What if things were different?

Maeve rubbed her eyes as the morning light from the window began to stream in signalling dawn had broken. This time of year dawn broke at 6:30, the perfect time to wake up and start her day. Spring was awakening after a cold, long winter and the earlier morning light was a sign of good things to come. She didn’t like waking up much later than that and the winter months forced her to set an alarm. Twice a year she had the perfect sunshine alarm clock and today she sat up, hair a mess a smile plastered on her face. Conor rolled over reaching his arm out trying to feel for her, he still had his eyes closed and she toyed with him moving an inch out of reach so her had to open one eye to find her.

“Hey!” Her laughed when he say what she was up to, rolling over to tackle her in a bear hug. “Thats cheating.” Maeve laughed, her green eyes sparkling and she rolled him over straddling him and gave him a good morning kiss. “Mmm, someone woke up frisky.” Conor said returning the grin and slipping under the covers.

“I’m going to be late!” Maeve squealed pulling the covers over both of their heads as they rolled around laughing. 

“Oh fine” Conor said coming up for air on all fours, “but I’m coming for you later.”

“Deal,” Maeve grinned gathering her red curly hair in a pile on top of her head. She grabbed her towel off the hood on the back of their bedroom door and walked to the ensuite bath room to turn on the shower. As the room filled with steam she called out to Conor still laying in bed, “Your mom wanted us to come over after work and talk wedding, do you have any objections to that?”

Conor groaned, rolling himself out of bed. “You really know how to a kill a mood don’t you my love.” He grabbed his towel, dropped his boxers and walked into the shower.

“Hey! I was getting in there.” Maeve objected staying in her towel at the edge of the shower in protest. Conor tugged at the corner of her towel and tossed it to the ground and grinned. “Well you better get in then.” Maeve rolled her eyes but did as she was told, she could never resist Conor. He took her heart when she was 14, her virginity at 16 and her hand when she turned 25. They were going to be married soon and she was as happy as she could have ever imagined. 

Maeve had always dreamed of marrying her true love and having a family of her own. It was the one thing in her life she was absolutely sure of. Everything else she did didn’t matter, she could move, change jobs, live in a tent, as long as she built her own family. Maeve grew up in the foster system bouncing around from home to home, never having a mom or dad, brother or sisters or anyone in her corner. She was out in this world on her own until she met Conor when she started high school. Conor Murphy was smart, handsome and athletic, with fiery red hair and wicked green eyes just like hers. Growing up without any family, with red hair and green eyes Maeve always felt out of place, she struck out like a sore thumb and always felt uncomfortably like the centre of attention. She never knew if people were staying at her because of how she looked, or if they knew she was a foster child. Either way the stares and whispers became a very isolating factor in her life, so when she met Conor, their likeness bonded them and they formed a friendship. 

As a young girl with no family and no home, the first time Conor brought her home to his house, Maeve knew this is what she wanted. Conor had everything Maeve had always dreamt of. Conor has a loving mother named Rose who baked homemade cookies and meals from scratch, she braided his sisters hair and was on the PTA at their school. Rose was kind and caring and took Maeve in like a daughter of her own, knowing that she never had anything this close to a mother in her life. Callum Murphy, donors dad, was a big burly man with hard calloused and peeling working hands. When he wasn’t working construction her was toiling away at home renovation projects, always looking to improve their home for his family. He had taught Conor how to do anything from building a tree house to installing plumbing for a new bathroom. While Conor wasn’t always grateful for the long list of jobs his father had for him growing up, Maeve was internally grateful that Conor was so capable now that they were working away at renovating an old victorian style house they bought last year. 

Conor and Maeve lived in Guelph, Ontario, one of the few Canadian cities that had an old world charm to it. Downtown Guelph was filled with beautiful old churches, victorian era homes heavily treelined streets and walking paths along the river marked by historic ruins. The Murphy family was a first generation Irish Canadian family, both Callum and Roses parents emigrating here during the Great Depression. 

The Murphys kept their children close, and cared for them dotingly even when they were out of the house. Maeve hoped to one day be this kind of a mother, a caring, careful, smother her children with kisses kind of mother who couldn’t get enough of her children. Not whatever her own mother was. Whatever he mother was was someone who birthed a baby girl and left her with the church. Never to come looking for her ever again. Maeve didn’t even know what her birth mothers name was, how old she was, where she came from, a medical history, nothing. All Maeve knew was she was abandoned and unwanted from the moment she was born. 

When she was old enough to emancipate herself, Maeve, ever a resourceful young girl having been in the system her whole life, hired a lawyer, emancipated herself from the government and got the Murphys on board to swear she could take care of herself as they took her in as one of their own. She was given her child protection services file at this time and found out how unwanted she had really been. Born with infantile tuberculosis, Maeve was a sick baby upon her arrival into this world. She spent months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit receiving treatment after she was bird from an infected mother and was transferred the disease during the birth. No one wanted a sick baby. Of course as an adult she understood that wholeheartedly, but at the time it was heartbreaking to her, abandoned by a mother, to be left sick and unwanted. How was a child supposed to recover from that?

Even after she was better, too much time had passed and she got lost in the system, going from foster home to foster home, nothing ever being terribly wrong, just never quite right. Either Maeve didn’t get on with the other kids, or a house was too full and she had to be moved. None the less she eventually found her own way, finding a family for herself and securing a spot at the family table with the Murphys. 

