posted
Something just happened in my family that is sort of a photonegative of a story told in another thread. Before I tell the story, I’d like to point out that this is not intended to be a rebuttal. In fact, if I had to choose a side on this issue, I’d have to consider myself mildly pro-choice, although I empathize with both sides enough that I have a hard time applying that label to myself. In any case, this is an absolutely true story that may give a little balance and perspective to the events going down here today.
I should start by telling you that my wife is Albanian. She moved to the United States when she was 19 years old, and is now an American citizen. She was raised the only child of an angelic mother and a sadistic father. Because of the abuse issues, we moved my mother-in-law to America nearly two years ago. If she’d been an ordinary mother-in-law, I don’t know that I’d have agreed to it. But she’s truly the nicest, most gentle, and funniest woman I know, with the exception of my wife. I’m ordinarily something of a selfish ass, and not one who would ordinarily open my house to another person, but she’s so extraordinarily kind that I’ve never felt anything but blessed to have her living with us.
Just after she moved in with us, my mother-in-law, who I’ll call B, found out something about herself. It took her over a year to work up the nerve to tell us. This is her story.
When B was in her late teens, she began dating a young man. He was evidently much nicer and more compatible with her than the man she would end up being forced into an arranged marriage with. Still, communist Albania was a country of extremely strict and unforgiving social codes, and anyone caught openly dating someone they weren’t already engaged to would be viewed as a filthy slut. She liked him too much to stop, though, so they continued their courtship in secret for some time.
Eventually, B got pregnant. As in many sexually repressive societies with undeveloped family planning, this was not uncommon. And in this situation, there was only one course of action. Anyone who got pregnant out of wedlock got the quickest, cheapest abortion they could find before anyone could discover them. There was no question about this. People had been kicked out of their homes and left to die in the street like common animals for the crime of pregnancy. Parents have lost jobs for letting children get knocked up. If anyone had found out that B was pregnant her life, and the lives of her entire family, could have been ruined forever.
However, despite the incredible social pressure, when it came time to do it, B could not go through with the abortion. Despite any consequences, she became determined to have this child. So when she was about 3 months along, she moved to a tiny village in the country to live with her cousins. Her parents supported her, another unheard-of action, and made up a story about her studying abroad. She eventually had the child, a beautiful baby girl who she named Mira, and began trying to figure out how she was going to raise it.
The first thing she had to do was figure out how to get her own apartment. Even today, the effects of communism have made Albania among the poorest countries in Europe. When they were living behind the iron curtain, under the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, the poverty was unbearable. Moving out immediately was out of the question. She needed to move back to Tirana to make any money, but there was no way to bring the baby back with her while she was in her parents’ house. Fortunately the village where her cousins live had a government-run orphanage. She made arrangements to have them look after the child while she worked in the city. Every week for the next year she would work all day long for five days, then take the bus to the village on the weekend to see her baby girl. It broke her heart to leave the baby in that institution every week, but little by little she was getting closer to being able to afford her own apartment, after which she would find a way to bring her daughter home.
After doing this for a full year, one weekend she came to the orphanage to find her daughter gone. She looked through the entire facility, her panic growing. Finally she went to the people in charge and asked what happened to her child.
“Oh, that little baby? She died.”
“How did she die?” B asked.
“Oh, babies die all the time here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We didn’t know whose baby that was.”
“Where is it buried?”
“We buried it in the mountains in an unmarked grave, like we do with all the orphan babies.”
“But she wasn’t an orphan. I’m her mother.”
“How do we know that?”
She talked to everyone in the facility. She went to the mountain to find the unmarked grave. She came back to the orphanage every weekend for another year trying to find her missing child, but there was nothing she could do.
Eventually she was forced into marriage with someone she didn’t know. She had one child with that man. That child grew up to be my wife. For the rest of her life she never spoke of her lost baby.
As she suspected, though, the child was not dead. Everyone with a government job in communist Albania made most of their money with bribes, extortion and finding something they could sell on the black market. The people in charge of the orphanage were no different, and they found a lucrative enterprise in selling children. One weekend a young couple stopped by the orphanage looking for a child, and selected B’s baby. The price was negotiated, and the deal was made. Mira was raised as the child of another family.
Mira’s family, fortunately, was kind and loving. They eventually moved to Tirana, and she grew up in the same city as her biological mother, got married, and had two children, a boy and a girl. In 1992, Albania escaped communist rule. On the day the Democratic Party took over, people were jumping over the walls of any foreign embassy they could find to seek asylum. Mira was in that group of people, and made it into the German embassy. They accepted her and her young family as political refugees.
When Mira moved to Germany, she began taking the necessary steps to gain permanent citizenship. One of the first things she had to do was find a copy of her birth certificate. She did this and, looking at this document for the first time in her life, she noticed that her father’s name was left empty, and the name of the person listed as her mother was one she’d never heard. This is how she first came to know that she’d been adopted.
Mira decided that she wanted to know her birth mother. In a country like Albania, though, this is easier said than done. Her parents had no idea whose child she had been. Even if the orphanage had wanted to help her, any records they may ever have kept were long gone. B had changed her last name when she married, so there was no way to look her up in the phone book. The situation looked bleak, but Mira didn’t give up.
