My Life as a Mom & Grammy

God blessed me with a Beautiful Grandbaby

2012-01-25T11:12:00.000-08:00

My son Jeff and his wife Vivian have the most beautiful baby girl. Remy will be a year old in March. She is such a sweet little girl. I love her to pieces. I am so proud of my son and his wife, they are awesome parents! Jeffrey has always loved kids and could hardly wait to be a father. My heart melts every time I see him with his baby girl. He is really enjoying being a daddy. Remy has had him wrapped around that tiny little finger of hers from the minute he found out she was on the way! Vivian is a smart mom who pays close attention to every little detail, seeing to it that Remy has nothing but the best care. A lot of children in the world are not blessed to have such wonderful parents and family. Remy hit the jackpot all the way around. She couldn't be more loved if she tried!

Catching up on where we have been.

2010-07-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Last year I was forced to put two of my children into school as I had to start working outside of the home. I took the job of a School bus driver and was able to bring Hannah with me on the bus along with some of her studies. When I registered Caleb for the 6th grade, his first year in school, I was asked by the principal if I felt Caleb was going to know how to interact with other people. Part of me wanted to laugh, the other part of me wanted to say, No as soon as he gets done with his home school work we toss him right back in his closet, hand him his crust of bread, his daily warm glass of water and shut the door until the next day! Instead I answered with my usual, Caleb has been in several groups of children, church groups, sports teams, home school groups etc. So the principal went on to say, "He is going to need to be tested before we can place him to see which special needs may need to be addressed since he has never had a formal education. Out of 70 possible questions Caleb got 69 correct. I must not have been too bad at schooling my own children. Both of them throughout the school year were on the honor role. Autumn got the Presidential Academic Excellence award.

Hannah made great strides at home. Having been adopted at almost six years old from China she has a lot of catching up to do. She is a little trooper, with a great will to triumph, and a sweet little spirit of God. This year because of her special needs we are working with a virtual school. She will have an education tailor made to her needs and testing to help us work to bring her up to age and grade level. I will work hand in hand with a teacher who is assigned to Hannah. I think it should prove to be a very good fit for us and Hannah will still get the one on one that she really needs.

Rachelle will turn 24 on August 5th. Since she received her Pastoral credentials back in 2008 she has been on staff at our church heading up the College age ministry. Her main focus since she was seven years old has been missions. She has taken a two year missions internship position with Chi Alpha at UCLA and is expected to report on September 17th to start her duties. I will be moving her out there. That is going to be a tough one for me as I am so close to her. While she has been here at home though, she has done some awesome things. Rachelle officiated her first wedding ceremony between her older brother Jeff and his wife Vivian. She Baptized her little sister, Hannah and another young lady from church. She has done several missions trips three of which were to Haiti before and after the earthquake.

As mentioned above Jeff and Vivian got married on October 24, 2009. It was a beautiful ceremony. They make such a wonderful couple. I totally approve of my son's choice for a wife. She is an awesome fit for our family.

Nathan has always been my eccentric child, stopping at nothing to throw me a curve ball, but the bonds of motherhood go much deeper then any curve ball he could ever throw. I am here for him and praying for him.

It's edging closer to the start of the new school year and a new bus route for Hannah and I. Autumn will be in her Freshman year of high school and Caleb will start 7th grade, his first year of middle school.

Memorial Day

2009-05-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

Today I'd like to pause to remember the two people who meant the most to me in my life, my parents. I lost both of them in 1995. My daddy had been sick for years and my mother seemed to be the picture of health yet I lost her to cancer two months before my daddy lost his battle to cancer.

I have few regrets as they were the best parents and grandparents any kid could ever ask for. My biggest regret is that my younger set of kids never had the pleasure of meeting them, and that I didn't get to have them longer. I lost them when I was 34 years old.

The picture I've posted here was taken 19 years ago. My parents were holding my oldest daughter Rachelle when she was just 3 years old.

I don't think I'll ever stop missing them. So here's a toast to mom and dad, you made me who I am. You were the BEST!!! I'll Love you for ever!

