We called him Aiden...

I think the reason that I haven't written in a while is because of this story. This situation took a little piece of my heart which I freely gave up and I hope it is being taken care of.

When R was around 2yrs old and we were building our house in Kzoo and living in this little apartment in Ann Arbor. We had put our names in to adopt again, we honestly didn't think anything would happen, we just wanted to make sure all of our information was in to the agency and available for birth mothers to see.

So, you can imagine my shock when I received a call from our social worker while shopping at Target with Poots and Cheryl. There was a woman who had see our letter and album...she wanted us to adopt her baby...she was seven months pregnant...she wanted to write us a letter could she have our address...she was sure this is what she wanted to do...she had been speaking to her social worker for a week or so...about US! Holy shit. I stood there in the lamp aisle (no one ever goes there) and listened....I asked her name (I'll call her Grace), if she had other children (she does, not with her, with her mother).

I was told she was in the Robert Scott Correctional Facility. She was going to be there until 2018 or so and did not want the baby in foster care, she wanted him to have a home.

HIM?!?

That was when I found out it was a boy!!! A boy...a boy...another beautiful boy. I tried not to get too excited, I called KPK at work and he was thrilled and shocked and excited. We laughed in the lamp aisle...I cried a tear or two. We were going to have another son...

Over the next few weeks we wrote letters back and forth. She told me about her life that led her to prison, about her pregnancy about her other children. She asked me to send her a photo of the nursery, of clothing for him. She asked if I would bring him to visit her, I said of course...I contacted the prison and our social worker to find out how we could do that. She asked what we wanted to name him.

We wanted to name him Aiden Patrick.

She loved the name. She said she was calling him Aiden to all the other woman. She was making him a little book for us to give him when he was older, she was writing him letters.

During this time we were granted permission to send her $10.00 a week for paper, stamps and such from the prison commissary. We did, keeping it all above board, the social workers all knew about it as did the prison system.

Then one day I received a letter telling me she needed $20.00, that she had not received any thing from me...that she had to borrow the stamp on the letter. I couldn't believe it! Where was the money??? Did it get stuck in the scanning process??? (The prison takes the money and puts it on account for the inmates.)

I called our social worker, she recommend we call the prison to see if it was just taking longer. At the same time as I was trying to get money into Grace's account. We get a call from our social worker.

The prison social worker Grace had been seeing had discovered she had 4 other families she was talking to, telling them that she had chosen them, that's 5 families from 5 different agencies.

I couldn't process the information. Honestly, 5 years later I still have a hard time processing it, fully understanding...what do you mean 5 families?? She had talked to the social worker for a week about us. We had written letters. We had named him. She asked us to name him. What the fuck is going on????

We never heard from her again.

We will never have closure.

But, for that month and a half, in our hearts, we were the parents of a sweet baby boy.

And we called him Aiden.