My desk is wherever I am.

Tonight it’s the extra leaf at the end of the dining room table.

I’ve spread my supplies wide,
stacked in an order that follows my brain and makes Lacey Logic.

I hear laughing.

My Piper and her friend Hanna.

They’ve asked to bake chocolate chip cookies together.

Before they began, they prepared.

Not the flour and the butter,
but themselves.

They have raided the dress up closet and put on

fancy Cinderella style dresses
waist aprons
and grins.

They have turned on the music of the Okee Dokee Brothers.

Singing.
Laughing.
Dropping cookie dough on the floor.

I’m actually working here in the next room, school prep.

I hear tid bits of their conversation.

“Does your sister ever ….”
“Sometimes my dad says ….”
“Did you know that ….”

I look up.

Take the time to

Put my pen down
Rest my chin on my propped up arm
And stare.

Watching.

I see past the flowers on my dining room table
(generously gifted to me by Hanna’s mom actually).

The girls are dramatically framed by the door.

Serious and jolly.
Silly and full of promise.

Beautiful in the Right Now.

I’m really just so glad to be alive right here,
on the other side of that door.

Glad to sit at this scratched table on a Monday night
Living some sort of broken beauty 
That brings two dancing girls into my kitchen.

One from Ethiopia and one from Virginia.
Past and present full of Things Known
And Things Unknown.

The big sister comes in,
beckoned by these two,
to answer the questions the ten year old bakers have
from her storehouse of experience.

Oven temperature.
Correct gooey-ness.
Do you use a toothpick for cookies?

The singing continues.
And so does the laughter.

Mosely assists.
Laughs.
Shares her Big Sister knowledge.

I seldom look at my children as adopted versus not adopted.

From this view point, however, tonight,
I am suddenly struck.

Tears stacked neatly at the edges of my eyes
At the absolute wonder of it all.

Of how when we said yes to a chubby-cheeked infant,
we said yes to this complicated and beautiful teenager,
capable and all but grown in stature and in shape
and yet so being formed in a myriad of manners.

I cannot imagine This One without our last name.
Cannot imagine me without her,
Her without me.

I’m sitting here.

Thankful to be.

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