Unexpected Experiences, Pt. 2

Interview for Graduate Assistantship within the University Studies College, 1 p.m., check.

I’m on time!  It’s a miracle prompted by my best friend sharing with me that my interviewer happens to be military breed.

Interview going well, check.  We discuss my journey to this point in life (ha!), what his department seeks in a graduate assistant, and more.

Interviewer mentions, “actually, you are sitting in the delivery room of the once upon a time Brookings Hospital right now.  Do you know how many people, I wish I had kept track, have come into my office because they want to see–as adults–the room in which they were born.”

Unexpected reaction.  The floor moves under my feet.  My eyes dart around the room and the walls, and I sense birthing.  I sense delivering moms, nurses, babies, . . . .  He can’t know what’s going through my mind.  I don’t even know what’s going through my mind, but this is part of it:

I was in a delivery room once.  Oh how I want to visit my actual delivery room.  Does it still exist?  Would they (who is “they?”) let me in to see?  Would I be restricted yet again from access to my own history?  What would I feel if I went there?  Would I feel her presence?  Did my parents know I was being born, or did they find about me a few days after delivery?  When did my birth parents leave the hospital?  Where did I go after I was delivered?  Can I seeeeeeeeeeeeeee?

They were all there in the delivery room, I’m told:  the mom, the dad, the nurses, the doctor, and then me.  And then,  . . . I was alone.  I am thinking and feeling that alone feeling while sitting 12 hours away from my actual delivery room of 1970.

Can he tell?  I know he can’t, but my insecure piece inside of me surfaces shame–shame that my delivery room experience wasn’t “normal,” and isn’t exactly the story he might expect from one of his many visitors.  For example, the prestigious and wealthy community man/bank owner of our town was delivered in this room and came to visit.  His birth parents kept him.

Thankfully, I am far enough in my emotional, intellectual, spiritual journey now, that I know God’s plan for my life is perfect and good.  Still, my story is so different.  I was given away–two sides to every story, right?  The delivery room was an end of family ties for me with one family, and a beginning of finding new family ties by day 7 of my little life.  Does that blow anyone’s mind?  It does mine.

I don’t necessarily feel good in this office, this delivery room.  It doesn’t give me warm fuzzies, sir.

Happy news–I got the job/assistantship . . .  🙂