We Are

I'm feeling a little ungrounded lately. In the time before each child has joined us, I have felt a bittersweet poignancy for what we were losing, what we would gain. That giant shift in family dynamics, energy, focus; it stirs things up. We are moving from what we are, to what we will become.

The beauty and simplicity of three daughters is not lost on me. Together, they are "the girls". I only need to wait a few days before I can do a full load of pinks, reds, and oranges. We are crayons and paper. Books and stuffed animals. Hula hoops and dancing.

We did not adopt so that we would be guaranteed a boy. Erik had no need to "balance out the house" as so many people joke. We were open to gender and would have happily added a fourth daughter. Sometimes I worry about my ability after mothering only daughters to shift my thinking to include less impulse control, more physicality, peeing standing up, and swords.

I feel like time is simultaneously speeding up and at a stand still. My life has become a scene from The Matrix. I hold on to these last days with the girls, watching them float away, watching myself distracted with packing lists, busy with adoption paperwork, stressed out, missing them, missing Yonas, trying to get centered enough to be here with them now, to sit down beside the stress and poignancy, to embrace the sadness, the fear that I cannot mother a son as I have these daughters of mine.

And then something shifts, and I put on Christmas music too early and I hold Eden and dance, I climb into the top bunk with Ava so she can read to me, I hold Safa a little longer than I need to when she calls to me in the middle of the night.

And then I remember. We are also blocks and trains. We are hikes and swimming. We are waterplay and mud.

And we will all be fine.