September 17th

We've been taking Merissa up for communion lately. We did this last Sunday. The first time, she shared the host with me, but this time, she received her own thin wafer and immediately took a no-nonsense bite out of it. She is hungry and here is food shaped the perfect size.


I dipped mine in the communion cup and gave her the edge, so she could taste the wine. She did so, with a thoughtful look. Our faces were close together, bent toward one another. Joy flew through me as a sparrow darts up from the grass toward the bluing sky, all flutter into expanse of quiet. I am compelled by joy to kiss her cheek; we don't have to use words. We stand, she still clutches some of her host in one chubby hand and we retire from the rail.


By pre-arrangement, I gave her to her father and he took her out into the foyer to crawl around on the patterned rug and be happy. Left to myself, I let down the padded rail and closed my eyes, let the present close over me, the weight of my body held on my knees, the murmur of companionable voices, the organ above and behind me in the choir loft.


There was the pleasure of being alone, one person not a wife and not a mother and not a daughter, just myself, this inner person, ageless and delighted and with no particular need to speak anything at all to Jesus because He was right there.


I could see Jesus close and bending down, His face above me. He had no need to speak because I can understand the things His heart is saying just in the beating, and without moving at all, I could throw my arms around Him in warm recognition and nestle my head on His shoulder and take joy in Him.


No one would see anything but myself on the pew now, my hands clasped in my lap, but I remember where my life really lies, where I'm forever hidden and one day- no more veil.


But at the end of that day, the rain drums on the asphalt roof just above my head and Merissa's, as she lies in my nap, bottle in her hands. Her face is like porcelain turned rosy pink at the cheeks and nose. Her round belly rises easily with each breath. The thunder does not bother her.


We sit in the room is swallowed up in blue grey haze, cradled in the sound of the rain, the running of it down the windows.

July 11th

The mornings are growing slowly darker. I wake up and think maybe it's going to rain, but it's only that the light is starting to shrink back. It comes eventually and turns the fence gold and then, reflected, it shines through the glass door and across the surface of the coffee table.


Not this morning, though. This morning, mist is clinging to the ground, softening the view and diffusing the light. We stood at the back door, Merissa and I, and stared thoughtfully out at the damp back yard.


Last night I had to admit that Merissa had outgrown her usual bath- a blue plastic container with reassuring rubber edges, so I set it aside and filled the regular tub with three or four inches and set the baby therein. She looked much more at home there, sitting amid bubbles and bright, chewy letters and numbers that bobbed on the surface around her.


Worried that she would slip, I hovered close, but she kept her balance perfectly well. A few times she miscalculated when reaching for a toy and almost tipped, but she caught herself before I could and then watched the water ripple out in wonder.


I was kneeling on the bathmat with my arms folded on the tub, my thoughts pleasantly drifting. There was something about the light shining off the water and the white tub and the sound of the splashing that was soothing.


I knew there was a lot I had yet to do downstairs, but it didn't matter because I felt as though I had all the time in the world. I felt as though I were doing the one thing necessary for me to do in that moment- to peacefully watch over my daughter while she happily played in the bubbles.


I've been able to rest in that place more and more often in the last week or so, and that is unusual for me. Usually when I go about my day, I am haunted by the anxious thought that I am not doing enough, that my life should be filled with doing "hard things for God," though I'm not sure what that means.


Before we had Merissa, I felt as though I were wasting my time, not having a child to nurture and care for. There was this sense of futility about my life, that I was simply spinning my wheels, not giving anything back to God, who was at that time pouring His love and presence out on me in a way I had never known before.


Now we have Merissa and my days are full of caring for and nurturing her and guess what? That thought pattern is still right there! I can still come to the conclusion that I am not doing enough "hard things for God," and that I am spinning my wheels.


A while back, I decided to try practicing the presence of God as Brother Lawrence outlined it- by doing everything for love of God. It sounded easy, but I found it quite hard. It's like learning to ride a bike- I keep losing my balance and fall off to one side or the other. I can't seem to go smoothly forward for any amount distance.


Inevitably, I'd end up doing things in a rote way, one task after another, saying to Jesus dutifully, "for the love of You..." and then look around tiredly for the next thing I could do, until one day Jesus had to say to me, Jenny, I am not a checklist. I thought it interesting He put it like that- I had been unconsciously assuming that I could only love Him and connect to Him if I was doing something. Such is my ingrained legalistic bent.


Then I would give up entirely and not go through my day with any sense of consecration at all, just slogging through the mire of anxious feelings about past, present and future events, worries about money, about my writing, how I am never blogging enough or the right things and how I never measure up as a good mother.


I'd wake in the morning and this whole rush of worries and insecurities would seem to reattach to me, as soon as my head cleared enough to remember them. It would seem like such a heavy weight, I had to throw my hands out to Jesus, as though I needed help just to sit up, and He would be there, and He would whisper, remember.


It's such hard work to remember, sometimes!


Trust, Jesus reminded me- does remind me, nearly every morning. Trust that He is there, that He loves me, that He is expressing His life through me and that I live my life in Him. That I am loved, completely, steady, unconditionally and that I am in my life- this very particular, very small life- for a good reason- His reason.


Believe this, Jesus has been saying to me lately. He says it like an invitation. Stop putting yourself to the test and simply trust Me, He says.


That's what He's been wanting me to remember, and I have been remembering it. That's the thing that surprises me; I have been remembering.


Last night, I remembered. It was one of those moments when my eyes were opened to the richness and the goodness of my life. I had a beautiful, healthy baby girl grinning at me while she chewed on an alphabet letter in this incredible, large, comfortable house and downstairs was my healthy, loving husband whose hard work paid all the bills on time. And there was dinner and bed time and peaceful sleep and all was suffused by God's presence, lit up by it, surrounded and upheld by Him.


And furthermore, I was thinking about the possibility of another child, however that might happen, and it dawned on me, in this undeniably clear way, that I would love that child with all my heart, for exactly who they were and that this love would in no way diminish my love for Merissa, who also has all my heart.


For the first time, I had a glimpse of how Jesus gives Himself entirely to each of us. I saw how natural, how inevitable it was. There is no lack of love; love multiplies without effort. It's what love does.


In a deeper way than ever before, I opened my heart to the knowledge that Jesus loves me with all of Himself- that I delight Him, that His love for me is endless, I can trust it completely. I can abandon myself to His love without second thought, without hesitation, with joy. There is no lack.


I was caught up in a current of gratitude. It was like a state of being, peaceful, still, kneeling on the bathmat, caught up in the light amid the objects of my every day life, doing nothing more than being a mother to my daughter and a wife to my husband, and through all and always the beloved of God.


Isn't it good? Jesus whispered to me.


He meant life itself- to be alive, to grow, to love, to be in this creation that He set us in. How life goes on, how suffering and death cannot stand against it, are so small and powerless in the light of this life- how nothing can separate us from His love. We came from Him and we will return to Him. It's like a river that just keeps on getting deeper, a river that can't be measured and that no ships can sail on.


"It's so good," I agreed.

July 3rd

I'm down here at five thirty in the morning, hoping that in the quietness, I might be able to write. I want to write because it's July. Next month, my baby will be a year old.


Sometimes I feel like I'm already looking at this period of my life from a great distance, as if I know the shape the memories will take. They'll be centered around this house- the side of the master bedroom that was completely taken over by the glider, the crib, the suitcase with baby clothes and the boxes of diapers bought wholesale. There's the scalloped sink in the master bedroom where she was bathed and the downstairs window where her playpen was placed.


