Une Envie de Sel

 Q's hand-painted Christmas cards drying in a doorway.

 She has quite a graceful hand, don't you think?

If you tilt your head to the side, you can see that she's painted the letters of her name into some of these. One of the others is a deliberate "rorschach", although of course she doesn't know the history of this type of imprint.

And in case you're wondering, the framed Mao-related magazine covers on the walls are pages from Mao-era magazines (Life, and others of the time) which I bought from used book vendors during the years of our adoption process. I'm an occasional collector of '60s print publications, and in all my pre-adoption research and reading on China, its history, philosophies, religions etc, I could not resist these. 

I remember the moment very well because we had just bought this house. My husband was working as sous chef for a prestigious restaurant downtown, and I was prepping, painting and furnishing the house on my own over the course of several weeks...all the while daydreaming, naturally, of the unknown child who would occupy the fourth bedroom at some undetermined time in the future.