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How I love her.
I love her like bitter chocolate. I love her like summer rain on your face after a drought. I love her like dancing in the moonlight on cool grass. I love her like the first love you ever had. I love her like the beating wings of turtledoves on the pink air of dawn. I love her so much it actually hurts. It hurts under my breastbone. It makes me want to ghasp for air. It fills me up like helium until my skin feels stretched tight.
Sometimes, I am struck dumb by the idea that one fragile hair's breadth of difference might have kept us from ever knowing her face. Had we waited just a little longer to decide we wanted to give parenthood a try. Had we hesitated even a few days longer wondering whether we could afford adoption. Had we chosen a different program, a different agency. Had we not met and fallen in love just at a point when our lives were in transition. Had we not discovered the Waiting Child (special medical needs) program, and dived headfirst into it, impetuously (or so it seemed to some of our doubters), in a matter of days, we would not have had access to the orphanage, the program, the system that allowed us to be matched with Q.
The international adoption world is mercurial at best, nerve-shattering and even heart-breaking at worst.
Bottom line: we were incredibly, profoundly, unspeakably fortunate. Just nine months after meeting her for the first time (I can't believe it hasn't even been a year) we can not imagine our lives without her.
We are like small planets circling around her very bright sun. Our lives literally revolve around her. My husband will snatch 15 minutes from his workday to drive home in order to see her smiling face over dinner break. When I put her down for a nap, I'm lucky if I go twenty minutes without the temptation to sneak in and see her sleeping form, pat her tiny back, stroke the sleep-damp, spikey hairs over her temple. Sometimes at night, before I go to bed, I'm almost irresistibly tempted to wake her, just to hear her rusty giggle and feel the strong wriggle of her body under my hands...to make sure she's still living, still OK, still happy.
Actually, the truth is, we do go in and harrass her late at night, after my husband comes home from work. We lean over her crib and pat her back and tuck a blanket around her whisper words of love in her small, tightly-curled pink ears. And here's the thing: when we say "I love you" to her while she's sleeping, she actually chuckles in her sleep.
It is the best sound in the world.
13 comments:
des mots si forts, personnels et universels à la fois, poignants et doux...
c'est très beau
Je pleure comme un imbécile. L'amour que vous prenez pour le Q est simplement beau. Je vois comment vous la regardez et comment elle vous regarde. Mère et fille.
I'm teary-eyed, too. What a lovely love-note to your little Sun Princess.
How lovely and how true... it really is incredible to think about all the paths that didnt lead us to our precious ones! I still hurt every day I love my sweet A so much and I hope I always will!
I hope you are planning on printing out this blog in some kind of physical book form for Q later on. You are actively creating such a rich and full history for her. This history will help her when the time comes that she becomes aware that there is a tiny part of her that is different. She will be able to see and read and connect to this amazing life that is hers. The stars simply landed her on another continent, but you were there to bring her home as soon as the Moon told you where she was.
Guess what?
I still sneak in M's bedroom, watching her sleep and breath peacefully. And I kiss her and whisper her Je t'aime mon amour and cry when she smiles at me in her sleep.
It just grows bigger and bigger every single day.
I'm so glad that people have enjoyed this post.
Lovepic, merci. Ces mots signifie beaucoup.
Yoli, I wasn't aware that you could write so beautifully in French! Bravo.
FDChief, I know you know the feeling.
hotpickles - thanks again for your words, and your shared sentiments.
Lonnie - I will find a way to preserve these bloggy ramblings for her (as excessive and ponderous as they are!) I intended to make a "life book" for her (traditional in adoption) but I find little time for much besides my blogs and my work. So...the blogs may well have to suffice, in some form or other. Technology, you know, has a life of its own, and I can only try to keep up.
Juliette - I never knew that, about how they actually hear you when you talk to them in their sleep, and how it makes them glad to hear your declarations of love...even in their deepest subconscious. Isn't that absolutely amazing??
I a so taken by your sincerity and your deep love for your girl. I have never read more beautiful words from a mother to her child. Q is such a lucky girl to have a mommy and daddy that adore her so. I believe in my heart that you would have found her no matter what, she had already picked you.
This is something I found on a friends blog. I haven't used it but it seems very interesting
http://www.blurb.com/
This made me tear up. So sweet. Your little one is adorable.
PS Hooray for Colorado!
beautiful...your writing is lovely and such a special gift to have found your daughter out in the world. she too is lucky to be blessed with such love from you. I once wrote about international adoption and loved what Angelina Jolie once said - "Some women are meant to give birth to their children but I knew I was meant to find my children out in the world..."
wonderful post..it brings tears in my eyes..
first time visitor...your comment on mine led me here. thanks. what a beautiful post to find upon arrival. i also believe that it wasn't chance or luck that brought you together...you were picked for each other and everthing happened to make it so. you can hardly blame her for chuckling.
This was too good for words. Thank you is all I can say.
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