I remember last July in the rental house, everything overgrown and bugs in the kitchen, the dampness seeping through the windowsills. The landlords raised the rent by fifteen dollars and that was enough to send my husband on a house search.


He came home with pictures, realtor agents' telephone numbers and quotes from the bank. He'd been to see a few houses. He even called the adoption agency to ask about getting our address changed on the myriad places where it was officially written.


I didn't know what to do, everything was spinning too fast, but I heard Jesus whisper that He had a good plan and Keith was hard at work tracking it down. After that, I tried to step away from the fear, mostly, and paid attention instead of digging my heels in.


Of course, it was after we'd signed the papers on a house yet to be built that we were matched with Merissa's birth parents. We waited in the rental house while the boxes piled up around us, on a collision course between the house's building schedule and Merissa's projected birthday, each one getting closer and closer together and there was simply nothing we could do about it but wait.


The stroller and car seat came in the mail and we set them up right then and there. We took pictures. Our faces are filled with joy, a tender joy, but one that was fragile- because how would it end? Those boxes were pushed underneath the kitchen counter when we finally arrived at the new house with Merissa in tow, dizzy with exhaustion and light headed with relief.


On the way, we'd stopped at this two bit town, at a gas station with cracked pavement and leaning gas pumps. The air was muggy and full of the sound of local traffic heading home for dinner and a beer. Merissa was like a warm rag doll with dark eyes and a shock of dark hair. The new born sized pants gaped at her waist and fell down over her arched, helpless feet. I rode in the back with her the entire way, leaning over to watch her breathing.


The dogs were wild underfoot when we arrived and the soldier who'd been house sitting for us had set up a few things on the wide expanse of dusty counter. Outside the windows, everything was green, just like it is now, almost a full year later.


Yesterday, I took Merissa to Goodwill to do some shopping. She needed play clothes, things she could crawl around in. At the parking lot, I leaned into the back seat and lifted her from the car seat. She's heavy, compact and warm, full of strength and energy, her skin a light golden color.


Her chubby legs are getting longer and her knees and elbows and the back of her hands are dimpled. She's stretching out to run, but for right now, she still clings to me like a monkey, her hands grasping my tee shirt, looking around her with interest. She's a willing and cooperative little back seat rider, happy to get in and buckled up and happy to get unbuckled and out, stretching her arms up, intently looking at me.


Sometimes it comes over me, the goodness of my life like a wave and I have to pause and let the wave break over me. Then I must break into ridiculous baby talk and refer to myself in the third person.


"Mommy loves you!" I must whisper to her, in delight. "Who is Mommy's little baby buddy? Who is Mommy's little companion? Mommy loves to spend all day with you! Mommy loves your company. You are the joy of the Mommy!"


Inside the store, I went carefully up and down the isles with the small blue cart. I searched through the racks, sliding one hanger after another, hearing my mother's voice in my head- her you have to be patient and persistent to find the good stuff- a find! I missed her, that cheerful veteran of garage sales and second hand shops.


Merissa, however, was not convinced about this slow and steady pace of shopping, especially after she was discouraged from attempting to eat the merchandise. She prefers grocery shopping, where every isle is a new adventure and the atmosphere is cool and brisk and store clerks coo at her.


When her father gets home, she stares up at him, her mouth dropped open in delight, starry eyed. When that broad shouldered soldier in uniform leans in to kiss her, her eyes get wider and wider. She hangs out with him on the couch while I get dinner and I see the back of their two heads, one shaved close per Army regulation, one soft and downy.


Even then, when I am exhausted and stressed by the noise of the television and the growing mess in the kitchen and the fact that I still have the home stretch of the evening before me, the sight of those two heads fills me with fondness.


It's July and the heat is oppressive. Long after sunset, the air remains humid, heavy with the scent of warm earth, pine needles and green growing things. The sky holds a dusky blue color, like the bottom of a glass bottle, thick and glowing faintly. Birds flit through the shadows, darting over the grass in pursuit of insects.


My baby still sleeps on her belly with her head pillowed on her arms, her knees curled up, but in the day, she is lifting off, pushing with her hands and straightening her sturdy legs, reaching forward to grasp anything, finding sounds and linking them together and intently tracking cheerios across the tray of her high chair.


I knew I couldn't hold onto this year and I knew it would go quickly, but I knew those things in theory. Now I know it in practice. I know the rest of her childhood will pass by like this; the rest of my life will pass by like this. This one year has given me a greater understanding of the brevity and beauty of life than anything else I've even known.


When I was younger, I assumed that I would have a whole brood, that being a mother would be my most basic identity. I assumed this even when I was thirty years old, when I married Keith and waited during his deployment for him to return and our family to begin, the happy chaos, the flotsam and jetsam of many children.


I assumed this until we moved to Kentucky, and then that dream began to ebb slowly away. That was five years ago, I think. Almost five years now. I lost that dream slowly, pushing myself to walk and then jog along the golf paths in winter and early spring, making my body do at least one thing I could control.


Now that dream seems foreign to me. I am surprised to remember it. I don't think it was ever real to me; it was a kind of mirage. I would have stepped into it and made it real, if I could have, but the reality would have been something completely different.


The same now too, when I consider the future, what it holds. What will it mean and what will it look like? I don't know. I can hold to a mirage and run toward it, if I want, if I choose to do that. But I don't want to, because I don't want to lose what's real right now, the precious and imperfect life that is given to me right now.


So I must swoop my almost one year old daughter up in my arms and kiss her and love on her while she is here, as she is passing through, one of the greatest gifts I ever received and so different from my first expectations.

June 6th

Recently, I brought the rest of the baby bottle paraphernalia downstairs.


One of the things I carried down stairs was a bottle cleaner, in a cheerful, gender neutral lime green and looking now much the worse for wear. I bought it months before we went active on the adoption website. I wanted something baby to be in the utensil drawer, rattling around as though it were at home there.


This month last year, we didn't know Merissa even existed. We didn't receive the match until the beginning of July, but all along, she was there and growing and her birth parents were searching and we were waiting and preparing.


Yesterday I also carried down special "for baby" dish soap- Keith bought it for me when we were stuck in the hotel for three weeks out of state, with a newborn six weeks premature. The scent of that soap takes me right back to that time, everything compressed, under pressure, living out of suitcases and eating out of plastic containers. Time moved by in three hour segments, day and night, dictated by the feeding schedule.


I gave Merissa her first bath on the hotel towel and used the plastic ice bucket to hold the water. We had a view of a back parking lot and a stand of yellow pines. Merissa and I waited there days at a time alone, while Keith drove back up to Georgia to close on the new house and then to move in. We couldn't come up with him because we kept running into problems with our home study and we couldn't cross state lines with her yet.


When we were released to go back home, I can't describe the feeling. I sat beside tiny Merissa in her huge car seat and I watched the green of August go by and I knew we were going home. I had yet to even see the new house finished. Keith had barely had time to set up the rooms and everything was still in boxes when we got home and we didn't care.


Last fall, the master bedroom was bottle central. I would stand there, wearily surveying the six waiting bottles, knowing that by seven in the morning, most or all of them would be dirty and waiting to be cleaned, and I would be standing there, wearily surveying them. Over and over again, day after day.


Now if Merissa wakes in the night, she puts herself back to sleep. Even the one bottle on standby was no longer necessary. The upstairs is officially for sleeping and resting, the downstairs for eating and enjoying.




