Through the Crowd

Dear Henry and Hazel, 
Last week, on an ordinary day, I drove across town to pick you (Henny) up from school. Hazel and I had been home all day, pulling our stained and worn carpet from the house to make way for gorgeous bamboo floors.  Tired and worn from the work and a whiny and board Hazel, I pulled into the long line of cars filled with people picking up their kids.  I had lazily picked up some cheeseburgers and fries for a late, late bad lunch just to have it done.  My impatience building, working to get back to work on the floors,  I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel.  And then one of those moments I tuck away to replay at random moments where I realize you are growing up, and rather than face that I think of that time when you were really cute...I looked in the rear mirror and saw you (Hazel) mugging your cheeseburger chewing face in the sun with a scrunched up smile and sparkly eyes catching mine, a smile just for me and a gleeful, "I LOVE YOU, MAMA!"  I love you, too, baby girl.  and the sun was shining on the kids waiting on the sidewalk in that highlighting way it does in late winter as you are gifted a spattering of days with sunshine and a hint of warmth, full of promises for the spring to come.  As people were passing around I began the search for my boy.  My head bobbing back and forth, eye line weaving between little kids, all looking for their place, in their cars, with their people.  And then there it happens.  A pause when your eyes and mine meet, we evaluate, a heartbeat pause, and then recognition, yep! that's him, that's her...we belong together...you belong to me, I belong to you...smile of acceptance of that fact, joy of that fact and you trot over to the van and get it.  "Hello Henny! How was your day!"  I get this honor.  I get this responsibility.  When I feel these times I think of your birthmom's who are proud of their decisions and love us all so deeply, especially you two squirrels. I don't take it for granted.  It is small, yet it is everything. 

 Maybe this sentimental post comes on the edge of finding out that the agency who helped with your adoptions closed down...leaving a lot of families waiting to become parents without any services but money paid for those services, leaving birth parents and expecting parents without counseling when they really need it, leaving me feeling like something changed for the worse with them along the way that they could just leave without helping these families set up the next steps for their plan to build a family.  We were grateful for the positive experience we had with their Indianapolis branch and I know our counselors were all in for the families...They too have a loss.  I just wish the high ups were all in as well.  Thoughtfully rolling this bankruptcy out with the same ethics they attempted to apply to their adoptions would have made a great deal of difference.  My gratitude this week that we have two kids through open adoption soars as families mourn their loss of this opportunity.  These moments were hard fought for and pined over for years by Mommy and Daddy, I will continue my gratitude and awe of the decisions your birth mamas made to make us all family.  I love the reminders like this moment.  Love, Mama              

Hazel wants to say... ihhihogkhjhgfvxgfttcxdvsal (yep, that's a hedge hog)