In Loving Memory of,

Florence Goldie Floyd-Marrineau
January 24, 1918 - August 1, 1995

Charles Franklin Marrineau
April 5, 1915 - October 21, 1995

My Own Adoption Story

2009-03-24T08:33:00.000-07:00

Jan. 1, 1998 I purchased a new computer. Feb 26, 1998 when I was 36 years old, I was on that computer, surfing the net. I happened onto a site called find a person. I typed in my cousin’s name and the last city I had known him to live in. When my parents died in 1995 I lost track of people in my family. I was amazed to see my cousin's name address and phone number pop up.

I went into my kitchen away from the noise of my kids and the TV. I called my cousin and had a nice conversation with him. There was a question that had been nagging me since I had given birth to my children years before. During my pregnancies I would ask my mother for motherly advice and questions like what was it like when you had me? She would never give me a straight answer.

While I was on the phone with my cousin whom I had only seen 3-4 times in my life, and wasn't really close to, I asked him if my mother was really my mother. Since my brother and my father looked similar and I had some similar features to my brother I thought that maybe our father had fathered us out of his marriage to our mother and she being the wonderful person that she was, she accepted us as her own.

Down deep inside I wanted my cousin to say I was silly for even questioning it and of course they were my true parents. That didn't happen! He became deathly silent and after a long pause told me that he didn't want to make anybody mad. I told him well mom and dad died in 1995, there’s no one left to get mad.

As it turns out, both my brother and I were adopted by both of our parents. Neither were our biological parents. I asked him if we came from the same biological parents. He told me that he didn't think so.

Part of me was in denial. I wanted to believe that this was all some big practical joke. If I had been hit with a wrecking ball I don't think it would have blown me over as much as this crushing news did! I could hardly even function. My husband tried to take me to a very nice restaurant to make me feel better. I remember sitting there looking at all of the people who had their family with them and wondering if any of them could be related to me. I felt as though the whole room was spinning around me, that all of those people were living, that my life had stopped and was standing still.

Who was I? I knew I was still Dan's wife and the mother to my children, but who was I really? I used to walk in the mornings at a mall and I would look at the other walkers and wonder if any of them could be my mother.

What could have been so terrible that our parents had to hide it from us and take the secret to the grave? In the absence of fact the mind can concoct some pretty bizarre scenarios. I had an insatiable hunger to find out what happened and who our biological parents were.

I called my brother who is three years older then me. I talked to his wife first and she thought I should go ahead and tell him what I had found out. He got on the phone and told me that he had had a few questions himself.

My brother called our aunt and spoke to her about it. Our whole extended family knew of our adoptions, aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone but us. Our Aunt told my brother that both of our bio families had been friends of our parents! She thought that my brother was from a very familiar family whom we had played with their children and visited in their home numerous times in our childhood. She wasn't sure which family friends I came from.

I being an adoptive mom myself knew a bit about adoption and I also knew that records in the state of Kansas are open to public record. We drove an hour to Topeka, Kansas to the capitol to try to find our records. By the time the lady handed them over to us, all of the pertinent info had been deleted. It was a dead end.

My brother looked into the family he was told were possibly his bio family and later that evening he was on the phone with his Bio mom and many other family members. But I was still standing there with a big hole in my life.

Having filed my daughter’s adoption papers in the probate court of our county courts, I decided to check with them for my records. My parents lived in the same county all of my life. Within minutes I was holding my complete original adoption file in my hands. There in blue ink were my parent’s very familiar signatures! I couldn’t deny it any longer!

My biological mother’s name didn't ring a bell. After a fruitless search I decided to contact a search company. With the unusual spelling of my birth mother’s first name and her birth date, they found her in less then 24 hours. The woman at the Search Company called me and gave me her two most recent addresses, phone numbers, the kind of car she drove, the license plate number and even told me that it was a four cylinder car!

