“Mom… that’s why we brought you here.
I turned around.
The door opened slowly.
There was an older woman.
He seemed to be about seventy.
His hair was almost completely white and both hands trembled on his sides.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
Then I saw his eyes.
My eyes.
And something in the way I squeezed my lips trying not to cry looked so much like I felt my legs fail.
He took a small step towards me.
Margaret?
I covered my mouth with my hand.
She started crying.
My name is Rebecca.
That was enough.
I crossed the room as fast as my eighty-nine-year-old legs allowed me to.
When I got to her, I hugged her.
And suddenly I was seventeen.
I wasn’t hugging a woman of seventy-one years.
In my heart, I was finally hugging the newborn daughter who had told me I could never touch.
“I thought you died,” he repeated again and again.
Rebecca hugged me harder.
I thought you gave me up.
“No.
I pulled away a little and held his face in my hands.
No, honey. I would have gone looking for you.
Rebecca closed her eyes and cried.
“I know now.
My six children were crying too.
Finally, we all sit down.
Rebecca told me that she had spent much of her life wondering why I hadn’t wanted her. I had imagined a hundred different versions of me.
None of them showed a mother who had spent seventy-two years believing that her daughter was dead.
Then Lisa explained why my children had organized everything that way.
After Grandma died and found the rest of the documents, the six began to talk about how much time our family had already wasted.
Rebecca had lost seventy-two years with me.
And my other six children realized how many times they had said to me:
Maybe next month, Mom.
Lisa took my hand.
“We realized we were doing something that maybe one day we couldn’t undo anymore.
Michael lowered his head.
We kept taking it for granted that there would always be another birthdays.
That hurt.
But it also healed something inside me.
“Tonight I thought you all forgot about me,” I admitted.
Lisa cried again.
“We feel it.
Then Rebecca said quietly:
Can we stop wasting time now?
