I am happy to share it with you. This is my mother's story. It is the story of how she realised her immense desire to be a mother. And therefore a little bit my story too. Perhaps a little special. I am a happily adopted child. And in our region, thanks to three adoptions of four girls, and thanks to the famous headmaster of our primary school, Lad Smrekar, the prejudice against adopted children has been considerably reduced.
Because people tend to think negatively about things that are alien to them. And it is right and very necessary for someone who knows the truth from experience to speak out about such things, to dispel unfounded assumptions. One of these truths is: I have a mother AND a parent. Two different people. Why? I say with all respect and gratitude to the one who carried me for nine months in her womb, gave me life and the possibility to be loved unconditionally, simply a parent. But the title "mother" is reserved in my heart only for Her who hugged me, cuddled me, spent nights by my side, wiped my nose and my bottom, taught me my first steps, my attitude to myself, to the world... The One in whose eyes I was the most beautiful girl and the most precious gift of life. My MOM.
She was mostly known to others as Jorgat's Betka. A tall, strong, always smiling woman with a sparkling spirit. Everyone knew she was witty, energetic. She was popular among the neighbours. Hard-working, always cheerful, efficient, always ready to play a joke, to make everyone a quick cup of coffee, naturally intelligent, a warm woman with brown eyes, a soft smile, short brown curly hair. She loved to sing and sang beautifully. Always at work, loudly, so that she could be heard by the neighbours. Ati really loved Mum and knew how to show it in his own reserved way. Mum didn't know restraint, but what she carried in her heart, her mouth spoke.
... or sang. And together they have walked the hard road to the parenthood they so wanted. The years passed with their father's job as a truck driver and work on a small farm in the beautiful village of Dolnja Prekopa. Because of his job, France would come home only in the evening, tired but happy. Like anyone who does his job honestly and well. That's why the work on the farm was mainly on Betka's shoulders. She did it with joy and great diligence. But despite the serenity of their hearts and all the love they had for each other in the hard farming environment, something was very lacking... And so one day, after fifteen years of the torments of infertility treatment, she sent a letter to the Ljubljana Centre for Social Work, expressing her great desire to have a child. And so, on a spring day in 1974, Betka and Franček's fates were forever intertwined with mine. And shortly after the birth of the "little girl without a name", who was placed as a candidate for adoption in the Dečji dom (today's Maternity Home), on 11 July, a postman brought a letter to Dolnja Prekapa number 10... And when a neighbour announced: "Betka, the postman has come, he has a letter for you, from Ljubljana!", Betka dropped her hoe and ran out of the field at a run. I think she knew in her heart what was written in the letter she had been waiting for for fifteen long years. I was probably, like the other children in the Children's Home, changed and fed as a matter of duty. But I don't know if any of the nurses considered it their duty to take us, little birds without a nest, into their arms for just a minute, to hug us, to stroke us...
But from the day I was set up for adoption, that changed for me. Twice a week, despite working so much, Mum would get on the bus, because cars were not like the leaves and grass around the house they are today, and drive two hours to the capital, a hundred kilometres away, to take me in her arms for half an hour. Yes, she spent half a day driving so that she could be with a little baby for an hour, whom she did not even know whether she would be allowed to keep. So on the first day, she noticed that I was not very well looked after, because the skin in the creases of my arms and legs and under my chin, on my neck, was inflamed, sloppily wiped. She tidied me up as quickly as she could and dared. The very next time she came to see me, she gave the sisters coffee, which in those days was almost considered gold, asking them to take a little better care of me, with the argument of a simple, deeply loving heart:
"Al' that's my baby now!"
And indeed, from then on, every time I visited her, I was dressed in clean clothes, washed, freshly changed. How many little big things a loving heart can do, isn't it?
That's how I came into their lives. That's how I got a warm and loving home. How many of you who were born into the family can say as I did: I was wanted and loved, and in my father's eyes, in his posture, I could see the pride and admiration that only a deeply loving father can show his daughter. How many of you can honestly say that you know you were a gift and a joy to your parents?
P.s.: My dear mother went to her heavenly home on 15 May 2009 at 18:30, following my father who had made the journey five weeks earlier, on 08.04.2009. Her husband and child did not meet her.
Franja Jorga Arnšek, 12. 02. 2025
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