you are a miracle, an impossibility. you are stars and earth, twine and clay.
and the timing, the timing. i hold one hand the little urine-soaked plus sign, and calvin in the other and huge drops can't stop falling from my eyes. a positive sign of hope for life. it's just impossible. how could this happen? and now? it couldn't have! no seedy hospital visits, no painful shots, no forlorn looks at adoption websites? i'd been traveling, crying, under more stress and more sad than i'd been in a long time.
dad, you put in a good word for us upstairs with the big guy, didn't you. the only thing cal wanted from the house after he found out dad passed was the babar books dad read to him as a kid. i made sure to get every single one of those books, and read his favorites to him like a kid while imagining how lucky his dad was to have such a great son. was there some connection?
i remember my dad coming to visit me after he passed away. we played with dolls under my yellow plastic table i used to turn over and make into a tent. in iowa he came, to let me know it wasn't my fault. he told me that he loved me, and not to tell my mom or she'd be really scared. during one of her longs walks in the snow, after we made charlie brown shrinky-dinks in the apartment kitchen, he smiled. he was 36 when he was gone. perhaps there are gifts that those who love us are still able to bestow, and God is merciful and ultimately loves us. if only the deserving grandpas would be around, and kai-kai too. kai kai was only 23. 23 years old. just staring his life.
in the midst of this. who knew one had room in one's heart to cry about a bunch of cells bursting and changing with every moment, on the way to becoming and more becoming? a little dream of calvin and me is growing inside, making us hold fast to all of the good and bad in things world that are both so very, painfully, thrillingly true.
