come around again
A man stood wide-eyed and held a small white candle. One of those really cheap kind you can buy in bulk. The kind used for church candlelight services. I'll never, ever forget those eyes as they locked with mine. His eyes hollowed, etched with hard work, and sadness too...somewhere way in the back. Mine were very wet. In fact I was crying, that ugly cry that women often joke with one another about. You know, when you are so emotional over something that you're downright sloppy. That was me. I looked that way - that day.
We stood around a small room praying a prayer I'll never forget, one side of the room was dark skinned, the other side white. We met in the middle with that small white candle. He lit it from the lectern and handed it to us. Seems so easy just passing a candle from one body to another. A little less easy passing a life. A boy's life, from one body to another. That man did, that day. He passed that boy right on over to us and trusted us with a look of desperation, to raise him right.
A mantle I've not taken lightly from day one. It haunts me sometimes when I think of the weightiness of that day. As much joy fills me to be that little boy's mother, just as much of me wishes his birth family was whole again. That what happened didn't have to happen. That he could have grown up on Ethiopian soil. But his reality became my reality that fateful day. I took the candle and I took the boy. I took that boy right into my life.
He's made me stronger and weaker. Stronger out of the dogged way I must hold my ground when he's trying to get his way on something that just can't be. Weaker from the way he holds my heart in his tiny hands and can downright squash it whenever he wants with a careless word or behavior. He's made me softer and kinder. The compassion that floods your soul, and sucks the breath right out of you when you look into those deep brown eyes of his, the eyes that trust you so implicitly to never ever leave him. Ever. His body, mind and heart remember the feeling of abandonment and it reverberates still. I can see the echoes of that fear in his talk, his fight, his love. He's a fierce one that boy. He wants love so much, but can be the very one to push it away.
That day has come around again. The day we met that man, that man that stood wide-eyed and held a small white candle.
We stood around a small room praying a prayer I'll never forget, one side of the room was dark skinned, the other side white. We met in the middle with that small white candle. He lit it from the lectern and handed it to us. Seems so easy just passing a candle from one body to another. A little less easy passing a life. A boy's life, from one body to another. That man did, that day. He passed that boy right on over to us and trusted us with a look of desperation, to raise him right.
A mantle I've not taken lightly from day one. It haunts me sometimes when I think of the weightiness of that day. As much joy fills me to be that little boy's mother, just as much of me wishes his birth family was whole again. That what happened didn't have to happen. That he could have grown up on Ethiopian soil. But his reality became my reality that fateful day. I took the candle and I took the boy. I took that boy right into my life.
He's made me stronger and weaker. Stronger out of the dogged way I must hold my ground when he's trying to get his way on something that just can't be. Weaker from the way he holds my heart in his tiny hands and can downright squash it whenever he wants with a careless word or behavior. He's made me softer and kinder. The compassion that floods your soul, and sucks the breath right out of you when you look into those deep brown eyes of his, the eyes that trust you so implicitly to never ever leave him. Ever. His body, mind and heart remember the feeling of abandonment and it reverberates still. I can see the echoes of that fear in his talk, his fight, his love. He's a fierce one that boy. He wants love so much, but can be the very one to push it away.
That day has come around again. The day we met that man, that man that stood wide-eyed and held a small white candle.
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