and_if_only_you_could_see_into_me Anna_Began You're my beautiful angel and I think I just made a very wise choice. Your big brown eyes remind me that beginning again is possible and I love it when people think you're my sister. This time, they're going to have to love you to be a part of my heart. 030504 ... no reason you would realise that i act in the opposite way of how i feel i'm sorry i wish you could 030505 ... Anna_Began There's no way to write about this... I never see it coming. And just when I think my self-involved world is enough, it blows up. I just wish I could leave for Findlay right now-ha! Never thought I'd say that. Man alive, he shows up everywhere. 030507 ... Anna_Began The air smelled mossy on the way home after pizza and beer. It was probably the first smell I'd noticed all day. And I realized my life will never fit into any sort of neat little box. When you snuggle up next to me and I tell you I love you I feel purely unselfish, which is something I rarely am lately... or ever. I'm so tired that all I can focus on right now is how excited I should be in two weeks. You give me this unending gravity that just will not cease. Seeing you grow from diapers to invaded flirt to a beautiful art that feels music and whirls around the room with me and takes photos and applies lipstick across both cheeks has brought me into being this person I never could have forseen. There are things that I would and would not do simply because of your presence in my life. Holding you today, wishing I could put the pieces together for your brother I just realized this will never, ever stop. Your existance litters my life. I have one of your socks mixed with my odd ones. I put your necklace into my jewlery box and your jeans are folded up next to mine on the shelf. Occasionally, I smell you in my room and throughout the house. The moments I cherish: wrestling on my bed, singing with you, dressing for that moment with him that never totally came to fruition but was still a perfect day nonetheless, the only smile left in that book that I cherish. The ease with which you will join this family amazes me sometimes. The way hearts just poured open and adjustments are second nature and you are one of us is a display of the most miraculous things I have ever seen. Your tiny red lips, your breath, your eyes which nearly, nearly resemble mine, give me purpose. Here, I see a family. I want every memory of yours to be as sweet as tiny, pink princess dresses with tiaras and flower picking in a meadow. What brought you there didn't last; and you stroked my hair and comforted me for that... but your place in my heart will last forever. I love you my beautiful little angel. 030508 ... Anna_Began Providing you with "lunch" allowed me once again to step into your life in the way in which I am most comfortable. If tallied, it would appear that more of your day was spent in my attention than anyone else's. And yet, the woman who's name you now just learned, considers me a "horde." How ironic when last night I just learned that an ignorant girl in Wisconsin considers me just one phonic letter different. No matter. I asked myself on the way home, "Am I doing this for them or am I doing it for you? That matter at hand is: You do not consider me anything except your Kelly." The moment I noted, to replay here later, just seems trite now. Sitting in the darkened corner, where I fear the world will always try to sit you, I held your small hand in mine. I filed nails that are barely present. You played with my most prized technological possession. No one spoke to me when you were docile, respectful and entertained. If jostled or thirsty, seconds would pass and they'd notice you were moving and suddenly, they'd spring to attention shooting me the dirty look. With your bottled orange juice and your small bag of cookies I kissed you goodbye and told you I loved you and they looked at me as if I were a stranger. I want to rage. Because nowhere in my life is the jangled whoisthisnowsayingtheylovemebeercansonthdeckinbagsinandoutofmylifebuymebuymebuymylove that you have grown so used to in your six and three quarters years. I do not know (yet) what it may feel like to open up my insides and have another human being pour from them. I cannot imagine I could love another tiny, innocent creature as much as I love you and I see God's gift of your brown eyes and round face and how in other places besides the ones we were in today people smile because they think what a cute child I have in my family. And yet today, I was nothing more than someone else showing up in your life to temporarily complicate the legal system. I should have expected a continuance. 030604 ... Anna_Began Today, they went bed shopping and it's become so that I no longer know what to pray for. I've begun planning for a new life, outside of the jurisdiction of those you are currently a ward of but I know that with just one phone call, one tiny acknowledgement of the role I play in your life, my plans will crumble and I would stay. Ideally, I'd like to pack you up, with your one remaining doll and ridiculously pink, borrowed clothes and your free spirit and existentialist views and drive you off to the city of my choice. And new beginnings would be had by all. Though rarely practiced, I am realist enough to know that that won't ever be the case. I think about you, up there on the farm, just north of the city and what you do and your friends I hear nothing of and shoes I have never seen and I'll bet you don't even smell like yourself anymore. Right after she lost you, we sat in the courthouse, you straddling my lap, your brother directly across from us. You asked me the questions that were breaking his heart. I held you to me, close enough to feel your breath on my face and I promised you that I would never let anyone harm you. Funny, I realize now, I've already failed. Your fate lies completely out of my hands. 