Founder of Lifetime Adoption, Mardie Caldwell shares one of her favorite adoption stories about how a birthmother chose her adoptive family, which can be found in her book, “Adoption: Your Step-by-Step Guide”.
“The Cookie Mom”
Mona and Dan lived in the High Desert of Nevada with their son, Jake, who was four years old. They had adopted him through a state agency two years before and wanted to adopt again, so they called me.
Full-figured with her strawberry blonde hair cut short, Mona was outgoing and had a great smile. Dan was slender and handsome but, unlike his wife, was quiet and shy. Both were in their early thirties; neither had finished high school. Dan worked as a mechanic, Mona as a stay-at-home mom.
Our center started working on their profile. One photograph for the web page was of them standing with Jake in front of their neat double-wide modular home surrounded by sand, sagebrush and cactus.
I got to know them pretty well. They lived a simple and unhurried life centered on their home and family. They rarely went on vacation trips, and their extended family consisted of some friends who lived hundreds of miles away.
Mona and Dan worried that their profile wouldn’t stack up to those they’d seen of other adopting parents who had college degrees, a lot of money, big houses and lawns, grandparents nearby and Hawaiian vacations planned.
I asked Dan if there was anything special about Mona.
“There is one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Well, she’s famous for her chocolate chip cookies. They’re made from a secret recipe.”
Mona blushed and waved her hand in the air.
“Oh those old things,” she laughed.
In the profile we wrote that her cookies were the best around those parts. One month later, Mona and Dan were chosen by a pregnant birth mother named Sarah, who told me that the cookies were the thing that had first appealed to her.
She imagined her child coming home from school to chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven, then climbing into Mona’s soft lap to cuddle. Four other birthmothers, attracted by Mona’s warm smile and motherly appearance, asked about placing their children with the family living in the High Desert.
Around the office, Mona is remembered as our Chocolate Chip Cookie Mom. And I’ve got to tell you, hers were the best cookies I ever tasted, though she never would give me the recipe.
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Heidi Keefer is a Content Creator for Lifetime Adoption and has 15 years of experience in the field of adoption. An author of thousands of blog posts over the years, Heidi enjoys finding new ways to educate and captivate Lifetime’s ever-growing list of subscribers.
Heidi has a keen eye for misplaced apostrophes, comma splices, and well-turned sentences, which she has put to good use as a contributor to Lifetime’s award-winning blogs. She has written and published hundreds of adoption articles which explore the various facets of domestic infant adoption today.
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