Sunrise, sunset
Who is this young lady? The one who looks all grown up? The one who makes me think that in just a few years, we will be beating off the boys with sticks?
Today was supposed to be our annual trek to the Nutcracker. We were going to take the dotter’s friend K. with us, as well. But yesterday the weather gods decided it was time to dump a big ol’ load of snow on the area, around 12 inches.
Now, in Small Mountain University Town, where they regularly get 26-plus inch snows, they have clearing the highways and byways down to a science. Yes, readers from SMUT, they really do, though you may not think so. Anyway, a 9- to 12-incher wouldn’t phase the county crews from SMUT; they’d have the snowplows parked by each highway exit, engines running, when the snow reached one inch…and then those plows would be cruising the highways over and over and over again, scraping things down, so that the afternoon after the snow began to fall, it would be fairly clear.
Hereabouts…well, it doesn’t seem very intuitive: Here in Alaska, Land Of Ice And Snow And Bitter Cold, they’re not quite as good about it. Oh, in a few days, the highways will be clear, but in the meantime, driving on the highways would be an iffy proposition.
So at 11 a.m. this morning, I wimped out. OmegaDad is still sick, hacking and coughing and not being very happy, so it would have been just me with the two girls. And I had foolishly gotten tickets for the 5 p.m. show, which would mean driving both ways in the dark. In the cold dark. In the snowy cold dark. In the snowy cold dark on snow-packed and icy roads.
In a word: Yuck.
The dotter, when informed that we were wimping out, climbed into my lap and let the tears roll. But a promise of hauling her and K. off to the bouncy haus for a few hours of good clean bouncin’ fun, plus a chance to dress up in her fancy new holiday finery for a few minutes so mom could take a picture, made up for it.
So there she is. That girl is only six years old. I swear! Really! But doesn’t she look…um…mighty damn fine? And like she’s on the verge of teen-hood? Dayum. It’s scary. I swear it was only yesterday that she was shorter than the dining room table, and we could keep things safe from her by pushing them towards the middle of that same table.
It breaks my heart.
Something else that breaks my heart: When doing the Right Thing is all wrong for a child. The picture at the head of the story says it all to me. I read about Anna Mae and my heart sinks. Oh, she’ll adjust in a few years, and she’ll be a fine young lady when all is said and done, but I think of my dotter having to leave our family at the age of 8–only another year–and it just makes me miserable. The whole story was so horrid, in every way, and I wish that both sets of parents had found some way, very early on, to resolve things.
Damn. Now I have to find some way to cheer myself up…
posted in Adoption News, Holidays and Festivals, Issues, OmegaDotter, Parenting | 6 Comments
