Signing the TPR

When V was a little over a year old, a social worker called me. I don't remember the phone call or the conversation. All I remember was having a meeting with her in an old building used for public services. My step Mom has recently told me that her and my Dad drove me there but I don't remember any of it. I have a vague vision on being in a parking lot with them but I'm not sure if that's where we were.

I had no idea what I was signing was the termination of parental rights. I know it had to do with the adoption but I just didn't realize they were THE papers. I recently had married my husband and I remember going on about it and making a big deal about my name change. The social worker kept having a look of confusion or concern on her face and looking back now I realize she was trying to make me understand what was happening and making sure I knew what I was signing. But I had no clue...until a little while later in a phone conversation with V's adoptive Mom.

A few months later V's adoptive Mom and I were on the phone when I brought up the court date. For some reason I thought I would be there with them and at that time was when I would sign papers, she would become theirs and we would all share tears of happiness. I don't know where I got this idea from so when I asked her about when we were going to court she said they had already gone. I heart dropped. She must have sensed it because I remember her voice going soft and questing me gently about my meeting with the social worker. The rest of the conversation is a blur with the exception of us setting up a visit...it was the first time I had seen her since our parting at the hospital.

Was I just blocking it all out or being naive to what was going on around me? I was still in the mind set that I was beginning my happily ever after life and that things would work out beautifully. I still believed in the things I was told, that by giving her up I would find a respectable man to marry me and life would go on as if the deep pain of my sacrifice was in the past and didn't matter. Boy was I wrong.