Sometimes I feel the chill of spring and remember springtime in Arkansas when I first took a class to be an adoptive parent.  I mowed my five acres and scrubbed my house for the home visit and spruced up the room where I wanted my little girl to live.  I had a neighbor clear the path to the river running through my property and set chairs on the deck, on which I had a carpenter build a railing for safety.  I spent hours pouring over the photographs of children available for adoption before picking a little girl of five years, with curly brown hair tumbling to her shoulders.  I set my kindergarten picture next to hers and thought, We could be twins.  Or mother and daughter.

The agency rejected my request for placement with one sentence:  This child should go to a two-parent family.

Six months later, I found out that I was pregnant with my son.  Now I wonder what it would have been like to raise him with a sister.  If we had stayed on that property, they could have gone to a small school.  We might have attended church in the mountains.  When my friend Carla had her daughter, my accidental namesake Kori, the kids would have played together.  I might never have returned to Kansas City.  I would have kept my children in the quiet of the northern slope of the Boston Mountains.

Sometimes, in springtime, I find myself wondering about roads not taken.  I stand on my porch and think about the road that I did take: its detours; the gorgeous scenery; the faces of those who walked with me from time to time; the storms that bent my shoulders and the sun which blessed my face.  See me now, here.  See where I am.

It’s the fifteenth day of the twenty-ninth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.