Commencement

Every day is one more step toward you.

I'm having an interesting time right now, A.  I have one more week of teaching and then I get to be with you for an entire year.  I am so happy and excited to spend that time with you.  But I am also a little sad.

Not sad because you are coming to me, but sad because I will be leaving my students.  My students have been my children for 18 years.  They have made me laugh and cry and pull my hair out.  They have loved me and not loved me.  They have been my ports of calm when things in my life have been stormy.

I love them, too.

I am looking forward to the day when I can introduce you to them.  They are very excited you are coming, and are going to give you solid advice when you get here.  The girls want too coo over you and smile, to hug you and give you kisses. The boys want to give you high fives and talk to you about being men.

I am kind of an expert on the girl thing.  I teach a class about it and have done a lot of studying on the subject.  So when I heard you were a boy, I was a little bit scared. I worried that I would not know how to raise a little boy into a man.  But I am not worried any more.

I'm not worried because I have help.  I have your daddy, your uncles, and all of the young men that I have taught over the years.  They range from football players to robotics experts to musicians, and all of them are smart and thoughtful and strong.  They struggle with masculinity and expectations, they fall down, they make mistakes.  And they are all wonderful.

Every time one of my young men come into the classroom I think of you.  I wonder how you will grow, what you will like, who you will love.  I see in them little pieces of who you might become.

So I am sad to leave them.  The girls, too.  Everyone here.  But I know that I am only leaving one school for another, and that you will ultimately be my greatest teacher.

I am ready for class to begin.

Today you said "I love you" to us for the first time.

Your Daddy and I do not know if you understand these words, but WE do.

And WE love YOU.

More than the sky, the sun, and the rain.

With everything that is us, and all else in between.

Soon we will be able to look at the moon together, you and your Daddy and I.

We thought the day would never come, and it still is not here, but now we wait impatiently for you to be here with us.

I will try to write to you a little each day so you can know what your Daddy and I are thinking, so that one day when you are old enough to read this that you will know how much you were and are loved.

It is a beautiful day today, and the clouds over the Koolaus are puffed and heavy with morning rain.  Rain here is so pretty, A.  It sometimes falls in huge, fat drops that feel silky against the skin.  Other times it falls so lightly that you can see it bead up on the hair on your Daddy's arms, the drops perched there like silver ladybugs waiting to be fed.

When you are here we will run and play in this rain, gaze upwards at this sky and wave at these clouds as they float by.

My First Day Home

I know it's been a while. Your Dad and I have been crazy with your Auntie Lisa's and Auntie Meghann's weddings, the Cornelia cousins and the arrival (not yet! any day!) of your cousin and playmate Izumi. It's funny--everyone we know has a door opening--a new life. I know it means you are coming to us soon.

I wanted to share a picture with you. This is me the day I came home to your Grandpa Brand and Lola Lou. I cried all the way home in the car, but your Lola was so happy!

Gallery: Your Dad's Awesome Faces

Family

I've been spending a lot of time contemplating this word, lately. It makes sense, as our family is about to increase with you in our home, which is what we have always wished for.

Your dad's cousin Dave just found us on Facebook--this crazy social networking thing that may or not be around when you are old enough to understand it. Suffice to say I was amazed, in looking at his photographs, how much of a resemblance there was between him and your dad--not just in appearance, but apparently in spirit and demeanor--they both make the same faces and seem to have the same crazy sense of adventure. It made me tear up a little bit.

I know that you might not look like us physically, but that does not mean that you won't BE like us. I am adopted, too, and your Grandpa Brand always said that I walked just like your Lola Lou: with my nose in the air. I denied it for years until your father admitted it was true, and now I take it as a great compliment.

I received a myriad of gifts from your grandparents, most of which I can see more clearly now that they have passed on. From my mother I get my sense of fashion, my desire to have pretty things around me, and my spoiled nature, as she and I were and are spoiled by our husbands. But that's on the surface. I think that she also gave me a sense of solidity that I am now only beginning to understand. She had only a few, carefully chosen close friends, and I share that quality. She knew exactly what she wanted and how she wanted it, and by the time she was older she had no shame about stating that, every day, to anyone whom she felt was worthy of her time. I don't think I have reached that point yet, but I do see in myself that same capacity; I know what is important to me and have begun to shed those things and people that do not in some way make me a better person.

Your Grandpa Brand is easier to spot, I think. He was an intellectual that loved to read and study. He had an insatiable curiosity about many things. I see his sense of justice in me clearly, especially in my teaching. He had a fun sense of humor and a love for literature. These things were my legacy.

Your Grandpa Brand was also a bit of a loner, and in some ways I am, too. I am a social person who can carry on a conversation, but I was never a social butterfly, maybe because for so long I felt like the caterpillar who would roll up into a ball when prodded too hard. I enjoy my silence and my alone time. You'll probably figure that out as you get older.

So I am amazed and fascinated by how you will turn out. I look forward to you and Daddy making the same faces, and to you and I loving books. It may not happen in a way we expect, but I do know, from the depths of my heart, that you will be my child, and we will be your family. Blood does not matter. The heart, however, does.

Mother's Day

This is a hard day for me, little one.

You see, I am in a strange in between. My mother, your Lola, is no longer here on Earth, and you, my child, are, but not yet in my arms. So I am a woman with no mother who is still yet to be one. So what does Mother's Day mean to me?

It means a great deal. But it does point to a place that is difficult for me to process; a place of simultaneously full and empty; I know in my heart that you are close to me, but like your Lola, you exist in in a place of intangible faith. I cannot see your faces, hear your voices, or hold your hands. And that hurts.

Yet, every time I start to descend into a place of deep sadness, something in the universe happens to pull me out.

On Saturday Daddy and I went to Ala Moana, a place where your Lola and I spent a great deal of time. As I walked around doing my errands I couldn't help but think of her. And you. I wondered where you both were, and my heart twinged at every sighting of a mother and child; it seemed the mall was filled with them that day.

Then, all of a sudden, I ran into a former student of mine. She's training to be a teacher, too. She smiled widely and said, "Happy Early Mother's Day!"

I wasn't sure how she meant it--it was Saturday, the day before Mother's Day, and she might have meant it that way. She's a Facebook friend, so she might know we're adopting, so she might have meant early in that sense. Either way, she said exactly the words I needed to hear.

There are so many things swirling in my head while I wait for you. There is a part of me that is still in disbelief that I will ever be a mother. There is a part of me that knows I am. There is a part of me that worries I have not been a good enough person to deserve it. But I know that's not true.

I am so sorry, little one. I am so sorry that your Lola will not be here to hold you and play with you. I am sorry that she will not be here to tell you stories and sing to you and teach you Tagalog. I am sorry you will never taste her fried rice. I wanted so badly for you to know her.

You are not even with me physically and I am already worried about disappointing you. About not doing this right.

I guess I am a mother--your mother--after all.