Not A Dream

The beginning is like a dream.  Nighttime in Addis, where the air smells of fragrant wood smoke, and earth after rain.  A cab ride blur of images.  Young people walking arm and arm and laughing.  Strange, bright colored shops.  Corrugated tin roofs and concrete.  Blind father and crying daughter.  Swirling joy and sadness.  

Somewhere along the way the tempo of the dream starts to shift.  When is it?  In the van on the way to the guest house?  In the courtyard where walls are painted with bright fish and an octopus?  Or seeing her for the first time?

   

Her emotions shift like the tides.  At times, she is silly and exuberant.  She sticks her tongue out at the camera, covers her mother’s arms with stickers, then her brother’s, then mine.  At other times, she is quiet and disengaged, focused on coloring page after page with a single green marker.  I love her.  I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly when that happened, but I know it to be true.  In some ways, it is her sadness that draws me first.  She is afraid.  Why wouldn’t she be?  She doesn’t know us, and her life has had far too much loss already.  And she is so.god.damn.little.  I know that I will do anything to help her feel safe.  To let her KNOW she is loved.    

This is not a dream – it is more real than anything I have experienced before.  The images of dreams are pale and muted when compared to real life.  My camera captured a thousand images of Ethiopia.  Markets crowded with people, chickens, goats and donkeys.  Children blowing bubbles and catching them before they pop.  And the eyes.  In the courthouse, I saw the truth of heartbreaking sorrow in a young mother’s eyes.  In Yonas’ eyes I know human kindness, empathy, and love when he tells her that we need to go, but promise to return. 

      

Dreams cannot convey the music of real life.  Real life is the music of Sinudu singing from the kitchen, as she prepares another delicious meal.  It has the rhythm of a prayer chanted in unison before a midday snack of buna and bread.  And the cadence of a rolled “r” when the other children say her name.  Aberash.  Aberash.  Beautiful music that sends chills down my spine.          

Our last visit on this trip is filled with firsts.  She pulls us aside so that she can be alone with us.  She apologizes to her brother with hooked pinkie fingers and a kiss.  She calls her mother ‘Innat’.  The end is a beginning.  I love Ethiopia.  I am in love with Aberash, my beautiful, radiant, silly DAUGHTER.  My life is not like a dream, it is better.  And it will never be the same.