Une Envie de Sel

Looking back:
I was looking for a file for someone in some of my external storage this morning, and came across these photos from almost exactly a year ago. This was just before Q's second cleft surgery, so her upper lip was only partially attached. She was still a little uncertain, a little unsteady, a little lost.
But turn her upside-down and tickle her belly, and that smile would emerge...that smile that lit up our world the very first time we saw it, and held so much promise for the future.

There were all sorts of concerns when we first considered adopting a child with a lifetime of surgical needs. So many cautions and warnings and doubts from those around us. What nobody thought to warn us about was the one thing that we encounter now every single day: the perilous, dizzying depths of that love for a child, the overwhelming joy that she brings to every moment, and the degrees by which, in equal proportion, the fragile confines of the heart become even more thin-skinned, more vulnerable, and more achingly translucent.