An Unnatural Choice by Mary Hodder Ross
"Adoption is two sides of a single coin. One side is the gift. The other is sacrifice."
-- from An Unnatural Choice by Mary Hodder Ross
What we believe we are meant to be is not always what we become. Some lives turn course on a dime into a defining story that begins with a single, heartrending decision. For Mary Hodder Ross that turn was an unplanned pregnancy at the age of 21.
Born and raised in a small town in Newfoundland, Ross was "child number five" of six. She would be the first in her family to go to university.
It was in her final semester before graduating as an English honours student from Memorial University that Ross learned she was pregnant. She crossed the stage at convocation without the sense of elation and possibility of those around her, but silently grateful for the gown that hid her growing secret.
For the first 22 weeks of her pregnancy, Ross "...led a double-life, that of a scholar and that of a secret keeper." She told a doctor first; her boyfriend, the father, second. Her mother, who had once said she would disown a daughter who came home unwed and pregnant, found out by accident some ten years later.
For the first 22 weeks of her pregnancy, Ross "...led a double-life, that of a scholar and that of a secret keeper." She told a doctor first; her boyfriend, the father, second. Her mother, who had once said she would disown a daughter who came home unwed and pregnant, found out by accident some ten years later.
Ross's mother did not disown her. Far from it. As the years passed and Ross's notes from that time grew, mother urged daughter to write her memoir in full. Thirty-six years after giving birth to the son she gave up for adoption, Mary Hodder Ross published An Unnatural Choice.
Like coins, decisions have two sides. For some of them, the engraving goes very deep: as hope is to regret; happy is to sad; life is to loss. At one point, Ross recalls the "used to be" light spirit of her childhood and how it was dimmed: "She did things she could not change. She was changed by the things that she did."
***
Over two hundred years ago, the poet William Wordsworth wrote:
"There is a comfort in the strength of love;
’Twill make a thing endurable, which else
Would overset the brain, or break the heart:"*
An Unnatural Choice is that kind of story. That kind of love.
*From "Michael" by William Wordsworth (1770--1850)
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