REMINDERS

What do these three things have in common: Clean & Clear Morning Burst Face Wash, the television show The View, and Del Monte canned mixed vegetables? Reminders. It's hard to explain...you know how a certain scent, food, or even season can take you back to a specific time in your life? During the first few months of my pregnancy when I left high school to become home-bound tutored (yes, Mr. Miller, my awkward math teacher, came to my house every Wednesday afternoon and asked what was cooking for dinner every single time.) Since I wasn't attending classes at good old Moon Area High School anymore due to severe hyperemesis gravidarum (the joys of morning sickness, ladies and gentlemen) I had a lot of free time on my hands. I would wake up in my house (alone, since my parents were at work and my sisters were at school) feel sad, wash my face every morning with Clean & Clear Morning Burst Face Wash, feel sad, watch The View, feel sad, talk to Robbie on the phone, feel sad, and eat an absurd amount of Del Monte canned mixed vegetables to ensure that the babe was the healthiest babe ever. I settled into a routine. So when I came home to Pittsburgh for Spring Break this past week, I had the strangest feeling in my stomach when I used the Morning Burst for the first time since I was pregnant four years ago. And when I went downstairs and watched The View on the exact same couch as before, I experienced it again--the feeling of being sick to my stomach, sad, and depressed--simultaneously. All from washing my face and watching a television show? Yes! How strange it was, but it was a reminder of the intense emotions that I had felt. And we all know how emotional pregnant women can be. I genuinely believed that those women on The View were my friends.

Pittsburgh is a great city, and it will always be home to me. But when I left for North Carolina, I never wanted to look back. I literally wanted to "blow the top off that joint." Such a change in attitude my community had when they found out that I was pregnant. The same community who had praised me for winning the WPIAL gold medal in the 50 freestyle and put my face on the front page of the Moon Record after being crowned homecoming queen were so quick to judge. "Did she do it on purpose?" "Are Amy and Robbie going to get married?" "Why is she giving it up for adoption?" In fact, I distinctly recall an incident when a former swim team member's parents (who used to tell their daughter to be more like me, a role model) would not allow their daughter to speak to me again. "That blasphemous Amy Hutton!" Moon Township.

It was the saddest day of my life, the day that Robbie and I signed the adoption papers in the hospital, and I was at a breaking point. My family wanted me to keep Deanna. So many others wanted to see De and Don become parents for the first time. I literally felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. I didn't know right from wrong. At the end of my rope, I decided to make a deal with God. I said to Him, "If I do what you are asking me to do and allow these people to raise my daughter, the only thing I ask is that I will never regret this decision." ...and he never broke our promise. I am so thankful for the wonderful life I have been given, and I absolutely love De, Don, Deanna, and Hank...but I will never ever ever use Morning Burst facial cleanser again...and that's a promise that I will never break!