Our taxi stops at a busy intersection in Addis, and a little boy selling tissues sends me scrambling for the granola bars to which I’d rubber-banded a few birr, and upon getting the treat he gives a whoop and starts to leave but then comes back to ask for the tissues back, and this show of chutzpah provokes a grin from both me and a respectable-looking lady walking by, and he waves whooping across the street at friends and suddenly the window (open a foot) seems open way too wide because within seconds there are half a dozen hands reaching in and I give out my last two granola bars and hold my hands apart to show I have no more, but a keen-eyed dirty-faced urchin sees the corner of more birr... more

I'm standing just outside security at the airport, eyes trained on the passengers coming from the concourse. Always before, I've been the one walking off the plane, eagerly bringing a new baby home to meet the rest of the family. This time it is my turn to do the waiting, camera ready to document the homecoming of a friend and her new baby boy.

I love airports. There are a thousand reasons people take a plane on any given day. But for me, airports have almost always meant a baby. I scan the exiting passengers. Men in camouflouge freshly home from Iraq walk alongside wives who were allowed to greet them at the gate. Businessmen with briefcases stride briskly through the crowd... more

I go out to the mailbox and the letter has come, the one I've been waiting all week to get, the one from AHOPE, telling us who our sponsored child will be, and as I rip open the envelope I wonder who I will see: a boy or a girl, tiny or older, healthy-appearing or gaunt like HIV+ people on TV in the 1980's before the good meds were available.

And there she is, tiny and adorable and bright-eyed, with round cheeks and a shaved head, and after I stare at her picture for a moment I read the letter that came with the picture and find out that she's only 5 and has been there at AHOPE along with her sister for over a year, ever since... more

(cross post from my personal blog a few days ago)

My most indelible memory of September 11th is of little boys playing Legos. But let me back up a little.

We move slowly in the mornings at our house. That morning we were just getting breakfast started. Our two three year olds were watching PBS, and the big kids were just starting to wake up.

The phone rang. It was my mother in law, sounding like she could hardly breathe. "Turn on the TV," she said. "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center."

At that point I'm not even sure if I knew what the World Trade Center was, and I was thinking some pilot had made some terrible error. We turned on the TV and... more

We're in Gail's car on the way to our US embassy appointment to get my daughter's visa, the final hurdle on her homeward path, and the air in the car is heavy with tension because it is early June 2005, and there have been student demonstrations over rigged elections and today 20 people died on the very road we must drive. But we must go, because to ever see America, to ever see her new daddy, my daughter must have a visa.

Only our car and one other private car drive the broad, unnaturally empty street, with not a cab in sight, though silent people line the sidewalks and Gail wonders aloud if there will be barricades ahead. But there aren't and we gratefully watch silent streets... more

I sit with my younger children, a four year old and two eight year olds, talking about their big sister who is going off to college today and they hammer me with questions.

"Why does she have to go?"

"Is she going to sleep there?"

"How long does she have to go?"

"Can she come home at Christmas?"

"Is she ever coming back?"

And they share their feelings.

"I don't want her to go!"

"I'll miss her."

Suddenly I realize I have goofed.

I have been all wrapped up in how the move will be for my college-bound child. I've equipped her with storage bins and clothing and blankets and endless advice that wells up from me... more

I've promised the nuns we will bring Tsion back to see them before we leave Ethiopia, and so here we are, walking back into the little room where she has spent the last year of her life, with its wall to wall cribs and its bucket of ragged and aromatic cloth diapers in the corner and the eyes of little ones watching us intently from every corner of the room.

Babies lie on a mat on the floor napping while others play around them, still more stand or sit or sleep in their cribs, and others clutch at my legs begging for contact. The most interesting corner to all seems to be where Sister Veronica, an Ethiopian nun with a radiant smile sits on a chair shoveling cereal into a spindly big-eyed... more

I walk into the baby and toddler house at our orphanage, its main room ringed wih metal frame bunk beds and padded with bright mats on which are sitting smiling Ethiopian ladies, each with a baby on her lap and one or two more playing around her outstretched legs, and as I sit near them, I ask the names of the babies, cooing over them and coaxing a smile out of one bright-eyed little boy, but in a little while as I talk to him I glance around the room, and spot a whole bed covered with babies, tiny babies lying crosswise in the twin bed, each bundled in a blanket on this 75 degree day and each with a bottle sitting on a little ledge above their heads, 7 babies in one bed, all different sizes... more

While wandering around the airport in London with hours still to kill before our flight to Addis, we hear the increasingly piercing screams of a very unhappy baby, held by a harried mother with a pained look on her face, and even in this packed waiting room there's a ring of space around them, and people just past the buffer of space are looking away resignedly and unhappily as the baby's screams rattle all our ears. Thinking we might be in the same predicament on the way home, I go to the mother to ask if her baby is sick. As I speak I pat his arching, sweaty back, feeling for fever and thinking maybe if he is sick I can offer her some baby Tylenol, but she says he isn't sick, he just needs... more

I'm talking with my 4 year old about her auntie, my sister, whose baby is due any day now, and I tell her the baby is coming soon and even though we have talked about this before, she asks me if I have a baby growing in my belly too and when I tell her no she asks who did grow in my belly, and I list off the names of her four oldest siblings, and though she has asked me this before and knows the answer, she again asks me if she grew in my belly, and when I gently remind her that she grew inside her Ethiopian mom, she is suddenly and dramatically sobbing her heart out, flinging her long-legged 42 pound self against my chest where I cradle her close to my heart and tell her I love her and that... more