Every year or so, Mira would come to Tirana to visit the family who had raised her. Every time she came, she would ask anyone she met if they had ever heard the name she found on her birth certificate. She started by asking friends, but as the years passed and she grew more desperate, she began asking anyone she could find. One day, well over a decade after she began her search, she asked someone she bumped into on the street if they knew this name. The person responded, “Yes, that was my cousin’s maiden name.”
“Where does she live?”
“Well, she used to live on Mustafa Street, but she just moved to America to live with her daughter two months ago.”
“Do you have her phone number?”
“I’ve got it at my home. Would you like to come with me?”
The next day, my mother-in-law got a telephone call, and for the first time in 40 years she heard the voice of her baby girl.
She found a way to keep this secret from us for nearly a year. Growing up in such a society leaves its marks, and as much as she wanted to tell my wife, she couldn’t shake the feeling that we’d kick her out of our house and let her die on the street if we found out that she had another child.
She finally did tell us, and we were obviously overjoyed. My wife had always felt something missing growing up an only child, and from the first time she talked to her half-sister, they were best friends. It’s lucky international phone rates have gone down, because my wife has spent several hours a week talking to her sister since the day they met. Mira came to see us two months ago, and I’ve never seen any sisters as close as she and my wife were. The similarities in physical appearance and personality between Mira, her mother and her half-sister are uncanny. And the joy it gave my mother was indescribable.
B is going to Germany this summer, where she will meet her son-in-law and her two grandchildren for the first time. My wife is going to meet her brother-in-law and her niece and nephew.
Again, don't take this as a rebuttal to any other stories told here in the last day or two. The theme of this story could be that abortion is wrong, and keeping a baby will bring rewards later in life. Alternately, it could be that sometimes you need to think for yourself and do what you feel is right, regardless of what society expects of you. Or maybe it's just a story I wanted to share, regardless of moral or political implications. In any case, B was fully expected to abort Mira, and by any objective measure it probably would have been the right choice. But 40 years can change perspectives a lot, for good and bad. And I don’t know if my mother-in-law will ever be more grateful for a single decision she’s ever made than the decision she made to keep this baby.
posted
I can never see the name Albania without metnally adding "The lighthouse of Socialism in Europe!" Not because it's relevant or anything, it's just a cool phrase.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
My dearest Baron,thank you for sharing this touching story. I do have to agree my mother is a great woman and as you said she is an angel and she would do anything for me and knowing how she is I know that she would have done anything for Mira too. In communism the party members were ordered to post all over town a picture of the person that did this unthinkable sin and their families would never be able to live with this burden and so they were forced to kick the child out and most of the time kill them. My mother did love Mira's dad a lot and I think he loved her too but traditions did not let them end together. Some times I wish that they had because my mothers life would have been easier and definetly much happier, but i guess something good did come out of the marriage of mommy and my father and that was me. After she told me the story about six months ago my respect and love for her increased 10 fold and I think she is much happier and relieved that we didn't kick her out. Though she is really smart she really thought that I would be ashamed about her past. Strange what communism did to people. Well, anyway, thank you Baron for sharing her story.
Posts: 69 | Registered: Sep 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
O.k., now I'm crying... I love you guys so much! Your wife truly is one of the most wonderful, kind, beautiful and loving people I've ever had the honor of knowing. I've only met Mira and B once but I felt that they too were wonderful and amazing people, it must run in the family. Thank you for sharing your story.
Posts: 37 | Registered: Oct 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
That was really great story. Normally I just skip out on reading threads like this, but I'm glad I stuck through this one.
Not knowing anything about the history of Alabania, I have ask... How come people were running for asylum when the Democratic Party took over? I know that "democracy" doesn't mean "peace and love," but I just can't imaginging that being any worse than how the communist regime was desrcibed as being...
Posts: 450 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Funny you should ask... my wife just corrected me on that detail. The day that happened was actually a couple years before the Democratic Party fully took power. There was a period of regime change around 1990, and apparently no one knew whether things were going to get better or worse. After decades of oppression, though, there were a lot of people not willing to take the chance. I'm not 100% clear on what events exactly sparked the panic on that particular day, getting most of my information second-hand from my wife and her mother.
All I know for sure is that it was a pretty messed-up time, but there have been a lot of improvements since then. In fact, along with the determination of the Albanian people, America had a lot to do with helping them make the transition from Communism to some basic form of Democracy. People in Albania still hold the Bush Sr administration in uncommonly high esteem for this reason. When I was visiting Tirana, for example, I saw a restaurant on one of the main streets of the city called the Cafe Bushi (named for George H.W. Bush) with the Albanian and American flags side-by-side on its sign. My mother-in-law still gets a little emotional when she sees James Baker in the news. And she won't hear a word against our current president, no matter how frustrating he can be, solely because of how much she appreciates his father.
Posts: 563 | Registered: Feb 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
By the way, thanks to all of you who added your posts of support. It took a lot out of me to write this, and it's nice to know that people read and appreciated my mother-in-law's story.
Posts: 563 | Registered: Feb 2006
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Kiss]](graemlins/kiss.gif)
