ours.

May 2015

We sit across from one another in the bakery, two glass bottles of soda between us.  Dust from the street outside trails in with the wind that’s blowing through our hair.  We’re waiting for our tinies to finish their school day.

Her tinies.  My tinies?  Our tinies.

I could feel those tinies coming months before they arrived in Kiwi House.  Maybe a little bit like seeing two pink lines appear on the strip, or feeling an itty-bitty pair of feet kicking your stomach from the inside.  I felt desperate for them, we had so much space, so much love, so much passion to give… so when we finally brought them home to Kiwi it felt so perfect, it felt like what we’d been waiting & preparing for.  Love grew quickly.  I taught Emy the sweetest words in English: I’d say, “Emy I love you.” and she’d smile and say with her Colombian accent, “I love you too.”  Baby Boy started calling me Mami.. one day he asked me, “I came out of your tummy right???”  No my dear, I love you and I’m one of your Moms right now, but you came out of your Mama M. remember her?

Now me and Mama M sit across from one another in the bakery with the dusty wind and the cold glass bottles of soda.  It’s been two years since since she brought her babies to Kiwi where they became my babies too.  I look at the woman across from me and I see so loud & clear the threads of grace & redemption God is weaving throughout her life.  Today she is telling me all about her classes at Beauty School.  She’s telling me all about her dreams to open her own salon and I find myself smiling and believing in her.  But I remember once trembling with anger & fear, so worried about what life would be like for our Little Loves if they went back to live with their First Mama.  No.  I said to God.  They’re safer with us.  But His reply was louder, “Do not dwell on the past.  I am doing a New Thing.”  So we trusted Him and we trusted her and the tinies started splitting their time between us: their two homes & their multiple Mama’s.  There was a time when the best & safest place for those two was with us in Kiwi, it’s true.  But God was doing a New Thing with Mama M… and once again the best place for those Little Loves was in her arms.  I see that for what it is, a Miracle.  Redemption.

The tinies are out of school now and we’re walking home together.  I remember a time when Baby Boy only liked to hold my hand, and today after all these months apart he’s finally holding it again.. but he’s wrapped up his other little hand inside his Mama M’s.  We walk home this way, my boy, her boy, our boy between us and it’s perfect.  At home we sit at Mama M’s new kitchen table where she takes my hands in hers to work her manicure magic.  Emy sits on my lap as her her Mama labors over my hands, she sits there between two of the women who love her most and it’s perfect.  Later we’ve got salsa music going and Mama M teaches me new steps.  Baby Boy & Emy watch us, laughing and smiling as two of the women they love most dance together, and it’s perfect.