Making room for another

Yesterday afternoon a little girl Bee's age spent the afternoon and evening at our house. She was there with her little brother and her dad. She is dreamy. The best part of my day was when she sat on our kitchen counter and talked to me while I popped popcorn for everyone. She told me all about how she used to make tea and coffee for herself when she lived in Ethiopia. She told me all kinds of stories about her life there. Anything I'd inject into the conversation, she would take in with wide open eyes that stared straight into mine.

After dinner, as all the grown-ups were sneaking cookies that we didn't share with the kids (no sugar-rush right at bedtime, thank you), she was riding the plasma car in circles around the table and stopped to give me some invisible flowers. She asked me to hold them for her because she was very busy getting ready for a wedding, hers and Abe's. He didn't know about it yet. She hadn't gotten around to telling him since he was very busy cooking dinner in the basement with her little brother. I taught her the proper way to carry flowers around, blooms down so as to keep them hydrated, a trick I learned during my years in Slovakia.

She decided that when Bee gets here, she wants her to refresh her Amharic while she teaches Bee English. I think it's a good plan. One thing for sure is that these two girls are so beautiful that when they are together playing in our house, the place is going to radiate with sparkles. People are going to walk past our house as they walk their dogs and wonder how we managed to get fireworks to go off out of our windows.

Please excuse my indulgence into my hope for a utopia. I know it won't be exactly this perfect. I know there will be grieving and frustration and lack of sleep and communication breakdowns and a lot of emotional intensity. I know this. But yesterday, the sun came out for a while in the late afternoon and within about five minutes, there were nine kids under the age of ten outside in front of our house organizing themselves into a posse of astronauts who were blasting off in their rocket ship, counting down in unison so loudly that you folks in Kansas probably heard the roar.

With the news of a court date, my mind is now "going there." I'm imagining Bee joining the kid posse in our neighborhood and the thought of her blasting off in the rocket ship with everyone else leaves a tightness in my chest, a physical tightness that I'm sure is my heart

e x p a n d i n g.

It is making room for another.

Another. A little peanut of a girl named Bee with big almond eyes who has a set of astronaut friends waiting to initiate her into the posse. The sun is finally starting to come out this spring.