Outside, the hibiscus are blooming orange and the rose bush is blooming pink and a hanging basket is full of fragile flags of red, orange and purple. A pink plastic swing hangs from yellow chain under the back porch, shaded in the morning and full under the sun in the afternoon.


Inside, Merissa is on the move. In her walker, she is like a fish with teeth, lurking underfoot, ready to strike against the tender back of a heel with the edge of the plastic bumper. She follows me around the kitchen, sink to stove and back again. She is adept at moving that thing around, backing and swiveling with agility; I never know quite where to put my foot down.


She has discovered the raspberry. She has also discovered that this noise is the perfect expression of opinion when the baby food is not up to standard or otherwise not wanted. Also, the gesture is simply much more expressive whenever there is food involved.


Because I don't want her to think this performance a grand one, I try hard to keep a straight face. So far, my stoicism in the face of flying food debris had paid off, as she has yet to realize just what an ace card she is holding.


She is almost crawling. She pushes herself up onto her hands and knees and teeters there for a moment, wide eyed and breathless as if on the verge of epiphany before collapsing into a commando crawl that moves determinedly forward in a slow and stealthy angle.


To encourage her to continue moving forward, I build tall, wobbly block towers and gesture grandly toward it, as though I were a model in a game show, displaying a brand new car.


"Look at the glorious thing that Mommy made! Come, and knock it down!" I invite, oh so enticingly.


Into the carpet her toes will dig and forward she will go, eyes fastened on the target, stopping every few inches to test and see if she is within reach with tiny outstretched fingers.


A few days ago we were outside, waiting for Keith to come home, Merissa in her swing. The sun was at that perfect angle where it lights up the grass from behind, turning the green translucent. The light was striking the unpainted fence, turning it amber and in the narrow lines between the fence boards was nothing but golden light.


I realized that it was June, after all, and summer. I freed Baby from her swing and caught her up.


"It is June!" I whispered to her. "The grass is green and it is late evening and still full of light. You will love these evenings."


We sat down in the grass together  to enjoy it.

May 20th

I stood watching Merissa as she tried to reach for a toy. She was lying on her stomach on the thick carpet of her room; I was down the hallway, leaning against the open door to the master bedroom. Her world was nothing but the warmth of the carpet and the fall of light and the hum of someone's lawn mower- and this toy, just out of reach.


I saw her try again and again to grab the toy, her hand sometimes making contact only to send it rolling further away. She would pause and retract her arms, as though to regroup before reaching out again, fingers groping, straining forward, toes digging into the carpet.


I wondered if she wasn't merely reaching for the toy, but for herself, aware of nothing but the need to stretch out into who she was becoming. Everything around her supported this growing into self, everything was focused into this one moment reaching into the next. It must be tantalizing, just at the tip of her fingers, who she knew she could be, must be, was going to be.


She doesn't remember who she was and she can't see so far ahead as to be worried about the shape she will eventually take- she lives always on the liminal space. Her life is a perfect sphere moving just beyond her current ability, rolling her into the next.


This work she does is full of urgency, frustration and joy. On one reach she finally clamped the toy between her finger and thumb in a secure grip. Aware of this, she snagged the toy immediately to her mouth and bit it, proprietarily. It was hers; she had reached forward into herself and taken hold and now she would enjoy it for all it was worth. She made no sound, but her whole little body was filled with the intensity with triumph, both hands now firmly around the block.


It sounds strange, perhaps, but I felt as though I'd been allowed to see something sacred. I feel this way, sometimes, watching her grow.

May 5th

This week we closed the windows for the summer. There might come a day or two in the next five months when we can open them again, but for the most part, they will remain shut and locked while the A/C runs its little heart out and I wilt slowly away until the middle of October, when they can be flung open again.


In May, Merissa will be nine months old. Each morning her face looks a little more like an adorable toddler and less like a tiny baby, with her large, perfectly molded head, creamy skin, round cheeks and large eyes that move swiftly, full of intention, focused, taking in as much as possible before zeroing in an targets and then lunging toward them, damn the torpedoes.


When placed on the hardwood floor, she slowly turns in ever widening circles, viewing the kitchen from first this angle and then that one, but mostly being fascinated with the wood grain. She also moves slowly backward.


Her feet touch the floor when in her walker, and she propels herself backward when in that as well. She will appear slowly, in segments, from around the corner of the kitchen bar, one finger in the corner of her mouth, smiling hugely at this leisurely form of locomotion, and also at the fact that she has discovered my whereabouts.


One pearly tooth has emerged from her lower gums and it shows sometimes when she is grinning or laughing. This adds some indefinable something to her adorableness, which I thought could not be added to, until I saw this tooth.


I think right now is the most delicious stage, but I have thought that about every stage since she turned three months. Before that, my memory is vague with misery. I was anxious about everything- how much she was eating, sleeping, pooping. She was so helpless that I felt like I could never relax and just enjoy her, and not much of her personality showed through, though I could see glimpses of it.


Besides, I was so sleep deprived I could barely enjoy anything. I felt as if I were constantly short of something, not just sleep, but time and perception and ability and serenity. I was constantly running short and desperately wanting more of those things.


Recently, I realized I had still been living out of that feeling of scarcity- still feeling desperate for just some more of something- usually time. But it was more than just a loss of time, it was this feeling that there wasn't enough, period. I felt as if I was constantly scrambling, heckled by this persistent, vague anxiety, but I didn't understand it.


I don't remember how I made the connection, but a month or so ago, I reached a different and deeper acceptance that there is never going to be enough time. Children are quite effective teaching aids for this lesson. Time is constantly running out, running between my fingers and I can't hold on to it and I can't get it back. It just flows through. In accepting this, I feel much more at peace.


I think we live in a culture that doesn't want to let go of anything. It refuses to age, let alone die. Choices can never be diminished, they must be expanded! They must be bewildering in their variety. Everyone must be distracted, dazed by the overhead light of the store, by the rapidly flashing commercials rolling by in triumphant procession. Ability to purchase must expand, money can be printed over night, the future must be spent for the present.


Anyway. Lately, I've been consciously letting go of things. Not things, necessarily, but embracing the sense that I can't have or keep everything, and that is okay.


For example, I can be caught up in writing and my daughter can wake up, and I can be faced with the sudden realization that I have run out of time to write. So I let the thought that I was composing fall away. I might never be able to capture it in just the way that I was on the verge of, but that is increasingly okay with me. If it was something well thought out, it will come back to me. If not, probably I need to grow into it more.


I'm moving slowly from one moment to the next, putting down one thing, taking up the next. The things that I'm doing aren't important or visible to the outside world. I am not productive or efficient and my course is frequently altering depending on what I am asked to do in that moment.


But I generally feel so peaceful; much more peaceful than I ever felt before. I also feel an increasing sense of gratitude welling up in me, gratitude for just those things that I have. When I start to feel anxious or frustrated, I now realize that this is probably because I am trying to hold onto something that I need to let go of, or I am bracing for something anticipated in the future. Either way, I must let go in order to be peaceful in the present.


This morning, I stood still in the kitchen, breathing in the scent of Merissa's downy hair and letting that moment open up as it was- she with her tiny tooth, dimpled elbows, wearing  her white onesie, slightly soiled at the neck with spilled formula. It is the most delicious stage, it was the most perfect moment, and I'm so grateful for it, even as it is passing me by.

April 24th

On Easter Sunday I kept waking up early, thinking of how the women left for the tomb before dawn, conscious of the bird song and the warmth of Keith sleeping beside me and of the quiet communion of the inner place.