I drove to Leavenworth Kansas but that was a dead-end. The second address led me to the parking lot of the Kansas City Zoo. It was so frustrating! That was Friday March 6th, 1998. On Sunday March 8th, 1998, I was making pancakes for my family after church, the phone rang, and it was a man from the Search Company. He hadn't known that the other lady had already conducted the search. While I had him on the phone I told him that I didn't think the address was right. He pulled my file. Either in my excitement I had written the wrong number down or she read it off wrong. He gave me the right address!

I looked at my son who was fourteen at the time, told him to hurry up and eat because we were going to take a drive. He wolfed down his pancakes and swigged down his milk and we were on our way. We drove to the new address, there was the car, and it's license plate number I had been given. When I started out I wasn't sure what exactly I was going to do but I found myself turning into the driveway. We were not in a very good neighborhood so I told my son to stay in the van, lock the doors and go for help if it turned out bad.

I didn't know what to expect when I went to the door. From the angle of the entry as seen through the little window that ran down the side of the front door, the house appeared vacant. I heard a dog barking and saw the figure of someone coming my way. A blue eyed, strawberry blond woman, wearing a bathrobe, stood looking out the window. She wouldn’t open the door because I was a stranger to her and her little dog would run out. She said, “Yes, can I help you?” I knew that she was supposed to have known my parents so I asked her if she remembered Florence and Charles? All she could manage to say was, “ ARE YOU?!!!” And me, with a lump the size of a Buick in my throat could only nod my head YES!!! The door flung open and the dog shot out like a bullet. She pulled me in and held me in her arms and we both cried. She then proceeded to bounce around the living room. She was so excited!

She blurted out; “I need to call your SISTERS!” I said, SISTERS? Throughout my life I wished for a sister and I had one all along. My sister Shannon answered the phone; she had just gotten out of the shower. My bio mom asked my sister to guess who was standing in her living room. When she told my sister that it was me I could hear her screaming from the phone clear across the room. She told my bio mom not to let me leave and she would be right there. I was later told that Shannon got on her knees and said a prayer of thanks and screamed. Her children came running and thought their mother had lost her mind; On her knees screaming, and not a stitch of clothes on. Remember she had just come out of the shower.

My sister lived a little over an hour away. While I waited for her to get there I came to my senses enough to bring my son in out of the van. He must have wondered what the heck was going on in there. My sisters got there in record time.
Other then hair and Eye color I felt like I was looking at my twins. For the first time in my life, other then my own children, I looked like someone. My younger sister Rachael was visiting Shannon and came along. Shannon is 15 months younger and Rachael is 20 years younger then me.

As it turns out my brother was the grandson of one of my mother’s dear friends. Her teen daughter gave birth to him and was not ready to parent a child. The boys we used to play with were my brother’s young uncles. I was born on October 11, 1961. My birth mother signed her rights away. My parents were allowed to pick me up at the hospital on October 17th. My birth mother stood in a phone booth in the hospital lobby and watched them as they walked away with me. I had been the granddaughter of my mother’s other dear friend. She used to visit us frequently. She used to bring my sister Shannon over to play with me. On one occasion Shannon and I fought over my Barbie doll. She accidentally scratched my face. Our grandmother snatched her up and took her home to tell our mother what she had done to me. Our mother sat her down and told her that she must never hurt me, and that I was her sister. From that moment on I was never allowed to see her again.

Poor Shannon had to live with the guilt of having scratched me. One of the first things she said when she came rushing in is that she was sorry she had scratched me. To be honest, I didn’t even remember the incident.

The Irony of it all, I have had a strong desire all of my life to adopt. In January of 1997 My Husband, mother in law and I went to China to adopt our daughter Autumn. In July of 2000 my daughter Rachelle and I traveled to Thailand to adopt our son Caleb. In September of 2006 Autumn traveled with me back to China to adopt our new daughter Hannah, one month before Hannah turned six.

I also have three biological children Jeff will be 29 on April 3rd, Nate 25, Rachelle 22, Autumn is 13 and was adopted from China, and Caleb is 11 and was adopted from Thailand and Hannah is 8 and also was adopted from China.

