Loss

Ella had a milestone yesterday.

She attended her first "friend" birthday party.

We have had other birthday parties for friends...but those have all been family events. Like our whole family was invited. This was for a girl in her class, and it was at a roller skating rink. So we made a personalized water bottle, and I took her and she carried that gift right in! (As we left a very very sad Kate behind at home. It was a first for her too - watching her big sister go to a party without her.)

She did great. I was a *little* more involved than I imagined - I mean, she needed help skating and playing arcade games and all that jazz. But I helped her make her way through the social ropes and she was polite and kind and even attempted to laugh at herself when she fell down one million times. (Oh, skating.)

No, I didn't skate. If you know me from my youth, you may remember that I spent quite the few Saturday nights at ol' Champs Skating Rink. And quite a few dollars. And I had to call my parents at 12:00 to wake them up to remind them to pick us up at 12:30. And sometimes we got to go to Perkins Pancake house afterwards. But I digress. The party took me on a little trip down memory lane.

Anyway, a few of her friends from her class were there and one little girl just so nonchalantly asked me some adoption-related questions. While my six-and-a-half-month-pregnant self is trying to keep my kid from busting her hiney in the smack middle of this skating rink. "Are you her mom? Like were you her mom in Africa? So does she have 2 moms?"

Ugh. These questions are so, so hard.

I don't mind kids asking questions. I would rather a kid ask and know the truth than make assumptions and end up saying something unkind. But every time someone asks, and Ella is standing right there, I just wonder. I wonder if it burns in her heart as she remembers her first mama. The one that loved and cared for her the best way she knew how. I wonder if she misses her. I wonder if she longs for her. I wonder if she wants someone to ask or if she just wants to be the same as every other kid. I want to do right by her.

"I am her real mom." I said it about nine hundred times.

I want her, and the world, to know that a "real mom" is the one that kisses boo boos and cooks dinner at night and takes her to the doctor and sings the song and checks the homework folder. A real mom is the one who sits her booty on the steps when she is out of line and makes sure she brushes her teeth and listens when a kid is being mean at school. A real mom goes to the teacher conferences and shares funny stories about what she says. A real mom does not have to look the same or sound the same or even have the same color skin.

She has experienced so much loss. Just an innocent question from a curious six year old sobers me up and reminds of that in the middle of a skating rink with airbrushed graffiti on the walls. More loss than most of us will ever know in our entire lifetime.

I am still trying to figure out exactly what I want my answers to be to these questions. I am figuring that out by talking to her in the quiet and privacy of our own home, and I do not want to share that part of our conversation here. It is her story.

Questions are good. I would rather them come to just me but how do you do that when a kid is asking? I just do the best I can to be honest and truthful and respectful to Ella, who is always 3 inches away.

It never hurts to hear me claim her again. I am her real mom. Forever.


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