Lily Rose - Fiction
The lilies weren’t just her favorite flower, they were also her namesake. Her parents were hippies that didn’t know how to be parents. They knew how to make love and birth a child, but after that, they were lost. That’s why they gave Lily Rose up for adoption at just six weeks old. She didn’t even know their names, but she knew they were living in a van and traveled the countryside selling tea. Lily was adopted by a lovely couple in Princeton Arkansas. Marjorie and William Jones never kept the fact that Lily was adopted a secret. They didn’t want her to think they were liars, so they told her all about it when she was 6 years old. They knew their kid was special and mature for her age pretty early on. Her blue eyes were so inquisitive and you could see the wheels turning when she was trying to figure out something. One day in June, Lily came to her parents who were sitting at the kitchen table and asked them why she had dark hair and they both had blonde hair. William was the first to break the silence, after glancing at Marjorie. She nodded and William pulled Lily onto his knee and rested his head against hers. She loved the smell of his light cologne and gave him a big hug around his neck. “Lily, we won’t keep anything from you because you are a very smart kid and you’d find out on your own. We love you so much and were so thankful for the day you came into our lives. You were six weeks old and no bigger than a bread basket.”
Lily pulled away slightly so she could see her dad’s face and her eye brows furrowed just a bit as she absorbed the words he had just said. At six years old, this beautiful old soul said, “I was six weeks old when I was born? That doesn’t seem right.”
Both parents laughed and that made Lily laugh too. For good measure, William tickled Lilly lightly on her belly. “Kid, you are wonderful! No, you were were not six weeks old when you were born. You birthday was May 15th 1986 and we first met you six weeks later. You were born to another mom and dad and they were not able to take care of you and wanted to give you every chance for a healthy and beautiful life, so they decided to find another family who could take better care of a growing kid. That’s called adoption and that’s how we came to be your parents. Marjorie and I tried for years to have kids and it just didn’t happen. We knew we wanted to have kids and if we couldn’t do it ourselves, then there must be some little munchkin that needed love and a chance. We signed up to be adoptive parents and the very next day, we got a call from our case manager. She had just been informed of a little baby named Lily Rose that needed a good home to come to. We knew right then that it was meant to be. We drove over to Tulip, the next town, over and met you for the first time. You were wrapped in the softest pink blanket and your dark brown hair was a mop on top of your head, kinda like it is now.” William tousled her brown locks with a big hug afterwards. “How you feeling Lily?”
Lily took a moment to think about everything he’d just told her and glanced over at Marjorie. She reached out a little hand and Marjorie took it without hesitation. “Mom, you were the first thing I remember seeing. I remember seeing your face that day, but I remember dad’s cologne. The same one he’s wearing now. I don’t know how, but I felt connected to you both that day. I felt that I had come home.”
The Jones family sat there in silence for a very long time and just hugged each other as the sun sent beautiful rays of light into the kitchen window, sending promises of a beautiful day.