Muses

Gotcha. Eleven Years Ago.

Eleven years ago today, we walked up the courthouse steps and into the judge’s chambers.

I held a thriving six month old wrapped in a starched linen dress in the lightest of blue.

These days she’s into earrings and lip gloss, more than the bottle.

A bundle I had prayed for, wept over and grieved about for five years.

Adoption is not for the weak of heart.

But sometimes your heart is so big it has to search for another.

Most people don’t get adoption. Like I can’t get the terror of a cancer diagnosis or the grief of losing a spouse or parent.

Not to say — heaven forbid — that I won’t get to know these things intimately but until you walk through certain challenges in life you can’t begin to understand.

Being unable to get pregnant and bear a child when everyone around you is finding a baby in their belly as easily as going to the store and picking up your favorite ice cream hurts.

More than you can ever imagine.

I did not pursue adoption to “help” a child.

I did not pursue adoption out of any altruistic notion.

I went through the endless, scary process of filling out paperwork, homestudies, home inspection (the two occasions that you literally could eat off the floors in my kitchen) and the waiting to see if the birthparents would sign the papers —

Out of a mad desire to ease the pain of not being able to give birth and watch a child blossom to all they were created to be.

These days, I don’t think so much about adoption. She is mine and I am hers.

August 22 is the exception.

Today we buy a cake, eat dinner out and celebrate.