Today is Amy’s 19th birthday. Nineteen years on the planet… She joined us on Halloween night, a few months before she turned 2. She was petite and very physically cute. Sadly, the cute wore off fairly quickly. Before she hit her second birthday, the control battles were in full swing. My husband and I particularly remember one about vitamins. We handled it badly, but we were completely clueless about what we were up against.


Until she was a pre-teen, her birthday parties were handled like everyone else’s celebration, notwithstanding the fact that she always pouted and melted down and acted as if the day were something to be endured rather than enjoyed. As I learned more about adoption, I understood more about what an adoptee’s birthday meant… but I didn’t get that when she was little. But I’m not sure how much of her early responses were about that either… mostly she just didn’t like to have fun… or couldn’t handle the fun, or something. She never had any friends to invite, either… except one year, where she really did make an effort, and did have some friends come to the house for a slumber party. After that year, it was steadily downhill.


On her 16th birthday, she was totally foul. Of course, she was incredibly difficult to live with day in and day out, so why should that one day be any different? Still, we planned to go out for dinner… but she was so nasty, we all said “Forget it!” Now how sad is that, on your daughter’s 16th birthday? It wasn’t like I didn’t want to celebrate… but her whole attitude, demeanor and persona reflected what an awful day it was… and we were all simply tired of arguing the point.


With very few exceptions, she never participated in celebrating anyone else’s birthday, either. No gift, no card (unless you count jumping up from the table as we are preparing to open gifts and running to the computer to print a completely generic, unsigned card…) and no concept of giving to someone else. I am happy to report that appears to be shifting… as you can see from this card I received for MY recent birthday.


Amy missed our weekend celebration of several family birthdays this past weekend in Chicago, because she didn’t get off work as she was supposed to do. She is also supposed to call me and tell me what her work schedule is this week so we can take her to dinner. I wonder if she will?


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