I have a pile of differently sized, small, beautiful notebooks in a couple of different places at home. Blank notebooks, waiting to be written in. I have collected them over many years and with many of the individual notebooks, though not all of them, I can remember where I bought it and why. Some are very small and were purchased so that I could and would carry them with me to jot down ideas for writing. They sit. On my night table, in a box in the guest room and in a basket on one of the bigger bookcases in the house. When I started blogging, I was so taken with how you could really do all of this, the drafting, the editing, all, on the computer, I stopped buying notebooks for a while. But I have not stopped making lists of things I want to write about. I have several post-its crumpled and tucked into my purse with a list that grows longer every few days, of things I want to write about. At this point many of the things I’d like to write involve material that is complex in some way and that I don’t I yet know how to, or haven’t had the time to tackle.
But for now, a couple of shorter things. Monday, as I indicated earlier, was May 24th which marks the anniversary of the day we got what, I explained in an earlier post, in the adoption world, is called– “the call”. When our agency called and said that there was a baby girl four days old who could and did become our daughter. This week, as we travel through the days my mind is very is full of things I remember doing 9 years ago and am feeling the very specific feelings of those days and nights as we worked our way to her. This week my mother is visiting and she slept the first few nights of her visit, in my daughter’s room. I remember working on that room in the heat of the days, and then late at night those nights, finally sitting down in it, or falling asleep and getting up to go into it at about 2 a.m. all those years ago. I remember just thinking about her, what it would be like to hold her, to know her, to touch and hear and listen to her. I talked to her too, before she came.
Now here we are, 9 years later, with all the busy things and all the complexities of real relationships. Things I have done well and things I haven’t. Things she is easy about and things she struggles with. Places where our household runs so smoothly and places where it really doesn’t. But this is the week I get to remember what I hoped and expected and what it is. There have been many surprises, but I can say I do not feel disappointed about any of it, except that it is going fast. Too fast. I remember those days of thinking ahead and here we are. It is good to have this period of anniversaries, to reflect on our unusual and good family.
When I wrote of my daughter’s Girls on the Run race– I regretted being out of shape and not running with her. A week of reflection like this one reminds me that I do want to live a very, very long life and to live every moment of it in the best possible health. We got a late start on this parenting thing and I want years and years with my partner and my daughter and many, many more years of doing interesting and hopeful things. So this week I revisited a milestone for me. I put on my running shoes and ran– a very, very short-mini-run (6 and 3/4 minutes) for the first time in a very long time. (Like about 10 -11 years.) And then this morning I ran again. 9 minutes this time. I remember my first run when I was 22. We’ll see where it goes this time. Running and playing hard is still my daughter’s way of life– but we adults, we give up at some point so it isn’t at all a way of life for me anymore. But I am trying for something along those lines again. So for this anniversary– at least for me– a run is so much better and sweeter than a cupcake and that’s just what I chose to start to mark these anniversaries this year.
laura writes 