holes

I have done quite well in staying away from our computer for a while. It is easier to forget everything then, to immerse myself in real life - the one laid out before me every day, in this moment.

I think I have moved to a place of sad peace about this adoption, knowing how little time is left but also knowing that we did all we could. Financially, emotionally, spiritually - we put everything we had into our move and have patiently waited for the other player to make their decision, to continue or to stop the game.

As always, I seem to be a study in contradictions; I asked our facilitator to measure Emerson one last time, knowing the clothes we continue to buy for her continue to be outgrown thousands of miles away; and I also took down her pictures from the dining room wall where I had so happily hung them so many months ago.

And I realized, standing in front of that wall, my eyes hovering on that strange empty space below the pictures of the other children... that beautiful face was no longer gazing down at me, but the holes left from the nails were gaping there in the mossy green paint it took me three tries to get right. And I knew that if time does run out and Serbia does not come through for us, those holes would always be there.

For a second I felt this furious urge to dig out the little pail of spackling from the kitchen pantry and fill them, paint over them. But I didn't, knowing the holes would still be clearly visible, the faint impression circling a small bump, the paint color not quite the same as the surrounding green, not having yet faded from the sun that comes in from the big window on the adjacent wall.

Standing there staring at those tiny holes, I knew that if we do not bring our Andjela home to us, that is how our lives will always look. Just as it was before - beautiful, happy faces holding and reflecting so much joy, as if hers never belonged with the others - but forever woven with these tiny little holes, these empty spaces, never able to be repaired completely, always remembering what was, what might have been.