Not everyone who came here wanted to forget the past. Some simply wanted a support system for whatever decision that they eventually made because there was nothing or no one at home to give it to them. They needed someplace to go to think about why they believed what HE said. And why they were so easily swayed to disregard the way that their mama had brought them up.

There were others who believed that they were in love, but were told it was really lust. Besides they were too young to know the difference and so was he, so signing the papers was best for everybody involved. I was the second oldest girl/woman….so I should have known better. The little wisdom I did have, I shared with the rest…willingly, almost maternally. Yet, I was literally in the same boat as them. What grand knowledge would I have to impart? Blind leading the blind, most likely.

Not everyone was meant to be a mother. Patti was the oldest and couldn’t wait to ‘drop the bastard’ as she would often call her unborn. She was so disagreeable about her situation that most of her venom was aimed squarely at that most innocent; I’d often wondered if the pregnancy was the result of an attack.

Lisa at 16, I could imagine was easily one of the most popular girls in her school. Her friends thought that she was spending the summer with her grandparents in the country. That’s usually how these little ‘accidents’ were handled. No need to ruin her future because of one silly mistake. Even as her belly grew to enormous proportions, Lisa still thought she was hot shit. The only time that I saw her express any type of emotion is when she’d changed her mind in the hospital and her parents forced her to sign them anyway. I hope that she was reunited with her daughter who would be 30 now, because she was devastated as she came back to pack and go back home with her parents.

The home was like a college dormitory. We slept three girls to a room, sharing stories about how we got there. We were kept on a schedule of breakfast, lunch and dinner at set times…..good nutrition was important for the baby whether it was going home with you or not. There was the television room where we all became soap opera addicts and bonded over the fact that there were other people in worst situations than us….even if it was fiction.

Once a week, we were shuttled to the nearby shopping center to shop for necessities which naturally included baby clothes. We were encouraged to exercise and I’m proud to say that I played on our volleyball team until two weeks before I delivered. There was a nurse midwife who examined us every week to see how we were doing. She was loved by all the girls because she took the time to listen not just about our physical aches….but the ones emanating from our hearts.

There were quite a few of us who decided to raise our children on our own. I can’t remember any who would be going back to co-parent with willing fathers. We had made the choice to be single mothers and as each of us was handed our bundle of joy, we hid the fear that we would be woefully inept in doing right by them. We prayed for the best and planned for the worst. But I think we believed we could do it because of the encouragement, support and a refusal to stand in judgment from the soldiers who were fighting the battle for mothers like us.