Two Women Linked by a Special Gift: a Daughter




Stacy Cooper was on her own in 1999, when she was pregnant. Karen Smith and her husband were looking to adopt.


It is Friday morning which means it's time again for StoryCorps, in cities across this country the project records interviews between everyday people and today, we hear from Stacy Cooper and Karen Smith. Stacy Cooper was on her own in 1999 when she was pregnant. She did not feel ready to raise a child. At the time Karen Smith and her husband were looking to adopt, so the two women agreed to what's called an open adoption, Stacy Cooper remembers how that began.

I really at first didn't want to pick the parents but... I went through adoption agency that would give me information about certain families and just look them over and I kept going back to your profile if you would call it that, and I just, I knew it was something about what you had written in there, about how I think, you know, the adoption is a really selfless act and that was one thing that really stuck with me. I definitely think we made the right choice and I'm real happy that I decided to meet you because I don't think right now, I could have it any other way.

Well, Anna looks a lot like you, Stacy. Every time I see her eyes, in particular, and you know when she's got a lot of emotion, she has this way of kind of flushing, it's just amazing, it's just so you. What is the best of you that you hope she always keeps?

I really just hope that she has a love for life that she doesn't feel held back by anything. You know that if she feels that she wants to do something, she will stop at nothing and she will do it.

And she is the spunky little thing, she has always got these things, things that she has to say, she has had the biological questions of "Did I grow in you?" So it's like no- matter- factly, no, you grew in Stacy, and I'll talk to her about I think you're gonna be tall and I'll say, "That's because both your birth parents are tall." And she has at times, said to me, "You know, you're my real mother." And I will say, "no, you know, we're both real, she is your real birth mother, I'm your real adoptive mother." Right, there you go.

I'm prepared for one day the question or may be the teen angst, you know, comment of you're not my real mother. Really you're ready? Ok. So I think the toughest questions are yet to come, so what do you hope your relationship will look like with Anna when she is an adult.

I want to see her grow up. You know I think at some point when she turns 18, if she chooses to have me come to special events in her life that would be up to you and I think she would ask you anyway.

I would like you there for special events in her life and I want you to know that every year I remember just as plainly as the first day, just how grateful I am being able to be a mother. You gave me a gift, that I could just never, never thank you enough for .

And that goes both ways, somebody is raising, you know, the baby that I had, I mean that's, that's an incredible thing, it really is.

Stacy Cooper and Karen Smith, at StoryCorps in Hartford, Connecticut. Their conversation will be archived along with all StoryCorps interviews at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and you can subscribe to the StoryCorps podcast at NPR.org.
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spunky
plucky; spirited.
angst
a feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish.