The Day After Mother's Day

Let me just start off by saying that I had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend. On Saturday I slept in, was cooked for, wore a beautiful Mother's Day crown, was given lovely written, drawn, and verbal messages of love and appreciation, enjoyed a living room picnic (because a violent thunderstorm eliminated the outdoors as an option), ate banana cream pie, and watched home videos, all with Ramsey and the kids. Sunday included a cookout with the in-laws and a walk down to my mother-in-law's childhood swimming hole (which my kids ended up putting to good use in spite of not having brought swim suits)and a visit with my parents. Rams and I ended the weekend chilling on the couch with a movie after the kids went to bed.

This weekend, we took pictures like this one.

And this one.

And this.

It was a great weekend.



Yesterday was Monday.

I started the day off on the right foot by burning breakfast- not productive. I followed that up with successfully getting through to a health insurance representative and getting the information that I needed- productive. I then spent the next three hours ignoring the housework that had piled up over the weekend, and scanned 522 old family slides onto an SD card, instead- a productivity draw.

I discovered that two of my children (who shall remain nameless) had been engaged in some intentional deceit and disobedience over a period of a couple of weeks. I preached a message involving the verse "your sins shall find you out" and doled out the consequences (loss of friend, movie, and computer privileges for the next 3-4 weeks. And extra math lessons on Saturdays.). I decided to stop assessing my day in terms of productivity.

Zuzu engaged me in the so delightful "happy-baby-stompy-dance", which involves holding each other's hands, stomping your feet, and grinning at each other with glee, then wandered off in the direction of the bathroom.

A few minutes later, I disovered that someone had left the bathroom door open. I fished the baby's hands out of the toilet, then washed her off and changed her clothes.

I fished two game pieces out of the baby's diaper, then washed them off and sanitized them.

About this time, I realized the direction the day was heading and began to take pictures to record it for posterity.

(The none-the-worse-for-the-wear game pieces.)

I called Ramsey at his office to congratulate him on what a productive day he was having. When I hung up eight minutes later, I found this:

and this:

I developed a strong craving for chocolate pudding.

A very strong craving.

Throughout all of this, my four old-enough-to-know-better children were behaving like hooligans. And the baby lost her pants. And one sock.

I decided to make supper.

Ramsey, who had arrived home from work somewhere around the middle of the pudding making, took the four hooligans and the baby outside to burn off some energy while supper cooked.

Aviva popped back inside to bring me this:

She and Gideon both also informed me that I was the best Mommy ever.


I was pulling supper out of the oven out of the driveway to pick up the pizza when Ramsey and the kids headed back into the house because the baby had gotten hit in the head by the tire swing. While a sibling was receiving an underdog.


Everyone survived supper (including the baby, who was also none the worse for the wear) and all of the children went straight to bed, without chocolate pudding which was still chilling in the fridge.

Ramsey and I sat down at the computer to view the 522 slides that had been scanned, and to eat chocolate pudding (which had finished chilling soon after the kids were put to bed).



All in all, not a bad day.

The Nap

There is an interesting phenomenon that occurs during the course of any given day at the Tripp Academy for the Exceptionally Brilliant, and I've heard from other homeschooling mothers that it's a common one. I get sudden attacks of narcolepsy, just about five minutes after I sit down on the couch to listen to my child read. Something about hearing a young, halting voice drone on about "Tommy Fox" and "Mr. Gray Squirrel" makes it almost impossible to keep my eyes open, and often the only thing that keeps me from drifting off completely is my recurring, involuntary head bobbing that snaps me back to partial wakefulness every ten seconds or so.

Today's reading session happened to take place during the baby's naptime. Today also happens to be overcast and rainy, and I was also feeling especially unmotivated to get any housework done. So when the reading quota had been met, I announced to all within earshot that Mommy was going to "take a quick nap while the baby is still asleep. Do not disturb!"

Obviously this plan was optimistic at best and just plain looking for trouble at worst.

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, I was repeatedly reminded of why I do not nap. As soon as I made my nap declaration, my five year old cheerfully requested to take a nap with me, then squeezed her cute little skinny self (and her mangy special blankie) next to me on the edge of the couch. As it turned out, she was the only one that didn't disturb my "nap" (rest?).

The first couple of minutes went well. I conked out pretty much immediately. In fact, I enjoyed a full thirty-seven seconds of blissful slumber before my seven-year-old made an unwise decision.

He stood over me. "Mommy." I woke up but kept my eyes closed, hoping that if I looked asleep, he'd realize his mistake and would tiptoe quietly away. "Mommy." I opened my eyes and looked at him. I asked him if he remembered that only two and a half minutes ago, I had specifically told them that I was going to take a nap and was not to be disturbed. He did. "So this must be extremely important, then," I said. It was, vitally. He wanted a snack.

Less than five minutes later, my eight-year-old set out to prove that "if we don't learn our history, we are doomed to repeat it" by insisting on asking me if she could play on the computer. Like her brother's before her, her request was denied.

While I was still speaking to the eight-year-old, my husband arrived home from the half-day job he'd been at. He gasped as he walked in the door- "Are Mommy and Aviva sick?!"

Turned out Ramsey had work news to share with me. He was on his way again soon, but by that point the nap was pretty much ruined. I had lost the sleepiness, also some guilt over the fact that I was lounging on the couch while Ramsey was off working hard at providing for our family was beginning to set in (either that or the fact that I'd been caught red-handed). I hung in there though, determined to cling to the last shredded bit of this nap, if only for the principle of the thing. The ten-year-old thought pretending to fling his pencil at his sister instead of doing his hand-writing lesson was a fun idea. The target, plastered up against my back, screeched and hid under her ratty blankie. I told the kids that the next child to disturb my nap would get to take their own nap after lunch, then rolled over and shoved my face into the couch cushion.

Rustling noises began to be heard from the direction of the baby moniter, followed by the sweet little voice of my fifteen-month-old, "Mama... Mama..." I sighed and got up off the couch. As I headed for the stairs, my five-year-old gleefully dove into the warmly imprinted cushion that I had just vacated, declaring, "Now I'm going to take a nap on the whole couch!"

"Good luck," I told her.

A Reacquaintance

I’m preparing to re-introduce running into my life. This introduction will be different from the previous introductions, I hope. This time running will not be demanding and brash, as it was on our previous encounters. Instead, it will be genteel and well mannered, and will be welcomed.

In the past decade, I have run a number of times, mainly darting after small children to prevent various types of naughtiness. But, if you’re only counting actual “lace up your shoes and head out for a run” runs, I’ve been running twice in the last ten years. Every few years, that flame of inspiration is ignited and flares up, wildly. “I need exercise. I need to get in shape. I’ll start running tomorrow!” And I do. Both times that I’ve started running, the weather has been at an extreme. I head out the door, determined that I’ll run such and such small distance (because anything less would be wussy) and I’ll build up each day from there. I arrive home, stitches in my sides, gasping for breath around the ice shards in my lungs, declare, “That sucked!” and relegate my running shoes to day to day wear until the mood strikes me again 5 years later. The flame of inspiration flickers pitifully, and dies, killed by a single run.

I ran cross-country in junior high and high school. Then, my commitment to running lasted whole seasons. I enjoyed it, mainly for the social aspect of training with a group and the competitions. But I was, at best, mediocre. I came across the finish line somewhere in the middle of the pack every time and the last thing my gait could be called is graceful. In fact, two of my running mates mocked my stride. Richard told me I had chicken legs and then he and Aaron would run ahead of me, flinging their heels out to the sides as they ran. The infuriating thing was that, somehow, even while running the exaggerated caricature of my run, they were both still faster than I was so I had no choice but to watch them as I took up the rear.

This time, however, running is behaving like a gentleman. Instead of barging in as a flash in the pan idea of my own, running knocked at the door in the form of a suggestion from my sister and only entered the room when I invited it in after considering the idea for a couple of weeks. Instead of grabbing my arm, hauling me out the door, and insisting that I go, right now, running has gently suggested that I actually spend some time researching the best way to start and that I form a plan. And, instead of cracking a whip and chasing me down the sidewalk right off the bat, running will simply be accompanying me on casual strolls for the first couple of weeks as I ease in gradually.

So you see why I’m hopeful that this time running and I will be able to form a meaningful and lasting relationship. I look forward to the many physical, mental, and emotional benefits that I can expect to experience from my participation in this alliance. And, as a little extra insurance to make sure I stay committed long enough to actually reap said benefits, I’ve registered and paid the entrance fees for three summer 5Ks. I’ll let you know how it goes.

A Joyous Announcement!

Just a brief post to assure my blogworld friends that I haven't dropped off the planet or abandoned my blog. I apologize that it's been so long since I've posted. Here I was, posting away a mile a minute on my brand new little blog, then- ZIP! Silence. I've had a number of fairly significant events going on in my life over the last couple of months which have required my time and attention to be focused elsewhere. I won't share most of them here except for the biggest and most exciting news...

The birth of my little daughter, Zuzu Noelle!



Zuzu (yes, "Zuzu's petals" : ) was born at 11:06 p.m. on Tuesday, January 26th. She was born at home with my husband, mom, sister and our two midwives attending and she weighed 10 pounds and measured 21 inches. Big girl! And she's only gotten bigger...

So my time these days is taken up with feeding, diaper changes, and cuddles, with the odd load of laundry and sinkful of dishes thrown in when I get a chance. Any time spent at the computer is generally in the form of brief snatches, and my typing mostly consists of one handed chicken pecking. Once we graduate to a more regular sleeping schedule, I hope to be able to post with more frequency. I'll have plenty to share, I'm sure! : )

In Which We Settle into Our New Home

Once the former occupants were moved out, papers were signed, and our belongings moved into the attic and basement of our new home, renovations began in earnest. Our family stayed with Ramsey’s parents for a month while Ramsey and two carpenter friends ripped out wall paneling, dropped ceilings, old windows and an old stairway, then replaced it all with new sheetrock, new windows, and new stairs. We hired a man to clomp around our enormous new living room and the bedrooms in his strapped-on stilts and mud and sand the fresh sheetrock. My mom and a sister-in-law spent hours helping paint the bedrooms- a light, soft sea foam for Ramsey’s and my bedroom and, because we let the kids pick their own colors, a pale purple for the girl’s room and a dark turquoise for the boy’s room (I hated that color but I was trapped into it by own promise. I bided my time, though, and last Christmas repainted their room as part of a surprise makeover.). As the clock was winding down, Ramsey sanded down the hardwood living room floor and refinished it.

By the end of the month, I was so ready to move into our new home. Ramsey’s parents had been so gracious and generous to let us stay with them but I just wanted to be in my own home again. Finally the day arrived. Ramsey and our helpers wore stocking feet to prevent damage to the newly refinished living room floor and we sorted furniture and boxes out of the attic and basement into the rooms where they belonged.

The overwhelming task of unpacking had only begun when, a week and a half later, Ramsey had to leave for a work trip. This trip would be longer, more intense, and take him further than any others before- he was going to Vietnam for two and a half weeks. The morning the kids and I dropped him off to meet the rest of his group, I cried as I pulled out of the parking lot.

I certainly had plenty to keep me occupied while he was gone, though. My mom helped me tackle the monumental task of painting our enormous living room. First we primed the whole gargantuan thing, and then Mom began expertly cutting out around the ceiling with the paint- hideous, bright blue paint. I was horrified when I first saw it. On the paint chip it had appeared to be a distinguished, calm, slate blue. This was wild and raucous, jarring, bright light blue.

“It probably just looks bright because it’s surrounded by white,” Mom suggested optimistically. I was doubtful but agreed that maybe it would appear less obnoxious when there was less of a contrast. Besides, we’d already bought the paint.

That blue pissed me off every time I walked into my living room for the next two and a half years.

One morning shortly after Ramsey left for Vietnam, I made a horrifying discovery. The prior owners were taking their final revenge on us. Apparently their two ancient canines had housed more than mange and now our home was infested with fleas. I learned that fleas go into a hibernation state when they have no host available and the temperature is cool, so they’d been hiding out in the cracks and crannies throughout our old Colonial. Now that the weather was warming up and they had new prey to feast on- us- they were hopping, and in full force. Let me tell you, there is nothing more disgusting than picking fleas out of your four-month-old baby’s hair.

