My oldest son arrived in my life unexpectedly in the fall of 2004. I was sleeping; unaware as he was brought into the world. He was born to a woman that I had known in junior high. I remember her as athletic and blonde. She was also a known rule breaker with a taste for trouble. She attended school sporadically. Other kids whispered that her mother was on drugs. I was the girl in the back right hand corner of class with the frizzy hair. My own parents were still double checking the books I was reading and making sure that I had enough lunch money.

I was a wife and a nurse and the mother of two daughters on the night that he was born. She was single and homeless and a mother of five who was addicted to methamphetamine. And though we hadn’t seen each other in eighteen years, we were about to share a son.

When my husband and I discussed adopting a child, I was picturing an older child. A girl, actually. With pigtails and brown eyes. I was going to teach her to read and paint her fingernails. My daughters wanted another sister. Providing a home for an older child was what our foster care classes had prepared us for. But when the social worker called that early September morning, I knew that my son had found his way to me.

We were warned about the lack of prenatal care, the drug withdrawal and the unknowns of his future development. We were advised that adoption was a possibility, but not a guarantee. My husband was concerned; I was unfazed. The circumstances of his birth were not his fault. He was our son; if for a few months or a lifetime, and I couldn’t get to him fast enough.

Though I kept it to myself, knowing who his mother was brought him closer to me. I knew his story. People would wonder aloud how a mother could use drugs while pregnant. I didn't wonder; I knew. I didn’t know my son’s mother as a thirty-one-year-old adult. I knew her when she was thirteen, and that explained everything. He was getting his diaper changed when I first met him. He was the only baby in the nursery at the time. As I stood over him, his little body shook with the tremors of withdrawal. His nurse wrapped him tightly and offered him to me. His body would heal over time. My former classmate would continue to self-destruct.

She has been in and out of prison for his entire life. He has grown from that little baby with the trembling limbs into a sturdy, athletic eight-year-old boy. And he’s got those brown eyes I was dreaming of so many years ago. People who know how his life began to ask me if he’s okay now.

The answer is the same for him as it is for my three biological children; I think so. He’s strong and engaging and amazingly funny. He has a stubborn streak. He takes medication to help him focus. He struggles more in school than my daughters do, but less so than my biological son. Twice a week, I drive them both to their reading tutor. They argue over who has to go first. To anyone who doesn’t know that one of them is adopted, it makes perfect sense.

I haven’t seen my son’s birth mother since we were teenagers, but we’ve exchanged a handful of letters. The first one that she sent to me was hurried; the words slanting down across a page apparently ripped from a notebook. She apologized for the way things had to be, and asked me to tell her son that she would always love him. This was shortly after she had voluntarily relinquished her parental rights. She wrote that she had no choice; she had already lost custody of her other children.

She was out of chances; down on her luck. Folded inside that note was a picture of her that I’ve saved for myself as much as my son. In it, she is standing on a beach with a smile on her face, her blonde hair wind blown and her eyes looking directly into the camera.

Just before my son's sixth birthday, she began to send letters and updates addressed to him, but I’m the only one who reads them for now. Her correspondence varies from hand made birthday cards that spill glitter when opened to heartfelt letters that detail the mistakes that she has made in her life and the regrets that she fears she will carry forever. Other times she writes to him about what she is going to be when she gets out of prison. She writes in large, loopy cursive about how she dreams of becoming a dog trainer. She writes about how she is now a grandmother. She tells him that she has nine years left of her sentence. My mind flashes forward to my son as a young man, and I think of how quickly his childhood is slipping away.

Recently, she sent an updated picture of herself. Standing in front of a book case that doesn’t look real, she is wearing a gray sweat shirt that is too big for her. I can tell from the way she is holding her arms that she is restrained in some way. Her hair is going gray and falls around her face. But I still recognize the eyes. I can see her in him sometimes when he’s running on the soccer field or riding his bike down the street. I think of her as I watch him work on his writing assignment at our dining room table. They are both left handed. And I know that there would be no him without her.

Jennifer Endahl is a Registered Nurse and the mother of six. She lives with her family in Iowa City, Iowa. She can be reached at: jenendahl@hotmail.com