Will the process ever end?

I forget that my daughter is black.  I forget that she looks different from me.

I do forget a lot.  But when I stop and hold her and really look, I see so many things.

Adoption is a complex thing.  My heart is filled with so many conflicting thoughts.  I am filled with absolute, joyous love for this little person who came to me, not from me.  I am filled with a deep, heart longing to know HER story.  All of it.  A story that I will never know.

We’ve had Desta almost two months. She’ll be 7 months old soon but in my mind, she’s still 2 months old.  At least my bonding and my adjustment is 2 months old.

I wonder about her so often. I look at that little crooked smile and hear the shrill joy in her laugh and I wonder, did her birth mom sound like that?  I see those toes and pudgy flat feet and think, maybe they are her birth dad’s feet?

I took for granted all the things I know about my birth children.  They came from my body and I knew them as soon as they came out.  Yes, I am still discovering many things about them, including their independent spirits but intrinsically, I know them.

With adoption, it’s a process that never ends.  And there are days that I want the processing to end and the living to begin.  Maybe I just need to tuck aside my questions for now and just rest in knowing that Desta does have a mommy, a daddy and a brother and sister. We are here, not there.

We are her family. I am her mother.