"It seems strange that I should be with You like this when I should be meditating on Your death," I confessed to Jesus. "But I can't bear to think of it."


He only smiled and didn't mind that I put my ear to His heart, to listen to it beating.


"After all, the angels are very close to You," I said, thinking of how they had ministered to Jesus in Gethsemane and were there again in the garden tomb.


Not so close as you, He said.


It was a rainy morning and so I didn't get the chance to watch the sunrise, but I stood at the back door with Merissa, listening to the birds. It's all green out there now.


We left for church a half hour early, in order to practice the baptism. There were trumpets blaring from the balcony where the choir sings and Merissa looked at me with wide eyes. She was entering nap time territory with no prospect for a nap in the near future. Keith and I felt much apprehension on this account.


The practice went well, though I found it hard to concentrate on anything, lost in the words. I had felt anxiety about many different prospects- a watery poop running up the back of Merissa's flowered and flounced dress or her wailing with abandon throughout the entire service, but I was sunk down too deep in some internal place for the anxiety to impact me.


As I have no ability to control the things I am anxious about, I have to leave them in the hands of God and merely do the one thing that is for me to do in that moment, and then to do the next thing when that comes- doing each thing like a secret language of love for God- and if there is nothing to do, to rest and to love Him in rest. This has been my practice of late.


Sometimes I forget this practice, but when I remember, I just take it up again. Sometimes I feel wearied by this practice and then I remember it's not my strength and faithfulness I'm counting on, and it's not about feeling some emotion or feeling some sense of His presence, it's about the simple faith that God is present and offering Him the exact thing that I am doing as an act of love.


As the time for the service drew near, we waited in the lobby to take our part in the procession, informed by a black robed lady that she was our vesper and would tell us where to take our place. Merissa flirted charmingly over my shoulder with some of the ladies of the choir.


People streamed in and chairs had to be brought at last minute and set up at the back and sides of the church. I kept stepping to the side as my husband and various other volunteers brought the chairs through the crowd.


Eventually the organ struck up some thunderous music and the procession began to disappear through the doors into the heart of the sound and eventually, our red-haired, bright-eyed vesper was waving to us and we took our place behind her.


The church was floating in a sea of white lilies and alleluias. We took our place at the very front and after us came a stream of children carrying bright flowers that they placed in the cross of evergreens placed up front. This took some time and children were spilling up and to the sides and wandering around curiously. There was the fresh smell of crushed carnations and lilies and the bitter, ancient scent of the incense.


I had lost my program and so could not follow the liturgy; I could not have done it anyway, with the baby in my arms, so it took me completely by surprise when the song, Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God, rose up it seemed from under my feet and swept me away. The Rector saw my face and smiled.


I remembered that to seek the Kingdom of God is to seek and follow Christ and the power of those words and that thought rose up all through me- it seemed to me both a great necessity and a great pleasure, whereas before, I'd always been confused about this seeking. How should I seek this Kingdom? Where is this Kingdom? What does the seeking look like?


This anxiety is all but gone now, and I could sing those words without reservation and the next part of the song was in my mouth and I was singing and I was trying not to cry, because I was singing with my daughter in my arms.


I remembered the day after she was born, sitting with her in my arms in the newborn nursery and talking with her birthparents. As they were talking about their difficult journey toward choosing adoption, and the peace they felt with the decision now, Jesus spoke right into my heart. This is the child you asked Me for; I'm giving her to you, He had said.


On Easter morning, as soon as I'd started singing, Merissa looked up at me with joy and what my husband calls, "pure love" and reached her hand to my face and didn't take her eyes off me for a moment and tried to sing along softly, off tune. This is a regular occurrence, but one that happens in the nursery in the evening, without an audience.


In the church, Keith turned and looked down at us in awe. The people behind us started to film us. I was really having a hard time singing at this point, because it was taking all my concentration not to cry.


The song dissolved into the chorus of alleluias and then the next verse rose up, and I was doing okay until the part where I was singing, knock and the door shall be opened unto you, and I could barely say those words, it was so strong in me, the wonder of this open door that Christ has put before me.


I felt His love washing through me, reminding me and insisting that I remember this gift through the words of the song. I felt that and I felt His presence as though He were standing behind me, His hands on my shoulders, steadying me.


"I love You," I said, directing this thought as though to the cross at the center of the church.


I'm right here, He whispered into my ear, as though I were standing in the circle of His arms.


It was all very much. I was very glad to sit down when it was time to sit down. I knew Merissa would be hungry by then, so Keith fixed her a bottle and I offered it to her, wondering if she would take it in that strange environment. She wound her hand around one of my fingers and drank the entire bottle while the readings from Scripture were said. Merissa spent the Rector's short sermon bouncing on her father's knees and waving her hands in the air and being charming to the people behind us.


Then it was time to go up and then my anxiety struck hard. I kept my head down and thought about one thing at a time, first to take that step and then the next and then to look up and find the Rector's face so I would know which direction to head toward, then to look up toward Keith to be sure he was there and that he had the seven page booklet outlining the Sacrament. He was; he did.


It was a full church. I tried not to think about it. Two good people from the congregation stood beside as, as sponsors in place of Merissa's godparent who couldn't be there.


The Rector had said that any time they celebrated the sacrament of baptism, everyone renewed their vows with the person being baptized; that the sacrament was a communal act, a joining of the community, a common celebration and joy.


So when I said the vows with Keith and the sponsors, and in Merissa's stead, for her and with her until the time comes for her to confirm them for herself or not as she is free to do, I was also renewing them myself. This knowledge was being pressed on me, as I stood there, leaning against Keith, trying to read the words on the page.


The words we were reading were centuries old. When we were practicing, the first time we all spoke together, we unconsciously choose the word "we," instead of "I," and the Rector had to correct us. She said that although we were speaking in harmony, it was for each of us an individual declaration.


The Rector asked, "Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?"


And I looked up and declared, "I renounce them."


The Rector asked, "Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?"


"I renounce them."


The Rector asked, "Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?"


"I renounce them."


"Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?"


And looking up into the space of air between the seats and the choir, I said, "I do."


"Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?"


And looking up, I said to Him, "I do."


The Rector asked, "Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?"


And we all said together, and I said to Him then, and again, and for all my life and for our daughter: I do.


Merissa loves water, so she was not upset when she was baptized, only very much surprised and then she waved her hands around excitedly, sometimes laughing and sometimes smiling. She was calm and interested in the Chrism, the holy oil that was marked in a cross on her forehead.


"Merissa," the Rector said, tenderly, "you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ's own for ever."


I heard those words with a feeling of awe, and then the Rector presented her to the congregation by carrying her down into the central isle.


"Meet the newest little Christian," she announced.


As I watched her being carried away from me and into a crowd of interested people, I realized that Merissa is not just a gift to Keith and myself, but to the world, in the way each child is. I had a glimpse of what it will feel like when she is grown and walking away into her own life.


When we went down to our pew with Merissa, the woman behind us was in tears, her mascara pooling under her eyes. "I'm crying!" she said, a little helplessly, stretching her hands out. "I'm crying, it was so moving!"


When it was time for Eucharist, we were invited up. By that time Merissa, very much nap deprived, had fallen limply asleep in my arms, her face buried in my neck. Keith and I both wanted to go and so I simply carried Merissa with me; by this time, my right arm was about numb with the strain of holding her.


