Dear Aunt Silvia,I am a married woman and have been married for the last twenty years but up to now my husband and I have not been blessed with children. All this time my husband has stood by me from his domineering family members , who insist that he should divorce me so that he can marry a younger woman who will give him children- not knowing that he is the one with the fertility issue. I had a baby when I was in college abroad over twenty five years ago; I conceived and gave birth to a baby boy whom I left with the father and paternal grandparents. After the death of his father, my son started communicating with me regularly and he now wants to visit me , but I have refused because I don’t know what I will tell my family members and my husband now after hiding his existence for twenty five years. I am getting old and I need my son with me- but I don’t know how to go about opening this Pandora box. Please help me.Beatrice. Dear Beatrice,I don’t know where the culture of hiding children came from, but believe you me the number of women hiding children they had before marriage is quite large. Others have guts to bring them to their home and lie to their spouses that the child is either an orphan left by a relative or some other funny story. But then the question is this- Why live in a life of secrecy? What is wrong with saying the truth about your child? Beatrice it is funny how you have lived for twenty years in a childless marriage yet you have your own son, but cannot bring yourself to tell anyone about it. Why live in a scorned life, when you very well know that you are a healthy woman who could have enjoyed motherhood if at all you would have told your husband about your son from the first time you two met? Have you ever thought about what your son is thinking and his feelings towards you for having dumped him for twenty five years? And now you do not even want him to come and see you for the first time in his life? Have you any idea what you are putting this young man through? I don’t know about you, but any woman who has undergone the experience of motherhood, even the street urchins will tell you, they would rather be hungry and spend nights in cold alleys but with their children tied behind their backs. It is now or never, call your husband first and tell him your story, you must also remember that as you speak to your husband about your son, he is bound to feel betrayed for a while, if he is an understanding person he will forgive you and embrace your son as his own, if he refuses to take your child in, just remember that he might be your husband but not your relative- but your son is. Thereafter you can call members of your family and break the good news to them as well. There is nothing which comes close to preciousness like a child, it was sang that a child is not a dress where you can go and ask someone to lend you for a night, therefore seek the motherly heart in you and ask your son to come to you, so that you too can experience the love of a child to his mother and vice versa. Ends