Thats the funny thing about how you’re built, people either take that pain and wallow in it, the let it suck them in and bathe in the sadness, using it as an excise to be mean, to fail, to use drugs and alcohol as an escape. And then there are the others. The others are those like Maeve who took what they were given and said “I can do better. I shall take my hand and raise you”, betting on themselves to build a happier, more fulfilling life than the one they were handed. 

Maeve and Conor bought a home around the corner from Callum and Rose, and Conor’s sister, Cara, bought one with her husband a street over from there. Already this old house was coming to life and it filled Maeve with some kind of power watching her build the life she dreamed of. It was a physical representation of the hard work she had put in her entire life as she watched this house turn into her home where she would some day raise her own family with her soon to be husband. While it may be a romanticized version of the truth she was wrapped in, in her writers brain she had to spin a story to turn everything into a more fantastical version of what it was. It was her only surefire coping mechanism to lead her forward in her life. Never having anything, she created stories for herself about what someday might look like, and how she came to be. 

To protect herself from the hurt of being an abandoned and unwanted child, Maeves brain compensated by creating a narrative that focused on the positive. Of course no one would willingly give up their child for adoption, that was ludicrous, she must have died. She knew her mother had been sick with tuberculosis, and gave it to Maeve, but that was the only information Maeve had. The records were sealed. It was the only way Maeve could manage the pain by creating simple logical explanations that rationalized the choice. She could forgive her hypothetical mother who had to give her up because she was dying of tuberculosis, she didn’t know Maeve wouldn’t get adopted, she did what she had to for both if them. 

——

Maeve used her forearm to squeegee water away from the glass of the shower, trying to see across the bathroom into the bedroom to her bedside alarm clock to see how late she was going to be. It was 7:21. Once again Conor had pulled her off schedule with his delicious kisses and greedy libido. “I’m so late!” Maeve said swatting Conor’s wandering hands away as he tried to get a few extra gropes in on her way out. 

“We will have to finish this later then.” Conor said grinning as he towered off his auburn hair that was growing wild. Maeve leaned over for one more kiss as she passed him on her way out of the bathroom and into the closet to find an outfit. 

Maeve was a beat writer by trade, and a closet novelist. Technically she was always on her own schedule, but she had learned pretty quilt that if she didn’t stick the the structure and routine she created for herself, it was far too easy to let everything pile up and get lost in her home and work life. Maeve have incredible self regulation, often to the point of frustration for her fiancé. She beloved in the power of routine and schedules and it worked for her. Part of that for Maeve was having a uniform of sorts. A knit sweater, a well fitting pair of jeans and a nice pair of sneakers were all she needed to get out the door and feel ready to face the day. She didn’t bother with hair and makeup, she let nature run its course and hoped the casual designer outfits picked up the slack for her lack of effort on grooming. 

Thankfully, as part of her daily routine Maeve had scheduled the coffee-pot to self brew for 6:30 so she had a warm pot of coffee waiting for her at the bottom of their squeaky narrow victorian staircase. It was part fo the charm for now, but it was going to have to be addressed at some point. Maeve knew which stairs to avoid if she was coming in late not to wake Conor, but Conor had an extra heavy step when he came home later after a few beers with his buddys watching a game. The noise was jarring when you are fast asleep, and if there were going to have any babies of their own one day, that was just not going to fly. 

She picked up the steaming carafe of coffee and took a long inhale of the brew. It was one of her favourite moments in the day, her morning ritual to start off a well scheduled and predictable day. Everything was better once she had that coffin her hands prepared with steamed and brother milk, a sprinkle of cinnamon on top, just the way she liked it. They had tried one of those fancy pod espresso makers for a while, but while it was superior in convenience, it never quite did the trick. She walked over to their kitchen table and placed the mug on the table beside a pile of mail that had appeared overnight. Conor must have Brough it in. Maeve picked up the pile and leaned against the table as she flipped through flyers and coupon books until she came across an envelope addressed to her, with an unfamiliar return address. Curious she turned the envelope over in her hands a few times before slipping a finger under the fold in the back of the envelope where she found a spot to tear it open. 

Slipping the folded stack of papers out of the envelope Maeve could see it was a letter from the Government of Ontario, most likely another attempt to get her to register as an organ donor. They sent a letter almost annually at this point and while she wasn’t totally against it, she still felt very protective of her organs at this point in her life. Perhaps when she turned 50 she might feel more generous, having put some good mileage on them.

Maeve unfolded the letter and what looked to be an application out of the envelope as Conor rounded the corner into the kitchen to sit with his own mug of coffee, giving her a little pat on the rear on his way over to the table. “Whats that?” He asked nodding his head at the envelope in Maeve’s hand. Maeve didn’t say anything as looked up slowly to meet his eyes, her face suddenly ashen. “Whats wrong honey?” Conor asked his face twisting in concern as Maeve stood silently processing whatever was in her hands. Conor stood up and walked around d the table to where she was still standing, not speaking and took the letter from her hands and read out loud.

“Dear Ms. Maeve Grisham,

An Ontario law recently passed allowing all children surrendered by their birth mothers between the years 1950 and 1970 access to their adoption records. As a child who was a ward of the province you are entitled to send in an application request for more information. The application and corresponding envelope to mail it back in are included in this package. 

If you have further questions please call 1-800-676-8827 or visit our informational website at adoption.on.gov for more details. 

Sincerely,

John Amos, Head of Adoption Services Ontario”

Conor looked up eyes wide at Maeve, who’s blank stare sat on a pale face. She had spent her entire life wishing, wanting to know who she was and where she came from, but now that the time had come she was terrified to find out the truth.