I was leafing through the girls’ preschool paperwork this weekend when I read the bold words asking us to bring in a baby picture of Elizabeth asap. My heart sunk for a minute. Ugh. These assignments, albeit this time “just” for preschool, are tough for kids who have been adopted. Baby pictures, if available at all, are few and far between. And if indeed available, they’re often a harsh reminder of traumatic pasts.
I did find the sweetest picture of Elizabeth though. You guys…
Let’s get a closer look…
I KNOW.
There’s a lot of sad that I could dwell on here. The “lost years” in which Elizabeth sat in an orphanage rather than in our arms. The reminder that we missed Elizabeth’s first smiles, first words, first birthday. The tragic situations that brought Elizabeth to the orphanage in the first place. Her first family in Congo who does not have the privilege of watching her grow and learn on a day to day basis.
But today Elizabeth will run her little legs down the hallway of her preschool, baby picture flapping in her hand. She’ll tape her sweet picture to the wall of her preschool class alongside those of her classmates with such vastly different backgrounds, and she’ll do so with so much excitement and pride because “I such a cute little baby.”
The hard questions haven’t come yet. Surely they will. But today, we’ll let her be her free-spirited three year old self, and we’ll celebrate her life and resilience and the precious little girl she’s growing up to be.
I just wish I could be a fly on the wall when she inevitably starts jabbering on to all of her three year old comrades, “and this is when I was a little teeny baby in Congo”…