At the rail, I knelt down, still with her in my arms. I'm not sure how I managed this, as I was wearing an ankle length skirt and high heeled sandals, but in any case, down we went. The next thing I know, the black robed official next to me was bending down to talk to me.


"We don't kneel down at Easter," he told me, with such kindness.


Naturally speaking, due to my shyness, I should have been completely chagrined, because as it happened, the official, Keith, Merissa and myself were the only ones up there in front of the whole church- apparently that's another thing Episcopalians do that I wasn't aware of. But I wasn't embarrassed, I was full of some humble, willing joy.


"Oh, we don't?" I asked him, happily. We'd been kneeling down all during Lent and I'd just assumed it was the thing one did. Actually, I would have preferred to continue kneeling, but I was more than happy to follow the form.


He helped us up with one hand, otherwise, I'm not sure how I would have gotten back up.


"She did so well during the ceremony," he remarked, encouragingly, when I was standing, as though to comfort me for my small mishap.


"Yes, she did, didn't she," I agreed, joyfully.


When the Rector came to offer the host, she paused before stepping away. She turned back to place her hand on Merissa's head and began to pray. As she did, I felt the Spirit move over me so strongly that my eyes fluttered shut.


Merissa and I waited in the lobby until the rest of the service was over. While we were there, one of the black robed officials came by and paused. He was broad with a grizzled face and short, bristly grey hair and piercing eyes. He looked like a monk.


"That wasn't so bad, was it?" he asked, in his direct manner, eyes twinkling- before the service, he'd asked us if we were nervous and Keith and I had both heartily admitted to being just that.


"No, it was not so bad," I said, Merissa still fast asleep in my arms. "It was wonderful," I added, softly, attempting to put some words to the experience.


"Yes," said the man briefly, softly. He touched Merissa's head with his fingers before turning away quickly and striding back to whatever duties were calling him


On the way home, we stopped at Burger King for some lunch. I sat in the car with the warm paper bag on my lap, listening to the radio and lost in thought. I couldn't help remembering the song I had sung in front of another congregation twenty years ago, when I had been sixteen, the last stanza especially:


“The soul that on Jesus doth lean for repose,
I will not, I will not, desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”
-How Firm a Foundation


It seemed to me that the song and the vows I had repeated just that day were like bookends to a particular period of my life- a period of life like a wilderness.


When I was a teenager, I used to draw as a hobby and I filled sketch pads with pictures. I've kept some of them and two in particular stand out to me; I keep them in my bedside drawer.


One is of myself sitting in a wing chair looking out the open window, a book fallen to my lap while a messenger leans over the back of the chair, whispering into my ear. There is a look of wonder on my face. Written around the pictures are words from this verse:


"Listen, oh daughter, and incline your ear, for so the King will desire your beauty; worship Him, for He is your Lord." (Psalm 45:10-11)


The second sketch is of myself leaning against a tall, robed person with sandals with the desert behind them and this verse is written across the bottom of the page:


"Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved?" (Songs 8:5)


Sometimes I pull out those sketches- poorly done and fading now after twenty years- and wonder how it was that I seemed to know the way my life was going to unfold.


I know my daughter's life is going to unfold with sorrow as well; the very circumstances of her birth plunged her into it. She will have losses to grieve and questions to ask. She will have her own kind of wilderness to walk through.


Sometimes I am gripped with intense fear of the future, wondering what lies in wait, what fearful events, what shameful failures, what loss?


That night, when I prayed with Merissa, I whispered to her all the things we were thankful for during the day.


"And we don't know what tomorrow will bring," I whispered to her, acknowledging this as I always do. "But we know that Jesus will be with us every step of the way like a Good Shepherd and His rod and staff, they comfort us, so we do not need to be afraid.


"And we know that all night you'll be held close in His arms, safe under His wings, close to His heart- all night long, safe and cozy, until in the morning light you wake to Jesus.


"And we know that we come from Him and we return to Him, because we live in Him, because He died for us, because He loves us," I whisper to her like a song, one I say each night. "And so we love Jesus and we belong to Him forever and ever."


Amen

March 3rd

My head is full of some dull, dark blue ache. I've spent the day drowning in it, being driven to and from the dirty white of the hospital building where they hold my daughter down and dig the needle into the crease of her arm, looking for a vein.


They find it, but it can't draw up enough blood and by then they've marked her foot and her hand with alcohol, gauze and band-aids. Little spots of her blood that they can't get enough of are splattered over the crinkling white paper. They give up.


We are happy to give up. We are ushered out of the bustling lab room where we were constantly interrupted by other lab workers inching past us to reach the refrigerator, the drawers of equipment, trying not to look at us.


We are told next time to make sure we feed her and give her a nap before trying again and we emerge into the crowded waiting room that is pushed up against the hallway. Frazzled faces of parents look at us, but I can't see them without the glasses that I broke the other day, the lens falling out.


I don't care. "How can we possibly make sure she's fed and rested when they make us wait for hours and then send us to another place where we wait again?" I demand of Keith.


I am holding my daughter who is red faced and smeared with tears. We are all of us red faced and smeared by the experience. We look like we are escaping with only the clothes on our backs.


Keith does not answer, he puts his arm around my shoulder and says something meaningless, something soothing. Because I know him, this works, even when I don't hear the words. Eventually we stop at one of the waiting areas to try and regroup. I pull her little socks on, careful of her heel, the one that the lab worker said was too thick.


My daughter had skin too thick, flesh too chunky; she had too much strength altogether for the needle and even with three pairs of hands to hold her down for the one nurse, she fought on regardless, her blue eyes looking straight into my eyes while her tears ran down the sides of her face into the paper.


What could I say to her, as I helped to hold her down? This is for your own good? I was right there as she was in pain and her gaze sunk into mine with all of her grief and bewilderment and anger and pain and the only thing I could offer her was simply to have the courage not to look away.


The lab workers meant well. They were as frazzled as we were by the end, the small room overflowing with rattled intensity, moist with emotion. Everyone was glad to burst apart, to break the tight bond of hushed voices and frustration that had bound us all down to the table.


The sliding doors open to the windy day outside, we are hit by fresh air and grey skies, sidewalks, cracked pavement. I sit her on my lap in the car and when she sees me, her eyes open up into love. I look down into the blue eyes that look into mine without fear and I wonder how she can love me still. Isn't my face the same face that watched over her while the needle dug down?


I feed her in the car and she falls asleep before she can even take half the bottle. She wakes at the PX. We try the optometrist and must make an appointment for next week. I stand too long at the counter, not realizing our business is done, talking with a kind of vague shell shock to another customer about the ordeal of doctor's visits.


Everything is out of focus for me, but my daughter is merely tired, content to watch whatever it is she thinks she sees from the car seat set up high in the cart. How does she see the world, when each experience swims out of the wild blue yonder?


Is it crystal clear for her, the racks of clothing emerging out of distance only to fall back and disappear, her father's blue and white shirt temporarily blocking everything, the magazine rack in the check out line, bright squares of jumbled color?


I wander slowly from one clothing display to another, trying to keep track of the prices, but I feel paralyzed and unable to make decisions. I appeal to Keith again and again, offering him up one selection and then another. He remains patient, leaning his forearms against the cart handle. I start one sentence several times and never complete it. It doesn't matter, we purchased everything we needed but socks. Again we forget socks. We buy fifty dollar's worth of small, soft cotton clothing looking like a rainbow sherbet.


