Today

My blog is pretty barren.  I have accumulated an interesting collection of ill-fated posts, unfinished due to an adoption-induced emotional congestion that did not improve with time.

In fact, in thinking about how things have gone over the last 18 months, I've been surprisingly uninspired.

Part of that is because of the dizzying bunny-hopping that happens - I've spoken of it before.  You wait, wait, wait... something happens... you wait, wait, wait some more.  Some of it is just so marvelously wonderful that you tuck it away in your brain and in your heart so tightly so that it will become a part of you and never leave you.

We finally got the news yesterday that seemed so dream-like.  Make travel plans.  Go get your girl.

Surreal.

Emails, phone calls, back and forth across the countries at a blistering pace.  Children in upheaval and showing it.  Straining communication over terrible phone lines, options, flights sold out, other options, Dad will be home late, time given up here or there, or some such thing.  What had seemed like such a straightforward itinerary was unraveling all the way around the world.  In the middle of it all I'm dealing with something viral, sickening... I want to put it down to stress or hormones or something fixed.  It's probably not.  Just par for the course when you are planning a major international trip that accommodates at minimum 5 major cities, and the activities of 6 family members...  Oh and the length of your trip is longer than the time you have before you leave.

It will look different in a few days, and that is comforting.  A little.  Tonight I am blitzed, and longing for bed and peace, and still have my lists... oh the lists.

I wanted to write this down, this rare moment of emotional clarity, because so much of the emotional journey of adoption is weird.  Indescribably weird.  Some mothers I know or have read can articulate with a certain fervor their sense of motherhood, family, and emotional bonds.  That hasn't been the case for me, at least, not out loud.  Heck, it took me nearly a year to use the name we gave her out loud.

I am supposing this is likely because for me, while the hormonal aspects of pregnancy were certainly there, most of the attachment and bonding of motherhood was the being, and the doing.

Do I love this girlie?  Oh yes I do.  Is this all worth it?  Oh yes, it is! 

This sick feeling I've had in my gut all day trying to get us to India is really only there because I want to be in the same space as this child... I want to breathe the same air she is breathing... 

And I want to be her mother.


Heart strained and body tired tonight.  Tomorrow a different view, a different taste.