Secret Thoughts

We're all friends, right? So it makes sense that I would post my secret thoughts here, clearly. I guess they're not so much secret as they are just stuck up in my head with no outlet yet.

I love Guatemala. I love so very many things about it but the part that gets me every single time is each and every face. The smiles, the eyes. The same smile and eyes that got us into all this trouble in the first place back in '03 in Honduras.

It blows my mind that we haven't even been home 2 years yet but we've been blessed to be able to return to Eliot's birth country 3 times already. Would not have seen that coming. We had originally talked of taking him for his 18th birthday.

Every time we go, on almost every day, I see a face that reminds me of my chocolate chip. This leads me to the same thought: What would Eliot's life look like if we hadn't adopted him?

The legit answer: some other house/family in the states. Oh yeah.

After remembering that, I then almost always wonder what his life would have been like if his birth mom hadn't decided to place him up for adoption.

That's a much different answer.

Before I go there, know that sometimes these types of trains of thought bother me. They are apt to create either drama or some sort of martyr role. However, I sometimes can't help it as an adoptive mom. I assume it's natural?

I see little Chapins* getting on school buses, shining shoes, holding hands with their mom, begging for money, digging through trash to find something worth money, playing with their friends, selling me a bracelet*, in good orphanages, in rough orphanages, sniffing glue, in the grocery store with their dad, laughing, crying, clean, dirty, too skinny, too chubby, thriving and struggling.

There's obviously no way to know so there's not any point in entertaining the thought too long. It's not like we're going to go through an entire "It's a Wonderful Life" moment here.

All that to say, I can rest in the knowledge that even in Eliot's conception, the plan was for him to live with us and be our first child. This wasn't a plan B for us any more than it was for him. Daily I'm grateful beyond words that his birth mom followed whatever tug was on her heart.

Chapin: slang word for Guatemalan person.

Bracelet: a bracelet I paid 4X what I should have because he looked like Eliot, just a couple years older. Can you blame me?