Wordless Wednesday: July 16, 2007

July 15, 2007

Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes,
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand
Six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?

How about love?
How about love?
How about love? Measure in love

"Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent

I'm going to go back there someday.

Let me tell you about our Ethiopian neighbor—okay, future neighbor.

Today Anna and I had lunch with a new friend (met her a year or so ago through a friend) who is adopting from Ethiopia. She just received her referral a couple weeks ago for a beautiful three-year-old girl. (Congrats, R.!) She lives just around the corner and a few blocks down from us.

Did you get that?

Someone else from our tiny little hick town is adopting from Ethiopia. And we are practically neighbors. What are the odds?

And so today I found myself again missing Ethiopia and unable to express why. Remembering the days of nervous waiting for court and travel dates, travel shots, packing lists, treasured photo updates.

I know we’ll go back to Ethiopia someday. But I don’t know when. I really want to sneak my jealous self into my neighbor’s suitcase. I want to smell the mercato on my clothes and hear dogs barking in the night. I want to sing with Kool and the Gang on the van radio and learn to say all of you ladies look lovely tonight. I want to see Solomon and Yezeshewai and the smiling nannies again. I want stand on that bridge in Harar where everything changed.

But it’s not my turn.

My part for now is to encourage and loan electrical converters and stand as evidence that one can indeed survive a 27-hour flight. This is my part, this is my place, for such a time as this. Until such time, perhaps, as another child is born at the right time but in need of a family, for such a time as that.

There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.
Part heaven, part space, or have I found my place?
You can just visit, but I plan to stay.
I’m going to go back there someday.
I’m going to go back there someday.

—The Muppet Movie

Flashback Ethiopia: Babe in a Denim Dress

Lately I have been amazed to find in my house not a tiny baby but a toddler in the making. Anna has grown so much, gotten so much more hair, and gotten so good at standing that already she doesn’t look so much like a baby anymore; she looks like a little girl, standing tall, ready to take on the world.

But sometimes when she is at her sweetest and most innocent, sleeping or waking up or drinking a bottle, she seems to shrink in my arms. She weighs next to nothing again. Her sometimes-chubby face seems tiny again—tiny nose, lips, cheeks, closed eyes, ears.

The third day we were with Anna, the nannies had dressed her in a denim overalls dress. She fell asleep on Aaron’s chest in the room we visited her in, and we marveled at her tiny hands, ears, lips, cheeks; her perfect skin and long eyelashes.

Today as I rocked her to sleep for her nap I found in my arms again a tiny girl in a denim dress, and in a flash I was brought back to Addis, to those first days of wonder and those first naps together. She looked every bit as small and soft and innocent today as she did then. She slept peacefully in my arms as I marveled at her tiny face, her perfect skin, her precious curls. She hasn’t changed at all. She is still my baby girl.