It doesn’t happen often.
But, it happens.
It’s not going to stop.
Ever.
“Excuse me,” is how it begins. When I have a loaf of bread in hand, examining ingredients and calorie counts. When I’m loading my car in a windswept parking lot. When I’m at the community center watching my girl leap and jump and twirl.
“Would you mind [...]
Today I cut some lilac blooms, filled a bud vase with water and tucked the fragrant blossoms inside. I placed the bouquet on the table set for a Mother’s Day lunch. The vase sits in silent tribute to the unknown, but very real guest at our table: my youngest daughter’s birth mother.
Although she is not [...]
Mary, who runs the whole operation over at the Mama Mary Show tagged me on this one. It’s the brainchild of another blogger, Her Bad Mother,who is trying to fly this one around the globe. So, I’ll do my part and then pass it on.
Five things I love about motherhood:
The bond of love between mother [...]
I had a nightmare last night.
In my dream, Godzilla is chasing Buddhist monks through the streets of Tokyo. Behind the city skyline is a mountain chain of books. Between the Godzilla-stomped city and book mountain is a vast expanse of paperwork and red tape. The valley is bustling with a throng of young Asian women [...]
This is Girl from the East’s third Christmas. She’s been alive for four observances, but in 2005 she was only a few weeks old and living in a land where Christmas is not celebrated.
Sometimes I try to image what she looked like as a newborn. Sometimes I try to imagine what her first December must [...]
Like most of us, I read a variety of blogs. Some I read for the pure beauty of the prose — even if I don’t have anything in common with the writer. Some are so well designed you just have to come in and spend some time admiring the wallpaper and furnishings.
Others always guarantee a [...]
Two years ago today we awakened very early in China and rode a bus to the provincial civil affairs office. We were a bundle of nerves. I clutched a stuffed bear in my hands on the bumpy ride to keep me from wringing them excessively. Two years of waiting and wondering were about to end.
Soon [...]
Two years ago we were in Beijing and other parts of China, touring, soaking up culture and feeling like big, fat, pasty Westerners. We also were there to complete our family and make some kind of lasting connection. While we were taking away one of its daughters, we also left behind a part of ourselves.
So [...]
My motherhood has always been as vulnerable as a featherless hatchling twitching on the pavement. My introduction to it with Girl from the West came about by surprise, so I was caught off-guard and scrambled for months to embrace the notion that I — rock ‘n’ roll zombie at the time — was going to [...]
This weekend marks the first anniversary of our adoption referral. For those outside the adoption community, this means after a two-year leap of faith we landed on solid ground holding the picture of a gorgeous baby girl born in Jiangxi, China.
The portrait of our doe-eyed baby motivated everything we did for the next two months [...]