She is hard asleep at the food court. She sits slumped in the car seat, her eyelids blue, her hands limp in her lap. I sit slumped in my chair, shoulders bent against the foot traffic behind me. There are TV screens attached to the pillars and I wonder why we always want that noise in every space. In every room in the hospital there was one screen that every face was lifted to like flowers to the sun, as though drinking in the quickly passing images, so urgent in the black frame, unwilling to lose even one drop of that nonstop narrative.


I can see Keith moving toward me; he is a bright white shirt with blue sleeves and a blurred face and then he is smiling at me and I can see the love before I see the features of his face. We carry the car seat out into the parking lot together, each of us offering one hand to help distribute the weight of our sleeping daughter.


We drive home in the rain and try to resume our day. I dress our daughter in one of her new outfits, all soft grey lace and pink cotton and somehow I don't think it suits her, but I don't bother to change it again. After all, she looks cute. Only I would know it doesn't match that lioness heart that beats so strongly in her tiny body. She is furious strength under round cheeks and knees and chubby fingers. She is like me that way.


I sing her to sleep like I do each night in the nursery with the blinds closed and the night light spilling up golden on the wall. As usual, I am feeling somehow out of breath, as though I've spent the entire day running instead of walking. I can't sing until I've caught my breath. I must allow my shoulders to drop back into their natural place. I look up at the ceiling and us usual, my prayer is wordless and hardly a prayer as it is an acknowledgement- here I am, here You are, here after all.


As I am singing the lullaby, my daughter reaches her hand up for my face. Her damp fingers brush softly across my cheek and bats against my mouth, her eyes wide. It's as though she is trying to touch the sound itself, fascinated by it. I remember singing to her the day after she was born, when she was the size of a kitten, all curled into her self- dark haired, dark eyed, tired from fighting her way into the world so early, fighting to suck the bottle, to breathe on her own.


I held her warm against my stomach, cradled in my arms and I sang to her all those songs that had waited years for the daughter all my life I'd wanted. It had been so long I couldn't remember all the words and had to hum my way through them. As I had, the words had risen up into memory one by one and it was as if by remembering them I was rediscovering myself, just in time to give myself away.


And then I know, as I sing to her in the nursery, why my daughter could look at me with unguarded love only minutes after the ordeal at the lab. Because the things my eyes were saying to her were not for her to endure, to grin and take it.


My eyes had been open mirrors of her own grief and pain, wide open and clear through. My eyes had said: Pour into me your grief, because I see you and I love you and I won't leave you alone in this.

January 24th

This morning, Meri and I danced around downstairs to the sounds of Tupelo Honey. Like the good girl that she is, she was drawn to the music, looking over at the computer speakers with fascination and jumping up and down in an excited, if uncoordinated way.


In general, she enjoys most of the songs on my Dire Straits Pandora radio station. It is my fond hope that by exposing her to such good music so early, I am inoculating her against any Justin Bieber-esce nonsense that in her future pop culture might hold.


Only time will tell if I am successful in this endeavor.


This morning, I am eating breakfast while it is still warm and the bed is already made and on the fridge, a message of love is spelled out in alphabet magnets: love u kitns.


This message is laid out above the chart for a weekend juice cleanse, which for some reason still hangs on there, despite the fact that I pretty much have abandoned the discipline, and must now figure out what to do with a pound of spinach leaves and other assorted vegetables.


Keith came home from work early yesterday, just in time to catch a cooking show where they were demonstrating the art of the cheese steak sandwich. This particular version was made with three kinds of cheeses, including mozzarella and cream cheese. We were in awe.


"Your mom used to cook like that for me," Keith told Meri sadly.


Those were the days. I suspect they will be returning shortly.


Meri has grown so much; each morning, she looks cuter. She is growing out of all her sleepers and onesies.


When she wakes, she sings to herself softly for a long while, before deciding that enough is enough and she has better turn up the volume and so announce herself to the waiting world, and also to wake Mom.


When she sees me, her entire body is filled with joy and her face is filled with laughter. It's the most marvelous thing. When I carry her down the stairs, I swing her around so I'm holding her wrapped close in my arms, because lately she loves to fling herself one way or the other, heedless of gravity or any other consequence.


"Safety latch!" I declare to her, smiling down at her and she breaks into a delighted grin. She thinks this is a game. But when we reach the foot of the stairs, she likes to stay there, curled up close to me, just looking up at me, and we end up dancing slowly around the kitchen, even when there is no music.


Per her doctor, we have started her on rice cereal. She was not impressed with this foreign substance and could not figure out why it was being put in her mouth. She promptly spit it all out again, as if that were her job. When I persisted, she pouted and looked around her for reprieve, any reprieve.


It broke Daddy's heart, who happened to be filming this event. It is not for nothing that we have dubbed her sad expression "the pouty face of infinite cuteness." It rarely appears, but when it does, to a man we are undone, we are slain. This does not bode well for future discipline, but we will do the best we can in the face of unstoppable adorableness.


Keith had to try the rice cereal himself, as he doubted that my bright expressions of "It's delicious! Delicious num nums! Delicious num nums for you!" held any truth.


Indeed, they did not. "That is not delicious," declared Keith, bitterly.


I tried to explain to Keith the Theory of Parenting When Trying New Things, but that was not the moment for it. Keith was filled only with commiseration, so we ceased Operation Num Nums, knowing that the battle might be lost, but the war was not over.


Two weeks later, she is willing to eat half the bowl- which amounts to a tablespoon, and even manages to swallow most of one spoonful at one go. The rest of it goes everywhere else.


She sits on my lap during this process, because, as her highchair was being assembled, a strap got caught in the place where the instructions strictly warned and forbade it from getting caught- we will not say whose fault that was- and now it seems to be permanent part of the structure, unless we can figure out how to undo the hinges and each time I look at it, I am filled with despair, so my lap it is.


Which reminds me of her last doctor's appointment. It was set for three in the afternoon and coming up on this event, that hour seemed to provide ample time for preparation. In fact, in order to prepare, I had given the baby a bath in the morning, so that she would be all sweetly clean and smelling of lotion for the doctor, who would then be doubtless impressed with my mothering skills.


After her bath, I decided it would be a great idea to give her downy, clean smelling hair its first comb with a tiny baby comb, so that she would be especially adorable. As soon as I did this, all of her cradle cap decided to come loose at once. This was horrifying.


"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, you're beautiful, this is mommy's fault! What was mommy thinking? Don't worry this is fine, this is going to be okay," I was wailing, while attempting to get her hair free of the stuff, but there was no end of it. Baby herself was unaware that tragedy was occurring right then and there, on top of her head and continued contentedly chewing on her fingers.


(I called my mom later, and my mother said the exact thing had happened to her, with me.


"All the baby books said to leave it be, that it was fine, and not mess with it, so I did, until now!" I wailed. "I just wanted to comb her hair! Surely I must comb her hair sometime!"


"No, that is right," my mom assured me. "It's perfectly natural. It'll go away on it's own."


But I digress.)


I did the best I could with it, but I didn't want to annoy the innocent child, so I had to leave it be. By two thirty, I suddenly found myself with a baby with a head full of dandruff to wake and change and insert into car seat, car seat to insert into car, diaper bag to sling in with, purse to be located and directions to be found, just in case.


In order not to lose my phone, I had jammed it into the back pocket of my jeans. Before beginning preparations for baby, I had decided I had better use the bathroom myself, because heaven forbid this need should arrive at the doctor's office, where all and sundry must enter the restroom with me and how on earth? Best not even to allow for this.


