Happy New Year

Happy New Year!!
A New Year and new beginnings. I love the thought of new beginnings. I always have. I love the idea of starting over. Like confession, your sins can be washed away and you can once again have the clean soul you have always imagined. I remember that feeling as a kid. (what did I really have to confess then?) of coming out of church after being absolved of my sins and going out into the bright light of day and really feeling clean, forgiven and good. Later when I no longer bought the confession story, I could still feel the black spots landing on my soul but I no longer had a way to get them off again. Now that I have found the site Come Clean, that option is back for me. What fun!! To wash away my sins!! Try it. It is very satisfying. I hadn’t been to the site in a very long time and it was so satisfying this morning!!! A sweet woman offers to wash away your sins. You write down your confession and it appears on her hand and she washes it away. Goodbye sins. So much more fun then going to see a priest. Ah, so on the first day of the New Year, I have come clean. All of you drifted Catholics will love this site.

I am thinking of all the New Year’s resolutions I have made in my life. I remember my teenage resolution to never leave my things on my mother’s dining room table or the stairs and to always make my bed so that my mother would like me. It was unsuccessful in every way.

This year, even though I have decided to skip the resolution ordeal, ideas are still rolling around in my head. It is so irresistible to think about things being different, that I could be different, better, more improved, perfect. I will be a better mother, I will stop blaming the damn husband for everything, I will lose weight, eat right, be right, stop worrying, help others more, change the world, keep a clean house, walk the dog everyday, run a marathon, start a new career, make money from the old career, leap buildings in a single bound,..

This was my last morning to sleep in but of course I couldn't. I woke up at 4am with my mind racing. I stayed in bed curled up with Mikaela for an hour relishing her smell and warm body, taking in the snuggles that I will be missing for the next 10 days. Leaving one child to get another.

Why Ethiopia? SO many people have asked me that. Because that is where my children are.
An art director I really liked working with curled up his nose when he heard as though it were the most distasteful thing he could imagine. I wanted to hurt him. I still do. A vendor I know at the farmer’s market asked, how do I know I will get a child without any problems, what are my guarantees? That was the end of my purchasing sheep cheese. Someone else asked if I had a time periods where I could give them back if things weren’t working out. Oh yeah it is a thirty-day money back guarantee. They come with return postage. Just like your real kids. The stupid comments could win awards: if you were okay with having a black baby, couldn’t you get one in this country for cheaper? Oh, you couldn’t have any more real children? When you get over there can you switch children if you feel like something is wrong with the ones assigned to you? You should really think about what you are doing. I have a friend who adopted and it was such a nightmare for them. On and on the comments go. I WASH THEM AWAY!!!!!

As a child I was told to finish all the food on my plate because there are starving children in Ethiopia. They are dying in the streets. I remember the feeling that gave me in the pit of my stomach as I stared, ungrateful child, at the food on my plate that I didn’t want to eat. How would eating my food help them? The guilt was enormous. I remember wanting to collect food and send it to Ethiopia and being told we couldn’t do that. I am fortunate and others are not. I am ungrateful. So with every meal I had,the guilt piled up with the uneaten food and there they were, the children dying in the streets so far away and somehow I was making it worse not better.

Two years ago I read an article written by Melissa Fay Green, the author of There is No Me Without You, telling her story of adopting her daughter from Ethiopia. I couldn’t stop crying because I knew then that my children were there waiting for me. It has been a straight path from there, but not an easy one. I worry about so many things – where the money will come from, the potential for corruption, how my family will blend together as one, but knowing that it would happen, and knowing all the time that Ethiopia is where my other children are. That is where my children are, and I am going to them tomorrow.