So now, in the midst of trying to unpack and cope with the kids alone, I sealed off the kitchen shelves with plastic, hauled the mattresses off the beds, and purchased flea bombs. Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of bombs needed to saturate a house of our size, so my attempt only served to discourage the nasty little parasites, not eliminate them.

Somehow we survived until Ramsey returned home. The day after he got back, the fourth of July, we re-bombed the house while we attended the local fireworks display. This time we won.

Ramsey had brought gifts for us- each of the children received a Vietnamese outfit, the boys also got beautifully carved wooden swords and he gave the girls decorative little dolls. And for me- Ramsey had brought me an embroidery. A large, framed embroidery, so detailed that most people mistook it for a painting when they saw it. It detailed a vase full of flowers, all beautifully stitched on a background of blue silk. Silk the exact same vibrant blue as our freshly painted walls. Somehow, without having seen the new color of our living room, Ramsey had managed to match the background of the embroidery to the color of our walls as perfectly as if he’d taken a paint swatch with him. The embroidery was situated in a place of honor, set on the mantle above our new fireplace.

A couple of weeks after Ramsey had arrived home from his trip and we’d gotten more unpacking and settling in accomplished, my grandmother called. She wanted to know the street address of our new home. She had been talking with one of her neighbors in her building across town and had mentioned that we had recently moved to this street. Her friend had grown up in this neighborhood and was curious which house we’d moved into.

Small world that it is, of course this was the house that Edna’s parents had owned for thirty years. Their home had burned to the ground after Edna was born, and a contact Edna’s father had within the city government had told him about this house- a house possessed by the city because the former owners had neglected to pay their taxes. It was, even then, a fixer-upper, but Edna’s father was a carpenter, it was large enough to house their large and growing larger family, and they could afford it.

Edna and my grandmother came by to visit and see the old place and I took the opportunity to interview Edna. During the thirty years that Edna’s parents had owned the house, Edna’s father had made some major renovations- completely changing the layout, including moving a stairway and adding four feet onto the whole back of the house- and by the time they sold it the house had been in good shape. Edna was sad to see the state of disrepair the following owners had allowed it to fall into but was gratified to see the improvements we’d begun to make.

I told you Edna’s family was large but I didn’t mention how large. Edna was one of seventeen children who lived in this house. Some of the children slept in the attic and I can only imagine how cold it must have been to occupy that giant, un-insulated space during frigid New England winters.

Edna told us of stringing tin can phones across the street to her girlhood friend’s home, of the enormous vegetable garden they’d planted every year in the then empty lot next door, of coming home from school on her lunch break every day to hang out mountains of laundry that her mother had spent the morning washing. She told us that she never saw her mother sit down until she was an adult and I believe it.

When I first heard a few bits of Edna’s story over the phone, I could envision myself basing a novel on it, something heartwarming and Walton-ish. But, hearing more details in person, there were strong undercurrents of pain and sadness to the story that I couldn’t just ignore and didn’t want to deal with then. One of the sisters had died in childhood from a brain tumor that was missed until too late. Another sister had felt unwanted and never could come around to feeling accepted. The parents didn’t seem to have the loving bond that I wanted to base a story on and eventually sold the house after thirty years when they divorced.

I have several special reminders of our visit with Edna and of the family that lived here decades before we did. Edna brought copies of a number of photographs for us to keep. Black and white, they are like opening a time capsule when I look at them. There are photos taken in front of the fireplace mantle- our mantle. There is a photo of one of the brothers in his military uniform- and in our daughters’ bedroom, part of the floor is a board from his military trunk, labeled with “Sgt. Richard F. Holt” and our home’s address. If we ever get around to painting that floor, I have no choice but to leave that board unpainted. And there is one photo that was taken of the entire family as adults in front of the birch trees at the back of the yard, the same trees that we hang our hammock from in the summertime, and the same trees that I have only to glance from my desk-side window to see at this very moment.

The Pop Heard Round the World.

I grew up in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. Which means that I should be a total Michael Jackson fan. My home was a fairly conservative one, however; we didn’t even have a t.v., except when our neighbors would go on vacation for two weeks in the summer and loan us theirs. Then we would rent “Anne of Green Gables” on VHS and, every four years, soak up the summer Olympics.