However- the best laid plans and all that. Somehow, the phone fell with a terrible plunk into the toilet. This was a shocking on many levels.


Fortunately, the water was still as clean as toilet water can ever be said to be, and so, after a horrified moment of wrestling all my best instincts down, I reached right in and grabbed the phone and then held it, dripping in my hand, and wondered what the next step might be in this unfortunate and unforeseen event.


I tossed it into the sink, realized I needed to wash my hand, realized I couldn't with the phone in the sink and realized I needed to get the phone dry if I were ever to use it again. So I used toilet paper and then remembered the small bit of brown rice still in the pantry, and how that is useful when a phone is wet.


So into the bag of rice the phone was tossed, I was able to wash my hands and then I realized I had yet to even wake the baby up. Somehow I remained calm while waking and dressing a sleepy but mild mannered baby and got her all set in the car seat.


Now I was really running late, so I fished the phone out of the rice and jammed it again into my back pocket- a habit is a habit- and rushed out the door, though rushing is not exactly the right word to use when I was laden down with baby gear, looking a camel about to cross the Serengeti.


I got everything situated in the car and then sat in the driver's seat, only to realize that my butt was cold and, worst still, wet. The phone had leaked its excess water out into my jeans in the short time that it had rested there.


I looked up at the now locked house with a kind of patient despair. I was out of time. There was nothing to be done. I looked in the storage compartment for the GPS. It was not there. I raised my eyes to heaven, ie, the roof of the car.


"Dear sweet Lord," I prayed, fervently. "Please don't let me get lost, ending up somewhere in the bowels of the city amid a confusing tangle of menacing highways and byways, now that my phone might not be working."


And so that is how I arrived at the doctor's office with two minutes to spare, sporting a butt wet with toilet water, a rice gummed phone and carrying a baby with a head full of dandruff. This is also why I will never, ever have an iphone.


At least I found the place. Maybe I should have been praying for the phone as well.

January 4th

A day in the life...

of last month, when Meri turned four months old!

I enjoyed doing this and it taught me two things: I do have free time and my life is a feast.

Early Morning

Mid Morning

 Afternoon

Early Evening

December 16th

I've been wanting to go back and read some old blog posts from this time last year, and today I finally remembered to do this at a moment when I also had the time- those two things do not always coincide, lately. I found this:

*

December 23rd, 2012

Our Christmas this year is still going to be modest and we are not able to travel up to Indiana as we usually have.

We did, however, buy something for Baby- the crib mattress. Keith jammed it up into our cart and then we looked at each other.

"For Baby!" I exclaimed happily. "Whoever and wherever he or she is!"

"Whoever," Keith repeated, smiling.

When I got home, I put away the groceries and then dressed the crib with Winnie the Pooh sheets and bumper pads. The nursery looks much more cozy now. I can imagine a tiny, wrinkled new born lying on those sheets, wearing footed pajamas and looking around with jerky movements and wide eyes.

We are going to take one month to try and do some repairs to our battered finances and then we will take out the loan in February and go active at the adoption agency.

This Christmas has been rough. I always feel as if I am scavenging through all the emotional clutter to get at something meaningful, some small piece of joy or hope or wonder that is left under the pressing anxiety of expectations.

I was cleaning out my bedside drawers recently- looking for something which I did not find- and I came across this scrap of paper on which I had written all the anxieties that had been pressing down on me at that time.

It was a long list and the funny thing was, I couldn't remember a single one of them. None of them mattered, in the long run. All of them were resolved.

All I could remember was how oppressed I had been by them at the time.

I've brought that scrap of paper to mind many times in the last few weeks. I don't know how or when, but I know that everything that feels heavy and impossible, everything looming over me right now, will be resolved and pass away.

As usual, I try always to wake up in the present moment; to be alive here and now, no matter how much I would like to escape into a rosy vision of what the future might hold, no matter how tightly I feel myself to be tied to the past.

Right now, for example, I hear the quiet clatter of the dryer and the whir of the heater, as it fights off the chill of this gray morning.

Keith's sneakers are tumbled at the floor beside my desk and my glasses rest on top of a Christmas card sent from my parents.

The Christmas lights twinkle in a haze of red, orange, green and blue; their reflections shine diffused and soft in the wood floor below.

Lynn sits at the window next to me, intent on some mysterious and pressing matter that only she knows about- a rabbit, maybe.

Right now, I feel worn out, inside and out. And that is okay. Even the landscape around me is resting now, bedded down deep and sleeping in the short days.

After the quietness, a different season will be coming. Right now there is only the promise of it, a light in the dark.

*

I can't help contrasting my life then to this year's Christmas. This year, I'm having to write with one eye on the baby monitor. There is no such thing as free time. If I chose to do one thing, it will cost me another.

I have a new desk, one scavenged from the curb outside Keith's office at work, where it had been left for the garbage truck. It must have been used as a concierge desk. It's very large and only slightly battered and set in what should be the formal dining room in the new house. My windows look out into the neighbor's siding, but they are large windows and they do let in a lot of light.

Beside me is the pack and play with the mobile above it in bright colors, diaper clothes and flannel blankets draped over the edge. Pushed up to the bookcase is a disintegrating cardboard box with unused Christmas decorations still partially unwrapped.

It's sunny and cold, the floors are scattered with bits of dry grass that the dogs bring in with them on a daily basis. Upstairs, laundry lies neatly on the bed, folded but heavily wrinkled from its long wait time in the dryer. I have to decide what's for dinner soon, because whatever it will be, it must come out of the freezer to de-thaw.

Yesterday during out weekly team Indiana, let's get in there, get what we need and get out again shopping trips, Keith and I bought a prime rib roast, to try it out as a Christmas meal tradition. Now I am terrified of ruining this ridiculously expensive cut of meat that I have never before cooked. It's lurking in the freezer as I type.

We are heading up to Indiana the day after Christmas and I'm kind of dreading the drive. Meri doesn't do well even on short trips. We'll probably end up driving through the night, in the hopes that she'll sleep. We still haven't decided what to do with the dogs.

Meri turns four months old tomorrow. She has that adorable bare patch on the back of her head from sleeping and every time I see it, or the way strands of her fine hair lift up from the crown of her round baby head, my heart melts.

She is determined to move and interested in talking. When I speak, she focuses on my mouth intently before breaking into a delighted, toothless smile and shyly whispering, "Huu!"

If she is happy, her whole self is happy. She kicks with happiness, arches with happiness, glows with it. She is rarely unhappy, but when she is, it is as though the world is coming to an end, right now, immediately and we must all run and yell for our very lives.

She likes to be up- sitting up, standing up, held up. If Keith or I support most of her weight, she will eagerly walk across the couch or floor or table, lifting her feet high and placing them down in a determined way. She wants to be on the go.

She has learned how to put herself to sleep, and will fuss if I hold her too long. Now I kiss her ("How many kisses a day to you get?" Keith asks her tenderly, from time to time. Nobody knows for sure, but we estimate in the hundreds) and lay her down, and she will remain there, cooing and murmuring until she falls asleep.

At night, she sleeps straight from six in the evening to six thirty in the morning. Though this has been happening for a while, I have yet to take it for granted, because I can still remember just how terrible it was before.

I wake up lately with this sense of freedom from dread- there is nothing more to be anxious about, the adoption is finished, complete, done. For three years, there was always something weighing down on me and it simply got more and more intense as the journey continued.

