage point allowed her to see. She took a deep breath, a cleansing breath, and returned to the car. Esther was asleep in the backseat, and her men were waiting for her at home. She had no reason to linger here.
Author’s Notes
• Infertility is a problem faced by increased numbers of people every year. Currently six million families, about 10 percent of married couples in the United States, struggle with infertility. With more and more women waiting until later in life to have children, that average will continue to rise.
In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where family is the nucleus of our religion, the emotional and spiritual struggle of infertility becomes even deeper. Adoption seems the easy answer, but with abortion on the rise, there are far more couples wanting babies than there are birth mothers looking for families for their children. Often, by the time couples exhaust the myriad of infertility treatments and determine that adoption is their only option, they don’t meet the age, health, and financial requirements. For more information, please go to the web page for Resolve, the national infertility association:
http://www.resolve.org/site/PageServer
• LDS Family Services has become an important part of the adoption process for many Latter-day Saints. The mission of Family Services is to counsel and support birth mothers, fathers, and their families in making the decision of whether or not to place the baby for adoption. They then assist in placing babies in LDS homes. Thirty percent of the women who meet with Family Services counselors choose adoption, and yet LDS Family Services places babies with 100 percent of the couples who meet the requirements and persevere through the process, which can take anywhere from a few months to a few years. To read more about LDS Family Services, visit their web site:
http://www.providentliving.org/familyservices/strength/0,12264,2873–1,00.html
• The Navajo Nation is roughly the same size as the state of West Virginia. They are one of the few Native American tribes that have retained their sacred lands; at a time when many other tribes are decreasing in population, the Navajo tribe continues to increase. The Navajo people actively teach their language and traditions to their children as they try to overcome the loss of culture brought on by multiple government programs that removed Indian children from their homes. The result of these “assimilation” attempts was a “lost generation” of Navajos raised without an understanding of their own people. For more information please go online to Wikepedia: The Free Encyclopedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo Nation
• The Indian Student Placement Program, often referred to as the Lamanite program, began in the 1940s as a way to offer religious and educational opportunities to Native American members of the LDS Church. It continued for nearly sixty years until the last graduate in the year 2000. Though critics suggest that the program’s purpose was to take the Indian out of Native American children, for most participants and families who fostered the children, it was a positive experience.
• No Socks Day and Have a Coke Day are real holidays celebrated on May 8. I was unable to learn when these holidays were first declared, and for the sake of the story I combined them to be No Socks and Have a Coke Day. For more information on unusual holidays, go to:
http://www.thevirtualvine.com/days.html
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