 |
| ~fly day~ |
It is the fall of 1995 and I drop you at daycare for the very first time and I'm crying so hard I cannot see as I drive off to college...
It is October 1996 and I've met the most gentle and kind boy. I can tell he cares about us. I wonder how much, and what it might mean for us...
It is November 1998 and you are spinning in circles on the dance floor at our wedding in your flower girl dress and it is midnight and you don't want it to end...
It is fall 2000 and you're standing by the flagpole gripping your lunchbox on the first day of Kindergarten at Rivers Christian Academy and when we blink you are done and you are wearing your silly blue cap and gown...
It is summer 2001 and we are all laughing so hard we cannot breathe, you are up on water skis on the lake with your spindly 6 year old Kermit the Frog legs...
It is September 2002 and we are sitting together on the ground outside of our hotel room in Port au Prince and you are crying. You have met your brother and sister and your heart cannot carry what you have seen here...
It is March 2004 and you are with me at North Memorial Hospital again, only this time you are holding my hand and we are waiting to meet Noah...
It is 2006 and we have moved to Haiti and you are teaching your friends English...
It is 2007 and you are handing your big sister supplies while she cleans out a wound of a friend in the village. You comfort and distract with Kreyol conversation that is best described in Haiti as "ou pale Kreyol tankou rat"...
It is March 2009 and we are facing some of the very hardest days in our relationship and we are covered by God's mercy and goodness and we begin to understand how much He loves us, and that He is for us...
It is summer 2009 and you are teaching all of us so much about love and service while taking care of your first foster-child, Renald, and you are riding horses now, and life is returning to him, and to you...
It is January 2010 and you are looking me in the eye even as the ground still shakes and telling me that you can handle evacuating with your siblings. You are more afraid than you let on and your strength carries your siblings as much and more than the roaring C-130 military plane does...
It is August 2010 and you are being baptized by our Uncle in the same lake I was baptized...
It is May 2011 and you are stunningly gorgeous and grown up and on your way to the prom...
It is January 2013 and we are driving to school and we are watching the days fly by and we know the time has come to begin to release you...
It is today and I am dropping you off at the airport and I am wondering how it all passed by so quickly and I am wishing I could stop time...
When they hand you a baby after you have performed miraculous feats of superhuman proportions to bring that little person into the world, they don't tell you about what is coming; the greater pain of letting them go. They don't tell you that those hours and hours of contractions and pushing are just the warm-up, eighteen years early, for the real pain.
It is today and I am thinking about your future and I am praying with all of my might that this world will be kind to you...
It is today, and you will fly.
XOXO
Mom
 |
| November 30, 1994 |
 |
| 1994 |
 |
| 1996 |
 |
| 1998 |
 |
| 2001 |
 |
| 2004 |
 |
| 2006 |
 |
| 2007 |
 |
| 2009 |
 |
| 2010 |
 |
| 2013 |
