You Should Read This

We have another, unexpected, yet very welcome guest right now, a friend I hadn't seen in person in almost three years, and I don't have a lot of time right now to write. So. I'm stealing this from my blogging hero's blog, the famous Coffeemom. I love her mucho grande, for many reasons. I would just link to this recent post of hers that made me cry (her posts often make me cry), but I'm afraid that people won't bother to click the link and actually read it. So I hope she doesn't mind that I'm going to cut and paste what she wrote. It's just that I really want you to read it.

After you read it, if you were moved in any way, please click this link and leave her a comment telling her so. She is an amazing woman. Here is what she wrote:

I don't have a picture. Not the right picture anyhow. I have this picture, far below, which will have to suffice.

I had a "mark the good" moment today. And because I have written before about how I think its important to MARK the good when you recognize it, I want to write this down...for the record, and so it doesn't slip away from my foggy mind. In older child adoption, there is so much that is strange and awkward, especially at first. And only time can help ease into some things. One of those is worth a whole 'nother post (Fair warning...). But it is this very thing that had one of those moments today, the kind that stills and shimmers for a minute, you realize you kind of are holding your breath so you don't blink and lose it. Then you do blink because you have to, suddenly, there is a pending spill. And if you're lucky you recognize, that this is one to mark. A step forward. A settling in. A deeper twinge resonating.

Ack. Let me explain. Tomorrow is Marti's birthday. She is a bit giddy in anticipation. Just a little shivery giddy. But I didn't really see it until Mass.

Every day we go to Mass after we drop off the school kids (parochial school, one of the perks). Every day we sit in our pew, third from the back, left. Some mornings Coffeedoc gets to join us before clinic. Today was one of those.

Marta was in between us, she kept pulling Coffeedoc closer in, and squooshing closer to me. We were all mooshed up together in that pew, tho the pew was empty otherwise. If you didn't know it, it looked like it was below freezing and we were huddling for warmth. Then, in one of the quiet moments of the Mass, we sat again, taking our huddle. She grinned and she pulled him closer in, put his hand on her lap and grabbed mine, pulling it to his, placing our two old hands together. We smiled a small laugh at each other. Then she grinned wider.

She wrapped her little arms around our big ones on either side, grabbed hands in the middle and squeezed. "My dad. My mom," she whispered to us with a huge smile.

It was very much like a small small child, claiming again, for the hundredth time, their parents. But this was our teen. Not a toddler. But the declaration was the same. And we looked across her head and smiled that deep smile. And then, surprising myself...I blinked.

I don't have a picture to show you. I wish I did. But I have stored this one away safely anyhow, marking it for good.