South Carolina - Day 4

Somewhere in either South or North Carolina. It's all beautiful.

Today has been a long, exhausting and rather disappointing day. When we realized we would be coming back east, we checked and saw that we would just be five hours away from Jalen's birthmom (we'll call her 'L'). Consequently, we asked L if she'd like to have us visit her while we were here, or if she'd prefer to still have us fly her to Utah. We were relieved when she said she'd rather have us visit her while we were here because it would save us some money, even though it would make the trip more complicated. Had we not planned on meeting L, we would have left the kids home, I wouldn't have been bumped flying out here and we would have been able to fly home yesterday. If, if, if.

We had agreed to meet at the Roanoke zoo. We woke up at 6:30 and got everything ready in order to meet her on time. We drove five hours to get to the zoo. When we got there, David called L to tell her we were there. She said that she wasn't comfortable coming to the zoo because she only wanted to see Jalen for five or ten minutes. I was kind of bummed that we drove that far for such a short visit, but I tried to understand that it might be difficult for her. She asked if we could meet her at a park. We agreed to meet her in an hour so that Baylie could visit the zoo for a minute since we had been promising her during the ride that we were going to see some animals.

After the zoo, we called L to tell her we were on the way to the park. She said she wanted us to come to her home instead. David told her we were uncomfortable with that and based on our agency's recommendation, we would prefer to meet in a public place. She recommended a restaurant in her neighborhood and we agreed. So, we drove to the street where the restaurant was and felt a little uncomfortable as the neighborhood was somewhat sketchy, but we decided to move forward and just be cautious. When we called L to say we were on the street, she said we had hurt her feelings by refusing to go to her house and that we made her feel "ghetto." Because of that, she no longer felt comfortable meeting with us. I was glad David was the one on the phone, because by that time I was losing patience. We had flown across the country and driven five hours to meet her for 10 minutes and she wouldn't even come out to see Jalen. Even if she was upset with us, if she had really wanted to see him, we were there.

In my heart, I know she wanted to see Jalen. I think it was just emotionally too hard for her and she admitted that she didn't know how to act around us and was uncomfortable. David was very kind on the phone and apologized for us hurting her feelings. He reassured her that we didn't think poorly of her and that instead we respected her for her decision to place her baby with us. He was amazing. I was just grateful that Jalen was too young to know what was going on and that he wasn't hurt by this experience. Had he been older, it could have been devastating for him. I'm also sorry that L didn't get to see how cute and lovable Jalen is in person.

When L selected us to be the adoptive parents for Jalen, it was in large part because we agreed to take him back to visit her. After we learned that we had been misinformed about her knowledge of the birthfather, many people told us that we should consider that a good reason to refuse to visit with her. Regardless of that, David and I still felt a moral obligation to fulfill our side of the agreement. Now I feel we did that. I don't feel any further obligation to take Jalen back or to fly L out to see him. We'll never keep her from seeing him, but we won't initiate any future visits. For me, it is a relief to have at least made the effort and know that we tried.

We headed back to South Carolina and drove six hours to Charleston, making it an 11 hour road trip with only about an hour in Roanoke. I have to say that our kids are amazing. They were so good in the car and I am so proud of them. I also have to say that southern rest stops are the best - way better than those in the west.

We got to our hotel at almost 11:00 p.m. and have to get up at 3:00 a.m. for our flight. We'll have a super long lay over in Houston, so we plan to meet some friends and go to church at our old ward (congregation). Hopefully we're coherent!

At least the drive was absolutely beautiful. David and I couldn't believe how green everything was.

Lakes and rivers everywhere.

Wild poppies.

For those of you who don't know, my maiden name is Bayles (that's where Baylie gets her name), so I was fascinated by this road marker.