We got married for love when we were still students. At first we did not think much about children, but when we graduated, started working, and decided on a place to live, we realized that it was not going to work. We waited for about a year, diligently keeping to the “schedule”, but there was no result. Then there were tests, hospitals, consultations of medical “luminaries”, but all converged to one opinion – the pregnancy will come, but when, no one could say definitely.
The next stage was informal medicine and visits to grandmothers. Nothing worked, and gradually I came to the logical decision – to give a family to a child from an orphanage.
My husband took my initiative neutrally, saying that if you want, let’s take it, if you don’t want – we won’t. Even at the stage of making this serious decision, I needed to talk to my husband more specifically, to find out his attitude to the fact that we would have to bring up a child, that it was a big responsibility and big limitations in our personal lives.
Now it’s easy to talk about it, but back then I took a close friend to help me and together we went to the orphanage. I remember my first visit very well. My heart just cringed at the looks of the children who all wanted to see me as a mom. I caught a glimpse of a girl sitting in the far corner. She wasn’t trying to draw attention to herself, just looking sadly at me and my friend, knowing that someone in their group was about to get a mom.
I smiled and nodded encouragingly at her. Her eyes transformed. There was hope, mistrust and elation in them all at the same time. I asked the nurse what her name was, and she realized that it was her I wanted to take away. Lissa came toward me, she walked, not ran. She took her time, not quite believing in her happiness yet. The children parted in front of her, looking enviously after her, and I sat down and held out my arms to Lissa. She hugged me, and whispered:
– Are you my mother now?
I couldn’t answer her then, I had a lump in my throat, so I just picked her up, and went out into the corridor.
In our family Lissa behaved the same way she did in the orphanage, calm and balanced, not causing any problems at all. She was very happy to have her own room, table, bed, toys, and she gladly helped me around the house and in the kitchen. Lissa treated her husband with great respect, listened to his every word, but behaved with him the same way he did with her – just politely, without warmth, seeing a certain estrangement of Daddy to her.
I tried to convince him that Lissa was now our daughter, that we needed to love her, to be a real father to her, but he kept telling me that it would take time.
Six months after Lissa came to the house, I suddenly became pregnant. My grandmother said then that God had sent us another child for being Lissa’s parents. When the pregnancy was confirmed, my husband unexpectedly offered to give the girl back. When I heard him want to get rid of Lissa, I said my emphatic “no,” but in response I heard an equally emphatic, “Then divorce.
At first I did not believe what was happening, I went to my mother for a few days, thinking that passions would subside, but when I called my husband, I heard nothing new, except that he was willing to wait with my decision until after the birth of the child.
I didn’t put off breaking up our relationship. It was probably my own fault, to some extent, for not preparing my husband for adoptive fatherhood, for not making sure he was ready to accept a child from the orphanage with his heart, not just so he wouldn’t argue with me.
We divorced. No scandals, no arguments, and no division of property. My husband did the manly thing, he left me the apartment, and he only took his things. He only gives me alimony for my born son, not even by court order, but on his own, faithfully dropping a decent amount on my bank card.
And Lissa still can’t understand why her daddy, to whom she was very attached, left us. Asks me difficult questions that I can not answer.
Really, why?