Now there are no more papers, appointments, meetings, phone calls, financial worries, unknowns, forms or deadlines- nothing. I can simply love and help and guide this delightful little person as she grows because she is my daughter.

There is just every day life, with each thing meaning more to me. I feel as if I am returning to myself, but softer, with more of the sharp edges worn off.

December 13th

As of yesterday, via telephone conference with a court in another state, this adorable little munchkin became our official and forever daughter:

I held her in my arms the whole time- I had to switch her to my left arm so I could raise my right and be sworn in by the traveling notary that stopped by just for that purpose, and just on time. 

Meri kept looking from Keith to me and back again, this look of love on her face, eyes wide; it must have been the tone of our voices that she was picking up on. She wore the dress her Grammie NH made for her by hand, just like the dresses she used to make for me, when I was Meri's size.

We had to answer a series of questions and all we had to do was answer yes, and it was very easy to say yes to each one and voila! She was acknowledged as our daughter by state and country, and just in time for Christmas.

October 24th

We drove past the old house recently. It was the first time I'd seen it since we'd left in mid August. There was a rental sign on the lawn, which had been mown. It looked neat and clean and empty.

I remembered the view from the kitchen sink and opening the French doors to the pool every morning, to look at the sky through the trees and the way the roar of the traffic on the highway grew louder as the leaves fell each autumn.

The first day we were there, there was no furniture but the pale yellow walls caught the spring light. I sat down on the rug in the empty living room and wrote in my netbook. The pool was a slimy green mess and Abby fell in, trying to sniff something. We slept on the slowly deflating air mattress and had cold cereal and strawberries for breakfast.

I miss it; I knew I would. I went through too much there. This time of year, I often think back to that first autumn when my spirit was lit up inside with God.

Yesterday I took Meri to the park. I've been thinking of doing that for a while. The leaves were dusting the road as I drove there, past our old housing development.

The sound of the wind was all through the trees as I pushed the stroller. Meri's eyes were wide, looking from side to side, listening.

It was exhilarating, walking there again. It seemed like forever but I think it was only a few months. Meri got fussy on the way back, so I stopped and picked her up.

We'd gotten out of the house in such a hurry- I'd feared that if we paused, we'd never have the guts to actually get out at all- that she was still wearing her teddy bear pjs.

We walked down the stone steps to the slow moving stream, murky green and clotted with yellow leaves. The grass was still green and most of the trees as well. If it wasn't for the brisk wind, it would have been uncomfortably warm in the sunlight, but we were tucked under the shade.

"This is the outside," I told Meri, as she looked around, quiet now that she was being held. "It's very nice outside."

Of course, we've been outside before. I take her for walks around the housing development, but it's still under construction and none of the trees are large enough to cast any shade over the road.

Most of all, the entire road is overlooked by house after house after well-groomed and landscaped house. This might not bother me so much, except the only way I manage to get out of the house is to dart out of it like an escapee from an asylum, in smeary shirt and fly away hair and darkly circled eyes.

 I never have time to pull myself together. Meri gives me about two minutes of free time every three hours, unless she is napping and she naps in my arms, which is not convenient for doing anything but watching television. If I get any free time at all, I am frantically running around doing things like brushing my teeth and drinking coffee that's gone cold.

In point of fact, I have written this blog in two minute segments stolen during the past three days, but I am just happy that I have written anything at all. And that my teeth are brushed.

Come to think of it, I better post this right now; who knows when I'll get another chance.

October 19th

Yesterday we drove up to Atlanta for our second post-placement visit. I could't help remembering how- was it two years earlier? How can that be?- we had driven up there for our very first meeting. It was the first really significant step on the journey and we were anxious and unsure and had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

We met at a bagel shop and our home study agent said cheerfully that we' d be meeting her there again soon, only with a baby in a car seat. I was caught by that statement and wondered and wondered if that would happen and how would that be.

I thought of that on the way up there yesterday. It didn't feel like I imagined, because I could never have imagined a little person so specific as little Meri is- I could only imagine a generic baby, a bundle of blankets in pastels, smelling of baby lotion.

Instead, and wonderfully so, we were returning to Atlanta with this intense, adorable little person, with definite likes and dislikes and habits and a powerfully effective voice. I feel like I could never love another baby, only this little person.

She sat on my lap and gave the home study agent a shy smile. She fell asleep on my chest, which is the only way she falls asleep. All my shirts have gummy marks on the shoulder at the end of the day, from where Meri gnaws on it.

She is a passionate baby. If something is wrong, it is very wrong indeed and must be fixed, pronto or it might be the end of the world as we know it. On the way down, something was wrong- we did not know what, only that we had to get off the highway and Meri out of the car seat immediately.

It turned out that she was hungry. She ate two ounces, was burped, and then everything could proceed as planned. I'm so glad that neither Keith nor I are into baby training or feeding schedules. I can't imagine leaving her screaming in her car seat because it wasn't the right time for her to eat. It would be unendurable.

I feel like I know her and all her ways. It's as if I'm a walking repository on all things Meri. What she ate, when she slept, how she likes to be held, it's all in my head and I'm always weighing it before doing the next thing. It's a funny thing about being a mother- this huge repository of vital-to-me but uninteresting and pointless information for anyone else.

If she hears my voice, she smiles even before she wakes. If she is awake, she starts looking for me. She gazes at me so steadily, so openly, it's almost unnerving. She is adorable, with her wobbly head up and her dark eyes searching the world around her. Whatever is going on, she is interested.

I like best in the evening or night, with the pale evening light of autumn shining on the yellow pines through the window. The lamp is sometimes on, glowing on the ceiling and white windowsills. All is quiet upstairs and Meri smells deliciously of baby shampoo, her damp head against my cheek.

We sit and rock amid the cluttered bedroom, strewn with baby clothes, burp clothes, flannel blankets, unfolded laundry and unread books in a pile on my side table. I sat there one evening, rocking her, and looked around me, and thought, my god, I have a baby- the evidence is everywhere.

I think that is when it finally sunk into me- this transformation of our lives, our family. I was finally on the inside of the experience, at the heart of it, where the baby sleeps and grows and Keith snores away in the bed late at night and Meri refuses to sleep and instead keeps bobbing up for one more look into the hazy horizon, all lamp lit and promising a wider world.

October 14th

Wow.

So I have far less time and energy to write than I ever anticipated not having, hence the long blog silence. Also, my old back injury has recently come back in full force, making sitting at the computer a very painful business.

However, here are a few bullet point updates:

* My mom was here for a week and now I have to remember, all over again, how I managed to do by myself the few things that I was doing before she came.

* I can exist- even bake or clean the house or cook or even all three- on three to five hours of sleep. I have no idea how; I just do. I remember the days when I thought getting six hours of sleep was a big, horrible deal. Ha.

* If Baby sleeps for five hours and those five hours were spent folding laundry, cleaning the bathroom and getting a few precious minutes of book reading to oneself, then it doesn't matter a tinker's damn how long she slept, one is still going to be exhausted when she wakes up, well rested, at midnight, wanting to eat, bounce and climb one's shoulder as if one were her own personal Mt. Fuji.

* Baby wearing does not mean that one has both hands free and therefore frees one to accomplish a multitude of satisfying and necessary tasks throughout the day while successfully engaging in the loving method of attachment parenting.

What baby waring means is that one must go about one's day doing everything weighing ten pounds more than usual, with only one hand- the other must hold Baby's head up- hot and sweaty- because Baby is like ten pounds of pure heat, and waddling.

* She is nearly two months old. How did this happen?