But I didn’t live under a rock. Probably even the Amish have at least heard of Michael Jackson. I was certainly familiar with his music and I can recall seeing the “Thriller” music video for the first time on MTV at a friend’s house, and being completely freaked out.

But a lot of my exposure to Michael Jackson has been since I reached adulthood, as he faded, both from reality and in the public’s opinion. The small amount of brain space that I’ve actually devoted to Michael Jackson has primarily been used to draw my own conclusions about what went wrong with his life and to feel sad for him.

One thing that I’ve always gotten a kick out of, though, is the fact that the entire rest of the world seems to adore him. I’ve shaken my head in amusement at the news stories and magazine articles that mention Michael Jackson’s popularity in third world or restricted nations, and I’ve assumed that they must just be twenty years behind the times.

A few weeks ago, I watched a biography about a young girl growing up during the revolution in Iran. Sure enough, even amidst all the veils, the lead character gets in trouble for wearing a Michael Jackson patch on her jacket, as you can see in this trailer for “Persepolis”.

A few months ago, I watched hundreds of inmates of a Filipino jail reenacting “Thriller” in this youtube video.

But the moment that has made me come to really appreciate the talent and widespread international appeal of Michael Jackson just took place a few nights ago. I had the delightful and unanticipated pleasure of seeing for myself just how far-reaching Michael Jackson’s appeal is.

I had stopped in at a new friend’s home for a visit. My friend and her family are new to the U.S., they arrived from Africa just a couple of months ago. She had been astonished to learn that I’d never eaten sambousas (she was so astonished that I didn’t dare tell her I’d never even heard of them, prior to that conversation) and declared that she would give me a call the next time she made some. The next time she made some happened to be last Saturday evening so when she called me I ran right over to pick them up while they were still hot. (Might I mention that, in spite of my prior ignorance, I am now a fan of sambousas, which turned out to be the African cousin of Asia’s spring rolls and Latin America’s flautas. They are delicious.)

Throughout our visit, her children and the three neighbor children visiting from the apartment upstairs broke out in song several times, mainly in an attempt to coax the 15 month old to show me her dance moves. As the visit went on, the older kids got inspired, and silly, and started showing off a few of their own moves. Let me mention that though these kids can fluently speak French, Arabic, and Somali, they’ve only had the opportunity to master a few English words, as of yet. Dance, however, is an international language, and they’d certainly mastered MichaelJacksonese. The singing that accompanied mainly consisted of “I’mbad, I’mbad,” but really, the head twitches, shoulder shrugs, spins, and hip thrusts, were the main event. I laughed and laughed, mostly because the kids were just that entertaining and partly because witnessing an M.J. dance-off in this Muslim home just felt so darn surreal.

The performance continued until it began to deteriorate into complete silliness and my friend, having seen one too many crotch grabs, declared, “No more English!” Apparently French and Somalian music is safer.

On my way home, I pondered the possibility that perhaps the rest of the world wasn’t twenty years behind on the times. Perhaps I’d just managed to miss something big.

Rosmery 2

Almost two years ago, just before Christmas, I went to Guatemala with a friend. Her family was nearing the end, finally, of their process of adopting their daughter and she wanted to go visit her and get in a couple of weeks of language school. She joked with me in an e-mail one day, “Want to go to Guatemala with me??”

I’m sure at first she thought I was joking by my enthusiastic “Yes!” but I wasn’t at all. I had been studying Spanish on my own for a year and a half by then and I would most definitely have jumped at the chance to go to language school. Not only that but I was dying to get out of the country and see a different place and culture. Ramsey travels occasionally and, though it’s always all work and no leisure when he does, I have to admit to having a slight case of travel envy, anyway. So, yes, I absolutely wanted to go to Guatemala.

Ramsey so generously agreed to let me go and worked out arrangements for childcare. I drove three hours to apply for my passport instead of mailing in for one, in order to expedite the process. My friend and I spread the word that we were going and that we planned to visit an orphanage while we were there, then collected the school supplies and Christmas presents that were donated, to bring along in our luggage.

