Paula Clemins gave birth to her one and only child, a Daughter named Melanie, only eight days after her own 16th birthday. That was now a little over 18 years ago, but to the loving and dotting single Mother, it still seemed like yesterday.
At 35, Paula was a customer service specialist at Logan Airport in Boston. It was a job, stressful as it was, that Paula had began just after she had finished high school herself. With a child at such a young age, no help from Melanie's nonexistent Father and born into a relatively destitute family of her own, college for Paula had never even been in the equation.
Through an unimaginable amount of hard work and sacrifice however, Paula had raised Melanie and gotten her through school with good enough grades to get her into the University of Massachusetts.
Paula had purposefully put any sort of social life for herself on the backburner while raising Melanie, both to avoid any distraction in her priorities as a single parent and to also show her Daughter she didn't need a man in her life to make something of it. In truth, it wasn't all that hard of a sacrifice for Paula to go without a man in her life considering she had gradually come to the conclusion that she had some strongly bi-sexual tendencies. Ones that Paula inherently knew, because of her strict moral upbringing, she'd never be able to openly pursue when it came to an official public relationship, but ones nonetheless she had delved into during the occasional weekend tryst when Melanie would be away with her Grandparents.
Not only had Paula been able to raise Melanie with the grades and enough money saved up to be the first person in her immediate family to go to college, she had also thankfully been able to instill enough street smarts in her Daughter about how the world worked, especially when it came to men. Paula had asked many times, and had every belief that when Melanie would tell her she was still a virgin, that she still truly was.
Like any person who puts so much energy, not to mention their own sense of accomplishment in the development of another person, when that other person is out of the picture, the adjustment of re-discovering one's self can be hard. And that was certainly the case for Paula when Melanie went away for her first semester at college. While the empty nest did provide some much longed for freedom of her own, it had been so long since Paula could be a little selfish, she frankly had forgotten how.
She did try and go out with a couple of men she'd met at work that had long been badgering her for a date, but it was basically a matter of going through the motions. Even though she was attracted on some level to a few of them, she just didn't feel any chemistry with any man she encountered. Paula did however click with a couple of the women she'd been seeing, and now had a place to bring them back home for the night to with Melanie away at school, but she knew deep in her heart, she'd probably never come out of the closet.
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All the preparedness, self confidence and decision making Paula had thought she'd equipped her Daughter with however, ended up exploding in her face. About two months into Melanie's Freshman year, just as Paula was beginning to explore and enjoy her new found freedom, Melanie called in tears from school.
Perhaps it was the free-flowing alcohol or the pressure to fit in. Perhaps it was the endless suppy of good looking and sweet talking young men who hovered constantly without the watchful eye of her Mother to answer to, or perhaps it was just fate, but Melanie had found herself pregnant before her first trip home that semester.
Paula went numb and nearly dropped the phone when Melanie's sobbing words came across the line. She had raised her Daughter the best she could and yet there Melanie was, in nearly the same predicament Paula had found herself in nearly two decades earlier.
The initial wave of shock that was boiling through Paula's senses after hearing her Daughter had gotten pregnant intensified tenfold when the next revelation came out of Melanie's mouth.
Paula listened to her Daughter in stunned and angry silence as Melanie told her she'd already aborted the baby. Unable to muster a response, all Paula could do was sit there and allow Melanie to spill her guts about how she'd met a great guy named Andy who was Junior at UMass, and that she'd conceived the very first time they'd had sex.
The words, 'pregnancy', 'abortion', and 'Andy', all mixed together into a toxic stew inside Paula's head as she fought for something coherent to say. Internally, she knew that despite her Catholic upbringing, Melanie had made the most prudent choice. Even though she'd never admit it out loud, Paula knew it would have probably been in her best interest to have an abortion when she got pregnant all those years ago. But in making that decision to keep Melanie, perhaps out of guilt over those long submerged feelings, or the fact that she was just a dutiful and loving Mother, she sacrificed in earnest, at every turn, to give her only child everything she could.
And now in this ultimate moment of need, Paula struggled for the right thing to say. Somehow the two, as they always had as Mother and Daughter, started talking and as the back and forth continued, the tension began to ease. Despite the bombshell Melanie had unloaded on her Mother early in the conversation, Paula had decided to try and talk about other stuff, school, upcoming holiday plans, anything but the dreadful news Melanie had sprung on her.
That worked for the better part of five minutes until Melanie let the next bombshell slip.
"So have you seen the guy who got you pregnant since....the abortion?" Paula asked against her better judgment.
"Well.......," Melanie hesitated. "Yeah....we're kind of still seeing each other."
Everything inside Paula's psyche screeched to a halt as a bitter wave of disbelief swept through her.
"You're still seeing him......?" Paula groaned.
"....Yes....," came Melanie's monotone response. "I was hoping you'd maybe let me bring him home with me to meet everyone when I come home for Thanksgiving in a few weeks?"
Paula sat there, the cellphone cold against her burning ear as her Daughter's query hung in the air.
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Paula spent the next several weeks brooding over everything Melanie had confided. While she knew pregnancy and abortion were obstacles many girls Melanie's age had to overcome, Paula had always raised her Daughter to be better than all those other children. And Paula struggled mightily with the realization that no matter what control and influence she tried to exert, Melanie was in fact human and capable of making mistakes.
So in trying to rise above everything Melanie had been through during that first semester away at school, Paula agreed to let Melanie bring her boyfriend Andy home for Thanksgiving weekend, no questions asked.
