Anniversary

Happy Anniversary, Aberash.

For you, this day will probably begin and end like most others.  You'll wake up (too early) and whisper some lie in my ear about needing to go to the bathroom, all because you are ready to get up and want me up too.  You'll want to watch some awful made-for-TV movie on Netflix or (if I'm lucky) Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the 876th time.  Before long you'll get hungry, and start asking for noodles or dinner leftovers for breakfast.  Yep, all perfectly, mundanely NORMAL.  But for me, that's one of the things that make this day so wonderful.

Because today is an anniversary.  You spent eight months of your life in orphanages and today, you have spent eight months of your life in our home.

I think of all you have done, and feel like I have spent the past eight months being shown what strength looks like.  Because your response to being plucked away from all that was familiar and comfortable was to thrive.  Learning a new language, negotiating a new world of school buses, cafeterias and swim lessons, making friends.  You LIVE like no other person I have ever seen - jumping in with both feet, grabbing tight with both hands.  You are a package of joy and strength and determination wrapped up with the most beautiful face I've ever seen.  Oh, and all topped off with an exquisite, kick-ass fro for a bow.  Beautiful inside, beautiful out.  You take my breath away.

You've taught me so much, too.  Before your arrival, I think I had settled into a too comfortable pattern. I had things all figured out.  Was totally self aware.  I'd had THERAPY, goddammit.  Then you came along and started pushing my buttons, and all that went out the window.  And I am so thankful for that.  Because I've wanted so badly to be patient, and loving, and kind for you, that it's helped remind me that patient, and loving, and kind is the way I want to BE. Period.  I have so much more to learn, so much more room to grow.  And the only way I'll get there is by being honest about where I really am.

And Aberash, there are times when I feel so ill prepared to help you deal with the challenges you are going to face.  Like issues of race and cultural identity.  Whatever self-assuring bullshit I told myself before you came here is gone.  When you point to two people with different skin color and say, "they don't match", or say you want your mother's hair, or look away with embarrassed shyness when we mention Ethiopia to others I FEEL how unprepared I am.  You know you are different, and right now I worry that your translation of "different" is "less".  It's bad enough that I will have to help you learn how to face the ignorant assholes you will meet that think that way.  Do I have what it takes to make you see that what makes you different is a part of what makes you so god.damn.BEAUTIFUL?  To have you own it and love it as much as I do?      
    
When I see how people react to you, my heart is fills with hope.  Sometimes I hear your friends and teachers call your name out across the playground, and I flash back to the courtyard in Addis.  "Aberash!  Aberash!"  Eight months.  They loved you there.  They love you here.

And why wouldn't they?  I am so in love with you.  Your laugh.  The way your hair hangs down when you are swimming in the pool.  The way you walk around like you own the place - wherever you are.  Your crazy dances and the way you make clothes that by no means whatsoever should go together look like a cutting edge fashion statement.  Your current obsession with notepads and pencils,  and writing your letters over and over and over.  The fact that you've started calling your favorite doll "Big Head Baby".  Even the fact that you are so goddamn stingy with your kisses.  I love you.

I hope with my whole heart that for the past eight months you felt more safety and security and LOVE than anything else. I know that's a lot to ask.  Your life didn't start with the orphanage, and I think I've only begun to understand all that your life has been, and all that you have been through.  And though you usually come off all strength and joy, sometimes you'll show these glimmers of fear and sadness, and I know they are a real part of who you are, locked deep away, but always there.  I don't have all the answers and there will be so many times I founder with the lessons, or even the right words to say.  But if I haven't always succeeded in the past eight months in helping you to feel safe, and secure, and loved, please know that I have been trying.  And I will keep trying, until eight months becomes eight years.  And every day after that.

While you go about the course of your day, I'll silently repeat this toast - a prayer of thanks for what I've learned.

Here's to strength and weakness, the mundane and the different.  

Here's to joy and sadness, to fear and hope.

Here's to LOVE - which has the power to somehow bring these things together and make life the beautiful, amazing thing it is.  

Here's to eight months of life with you - beautiful, amazing you.

... And here's to tomorrow.     

I love you, my radiant daughter.  Happy Anniversary.