Baby, We Were Meant for Each Other

Author:Scott Simon [Simon, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-679-60416-7
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

“IF WE HAD had just one child, Linda and I would have felt we were much better parents than we were,” says Kerby. “There is a human tendency to look for cause and effect. A lot of our sadness about Jennie turned into anger, and then we turned it on ourselves.

“Thomas always traced a lot of his success to the fact that he felt adored,” he continues. “I think he would have been the same person in any family. Jennie was no less adored. But other things just overwhelmed her. Life is more complex than cause and effect. There are genetic, sociological, cultural things that just keep mixing up …” His voice trails off.

The pain of the loss that Kerby and Linda suffered may be sharper yet because it seems to upend the implied bargain of adoption: that we can give our children better, kinder lives than the ones they might have had without us.

I think that Jennie had such a life. The Lauderdales gave their daughter loving, reliable parents, a stable home, interesting siblings, and opportunities to break free from addiction. But as Kerby notes, life is not always cause and effect. There are always other factors and influences to infiltrate, frustrate, confuse, and distract. Drugs and self-destruction come into the best families despite the direct shots from goodness to happiness that we try to arrange.

At some point as you hear Jennie’s story, you want to reach out to her with words Thomas wrote to the title song of Hang On Little Tomato:

Just hang on, hang on to the vine

Stay on, soon you’ll be divine

If you start to cry, look up to the sky

Something’s coming up ahead

To turn your tears to dew instead

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