It was hard to believe that I was really going, and so all of a sudden, too! I hadn’t set foot on an airplane in over ten years or left Ramsey and the kids alone overnight, let alone left to go traipsing around in another country for seventeen days. But I was and soon it was the night before our trip.

The kids were in bed and Ramsey was in our bedroom with me while I did my last packing. “If you find our kid, start filling out the paperwork while you’re down there,” he said. That’s not really how it works, but I loved the attitude that was behind the comment. Rams and I had talked about adopting for years, since before we were even married. Now our youngest was almost two and we felt like it was finally time to really do it- we would adopt our next child. I don’t remember what I said to him in reply but I do remember thinking, Out of all those children, how could I possibly just pick one? How would I possibly ever know which child was meant to be ours? But it didn’t really matter anyway, because I knew it was impossible. The world of international adoption is complicated and even if you choose to adopt a child from a country where the process is relatively smooth sailing, there is still always the possibility of everything turning upside down overnight and being a royal mess by the morning. At the time, Guatemala was having its own issues and even families that were well into the process of adopting their child, as my friend’s was, were in danger of having their process disrupted. No new applications were being accepted, anyway. It just wouldn’t be an option for us.

Guatemala was such an adventure. Language school was wonderful, everything was beautiful and warm, and volcanoes erupted nearby, drifting ash on our heads while we studied in the school courtyard, like Central American snow. We ate authentic Guatemalan meals at the school for breakfast and lunch, then ate out at nearby restaurants for dinner. We haggled over prices in the nearby mercado and, after being suckered once or twice, I prided myself on not getting taken in again, at least not too badly. December is an amazing time to be in Guatemala, there are pre-Christmas festivals every other day, the only downfall is not being able to sample the enticing food offered by vendors all around the plazas.

And in Guatemala, everywhere, everywhere, were the poor. There were people begging for coins on the sidewalks and there were women and children who would follow after us in the streets, trying to get us to buy their wares, everything from cheap pens to lovely jewelry.

Midway through our trip, we were ready for our orphanage visit. Our original contact didn’t pan out. My Spanish teacher told me about another orphanage across town, home to a dozen girls. No success in making a connection there, either. Somehow my friend heard, through another friend, of another orphanage. Attempt number three. The American man who answered the phone told us we could come by any time and gave us the address, then hurriedly got off the phone. Well, all right then.

We felt a little awkward just showing up unannounced at an orphanage that we’d only made a random connection with but what could we do? We hired a car, loaded our two bulging suitcases and ourselves into it, and headed off to Casa Aleluya. We pulled through a mural-painted gate into a large central courtyard and parked. Unsure of where to go or what to do, I saw a man near a building on the other side of a playground and decided to go ask him if he could tell us where to find Mike, the director of the orphanage and the man we’d talked to on the phone.

I took four steps from the car, then, somehow right in front of me where she hadn’t been a moment before, a small girl stood, reaching her arms towards me for me to pick her up.

I didn’t know what to do- my first impulse was simply to pick her up, of course, but I didn’t know how the staff at the orphanage felt about complete strangers just scooping up the children. I took her by the hand instead, and she walked with me across the playground. The man, another American, helpfully pointed out the building where we’d likely find Mike. I told him that the little girl had wanted me to pick her up and asked, hesitatingly, if it would be all right if I did. “Sure, of course!” So I picked her up and she immediately wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist.

I and my friend and her two children did find Mike and his wife and they led us, towing our two suitcases, to their “Christmas building”. The building was full of gifts that they’d bought with money that had been donated for that purpose. As they shared with us the history of the orphanage, a couple of teenage girls swiftly sorted through the items in our suitcases and stored them in the appropriate places throughout the building. The suitcases were empty in minutes.

Casa Aleluya had been started by Mike and his wife 20 years earlier after Mike, a pastor, returned home to the U.S. from a short-term mission trip to Guatemala. He’d only gone on the trip to placate a friend of his who’d been harassing him to go but, while there, his heart had been broken by the sight of so many children in need. He and Dottie had started the orphanage in a house with just a few children but within a year they’d received more children than the house could comfortably hold. They moved to their new location and the orphanage had grown and grown- it was now home to five hundred children and he told us that, if they had room for them, the government had another two thousand that it would like to place with them.