030712 ... Anna_Began Operating on high the last two days it wasn't until this evening, sifting through those pictures that are mostly of him, with the older black and whites of you mixed in, did I stop to realize that last Tuesday was your first day of school. I mean, I knew it, in the sort of abstract way that I know all the major dates in your life and will never grow accustomed to not planning as such. But I stopped to think back on the conversation I'd had earlier in the day; yes, your mother let you starve for several days, yes, you were now safe as all reports indicate and yes, you've begun the first grade. The past two years I have bought your school supplies for each of the times you'd begun kindergarten. Now, for your first real, full-time day of school, I bought nothing. Each time I walk by the children's clothing section of Target; the tiny sweaters that the September humidity is not ready for, the pastel colored jeans and the rusty-sienna, screened t-shirts with the long white sleeves stylishly sticking out, I think of how you must be growing and how I'd be guessing at your size if I were to buy anything. I used to measure your leg length by how far I'd need to move away from you when you'd kick me. We haven't heard from your mother in months. There are only so many people that we are capable of saving and life moves on and I pray that I'll have a chance to tell you happy birthday, and goodbye before I leave. The message on the answering machine says you're happy in placement. Placement. Things you need: lunch money, folders and pencils and spiral notebooks. Pizza and shampoo and a jacket with a working zipper for the coming winter. A family. By now, placement must know that you thrash about so much in your sleep that you need to be barricaded into the bed. Placement must know that you will not eat french fries. Placement must know that barettes are a fate worse than death and that when pooping, you exclaim with the joy and zeal that only a seven year old completely comfortable in their own body can muster. There are several ways to save a person; and this way has left me with an envelope of pictures that I will barely let myself cry over. 030903 ... jinx I'd really have to hide myself... 030903 ... Anna_Began Tomorrow, when I see you, I envision this out-of-the-movies melodrama where you run to my arms and I scoop you up, spidery legs flailing about and I hug you and hold you and your tiny hands grapple behind my neck. I picture you feeling the same joy I'll feel while you're in my arms; but you are seven and when you are seven, six months passing is a lifetime and I'm not even sure who you are anymore. I acknowledge all you have been through to date and still you have always come back the same wild-pony, grape-juice covered paragon that I've always let directly into my heart. But nothing feels familiar right now. Everything from this week will whirl by and as soon as I say "Hello" to you I will have to begin my goodbye. I wanted you there this summer. I wanted you to know the boy you spoke to that day, he's slipped away. And that you were right, things truly are going to be ok. I want you to see the dreams at every turn coming true and I want you to meet this person that is deep in my heart too. You'd be able to shed clarity and sense on red velvet and standing up for something that one year ago yesterday was grabbing at me like a drunken animal. You'd understand where I'm going and why. Tomorrow, I just want to cup your cherubic cheeks between my hands and have you blow a raspberry all over my face, just like old times. 031026 ... Anna_Began "Why are you missing us?" was your slightly misinterpreted way of asking me why I had chosen to move. If I'd have had more than thirty minutes, more than a ride to get McFlurries, more of your attention without others around, I could have explained it better. You'd have known. If I had been given half of your strength I could live through anything. You are the most amazing, resilient human being I have even been exposed to. I prepared myself for a changed little girl; a haggard version of the wood nymph you'd been, darkened by circumstance. And into my arms you ran, taking my face in your hands. Kissing it you said "I have been missing you. I love you." Your personality still possessed the exuberance and light that it has shown since the first hour I met you. You wrote in your new journal, a trend that I hope continues through your lifetime, "I am having a great time in foster care." Sandy helped you spell "great," "having," "foster," and "care." You knew the rest. This is what you have learned in first grade. Spelling. How to write each and every letter and number although your twos are backwards. You told me that one hundred plus one hundred is two hundred. You told me my face is soft. You curled into my lap a dozen times and lavished love down upon me more than even before. Witnessing the miracle of you; your survival and sustaining smile, makes leaving easier and more difficult at the very same time. I nuzzled your neck in the moments before saying goodbye. I wanted to remember this new smell of you, clean and soft but still with the slightest remnant of what used to be. If you were the only good thing left in this world, it would still be enough for me to believe in. 031028 ... 0of46 you'd see how i cry and rage when you say 'back in about 10' followed by 'sorry ;)' 55 minutes later i wrote this and finally stopped waiting 031029 ... Fido You'd see my superman underwear! Oh God. 040922 what's it to you? who go blather from