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.
love this one. And I, for one, am very glad your path led you to where it finally crossed with mine.