This sweet little girl still clung to me, her glossy dark brown hair pressed against my cheek. I asked her name. Mike didn’t know and asked one of the teenage girls who followed along with us. Her name was Rosmery 2 (the “2” because the orphanage was apparently home to more than one Rosmery) and she was four years old.

Mike gave us a tour of the whole facility, showing us the school, the cafeteria where older residents received training in food preparation and which doubled as the chapel, the “Baby House”, and construction projects that were currently underway and waiting for the next group of volunteers who would visit and continue work on it.

To be honest, though I was impressed by the orphanage’s amazing organization and structure, I was most definitely distracted during the tour. Little Rosmery never loosened her hug on me except when I once set her down to get my camera out of my backpack. Then she reached in and rummaged around, finding one of the flashlight pens I’d bought on the street from a little ragamuffin boy. She was intrigued by it and of course I let her keep it. Then she was back in my arms again, her fingers winding gently through my hair. I asked her questions and called her sweet things in my faltering Spanish and she smiled back at me but never said a word.

I held her the whole time we were there. More than an hour after we’d arrived, our tour had ended and another little girl had come to say it was time for Rosmery to have a shower. We needed to leave, too, and, really, there was nothing more for me to do there except to hold Rosmery and claim her as my own. Instead, I walked with her to her little dorm where a dozen other little five-year-old girls were stripping down in preparation for their showers. I crouched down to let her go and she scampered off among the other little girls, obviously less impacted by me than I was by her, and moving on with her life.

My arms ached a bit on the ride back to school and, though my friend and I had both been impacted by our visit to the orphanage and discussed it at length, my mind was largely on Rosmery. The rest of our stay in Guatemala was as interesting and delightful as the first half had been and, finally, two and a half weeks after our arrival, we were on our way home again.

Back at home, it was almost time for Christmas. As lovely as our stay in Guatemala had been, it just hadn’t felt like Christmas when we were walking around in short sleeves every day. Home was cold and snowy, as Christmas should be, and our house was cozy and familiarly decorated. It was so wonderful to be greeted by my four children, who all ran to hug me at once, and so fun to hand out the souvenirs I had brought them. I enthusiastically jumped into last minute Christmas shopping and baking and I sipped eggnog in the evenings, cozied up on the couch with Ramsey, only the fire in the fireplace and the Christmas tree twinkling in the corner softly lighting the room. It was so good to be home again.

I’d told Ramsey all about little Rosmery and I showed her to him on the orphanage’s website- the orphanage had a sponsorship program so it was possible to find specific children. From the website, I learned that Rosmery’s mother had died and she had no other relatives. We discussed the “what ifs” and were both in total agreement that, if it were possible, we would adopt her in a heartbeat. But it wasn’t possible.

Finally, a few days before Christmas, I found myself alone in my room, and thought again of Rosmery. And, finally, all my thoughts and emotions that she evoked came to the forefront and I let myself go with them. All along, knowing that adopting her would never be possible, I’d held myself back. As I’d held her in my arms, I’d held back. As I’d talked with Ramsey about her, I’d held back. As I’d thought of her, I’d held back. Because, really, what is the point of letting yourself connect when you know that it will only cause you pain? Keeping a safe distance is just that- safe.

And so now I finally let down my guard and stopped keeping myself safe. I wept and wept, grieving over a little girl that I’m sure never gave me another thought but that I couldn’t get off my mind. I grieved over the fact that I would never see her again. I grieved over the fact that she would be unlikely to ever have a mother. I grieved over the fact that I would never get to be her mother. And I grieved over the fact that, when I’d had the chance to just full-out love on a little girl who so clearly desperately needed it, even if only for the brief time I had with her, I’d chosen to keep myself safe, instead.

I checked in on the orphanage website from time to time, just to see her and to find out if anything in her situation had changed. Much later, I went to check in on her and she wasn’t there anymore. I e-mailed the orphanage to ask about her and never got a response. I’m sure the staff there has more to keep them busy than to answer inquiries from former visitors about their children.

I know I’ll never see Rosmery again. But I also know that she will always be a reminder to me to love lavishly, for whatever time is available, in spite of the risk of pain.