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February 02, 2005
You will be extraordinary
Dear Emma:
It's been a while since I've written. So long, in fact, that you've had time to come into the world and make your way to the orphanage. So long that I've come to far better terms with having a child half a world away, in the arms of a stranger.
Odd how that works.
I have far fewer bouts of “I can't believe we're doing this” now than I did when we started the process, all those months ago. Maybe that's because I'm beginning to make space. Eight months ago, you were just an idea to me. I had a full life, and a full house.
Now, though, we've started arranging a place for you in your new home, no longer awaiting the day we “get a child,” but the day “Emma comes home.” A change of just three words that glosses over a gulf of emotional and practical preparation. With that physical space, has come some less-tangible space as well.
It's hard to make space in your heart for someone you don't know. It's hard to leave room in your daily roster of cares and worries for someone that you can't see or touch or affect in the slightest. But it's an effort I've made for months.
I think the break finally came when Schiele passed on. Silly as it sounds, she had been with us for so long that she was family. When she died, it would have been easy to let that space be filled by the demands of workaday existence that press in so constantly. It would have been easier still to slam the door on that part of my heart and forget that it was even there.
Silly, isn't it...how a cat can take up so much room that her leaving feels like it makes space for the next big thing. Oh, I don't mean to say that things wouldn't have rearranged themselves anyway, but to have that break, and that open space, come so long before your arrival truly deepened my commitment to you. I don't really think I could explain -- perhaps it's all just a matter of having the weight of Schiele's illness off my shoulders, and I'm looking for more there than there actually is.
Either way, I'm more ready for you to come home to us. I'm ready for us to be a family. Ready for you to meet your younger cousin Kyra, and your older cousin Ryan. Ready (gulp) to be Dad.
There, I said it, didn't I? I kind of didn't think I'd ever get to that point, what with the general nebulousness of things. But I'm there. Now all we need is for you to be here.
See you soon, kid.
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Now Playing: Extraordinary from the album “Liz Phair” by Liz Phair
Posted by brlittle at February 2, 2005 03:58 PM