I want to get the message out to the public that secrets kept are many times more painful then the actual truth. I lost both of my parents in 1995 to cancer and never got to ask them anything about our adoptions. I wonder what their reactions would have been had they been alive when we adopted our children.

I have had many people ask me if I am bitter about never having been told. I tell them no. I don't know what their reason was to keep it a secret but they were the best Parents I could have ever asked for. They were also the Best grandparents to my children. My only regret is that they never had the chance to be the same wonderful grandparents to my youngest three! My children really missed out!

As of Feb. 26, 2009, it will have been eleven years since I heard my earth shaking news. I have maintained a rather on again, off again relationship with my birthmother and the older of the two sisters. I am very close to my baby sister. Knowing my birth mother in many ways has been a terrible let down. My expectations were well above the level that fact actually afforded me.

I have a very healthy attitude should my children want to seek out their birthmothers. I have room in my heart to let my children love their birth families and our family. I love their birth mothers for choosing life and giving me these precious gifts.

It’s strange the bond that can be felt between a birthmother and her child who have been separated for 36 years. I can honestly say that I love my birth mother. I for the life of me can’t figure out exactly why. She has done nothing but reject me in one way or another since the beginning of my life and since I have been back in her life.

No one can take the place of my real mother and father, the mother and father who raised me. They were there for me at every turn of my life and I miss them greatly. Should my children ever find their birth family I wish them a much better outcome then what I was met with. I will always love my children in the same way my parents loved my brother and I and I will always be their mom. It is amazing how much Adoption has been a part of my life whether I knew it or not!

My Beautiful Daughters

2009-03-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

Rachelle and Hannah were goofing around with Rachelle's camera. Their brother Nathan had lighting set up in Rachelle's room to interview her for a film he was making for school. So Rachelle and Hannah took advantage of the lighting and sat up Rachelle's camera. Rachelle would focus and set the timer and then they would hop on the little sofa and strike some pose. I got some really beautiful shots of my precious daughters. I feel very blessed to have such wonderful kids.

Chinese New Year

2009-02-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

On Saturday afternoon, Feb. 7th, we celebrated the Chinese New Year at BoLings Chinese Restaurant, complete with the Ancient Lion Dance. Something about the Lion Dance always stirs my spirit and leaves me choked up. I am not certain why it has this affect on me but it does. Maybe it is because it is a reminder of the culture my girls left behind and just how far they had to travel to have the love of a forever family. Any way you figure it, it will always be my favorite part of the celebration. As the two lions danced into the room, Hannah's eyes got really big and she asked me if they were real. I said yes, this is the real Lion Dance from China and she then said, "No mamma, I saw some Mans under there." I asked her if she had ever seen anything like this in China and she told me no. I don't know if this is something that is regional or if maybe the foster family was too poor to travel to where the celebration took place. I'll have to look into it. Anyway, Gung Hey Fat Choy!

My daughter Rachelle

2008-12-18T21:51:00.000-08:00

I am happy to report that my daughter Rachelle has officially received her credentials. She is a pastor of the Assembly of God churches!!! She has worked so hard for over two years to achieve this honor. A package was delivered today addressed to Rev. Rachelle Hamilton. I took it up to the church to let her open it because I couldn't wait until she got home. I am so proud of her.

It's about time...

2008-12-04T00:03:00.000-08:00

... that I update my writing on this page. The picture below was taken on my 47th birthday with all of my kids and I. While I have three grown kids, the other three are rapidly growing up too. It's one of those blink and you'll miss it things. Not only does it blow my mind that Hannah has already been home two years but the fact that she is 8 years old, Caleb is 11 and in fifth grade, Autumn will be an official teen next month and is in 7th grade, Rachelle is 22 and is about a week away from being credentialed as a pastor, Nathan is 25, engaged to a very sweet girl and attending the Kansas City Art Institute, And last but certainly not least, Jeff is nearing 29 and is nearing an engagement a wonderful girl too.... All of this is mind blowing. It seems like yesterday that I was helping Jeffrey learn to walk.

I have the best kids on the planet!