Ukraine Adoption

Remember?

I opened a photo album last week and showed Tara some pictures of her in Ukraine in April of 2005. I slowly turned the pages, watching her reaction. She smiled and said, "that's me!" Playing at the park in Kiev, laughing in the apartment, sitting in a stroller in downtown with a balloon in her hand. Then we got to the ones from the orphanage. Do you remember this? I asked. In her picture, her eyes are puffy and her face is pale, she looks frail, tiny, scared. Do you remember? "Yes, I was sad," she said.

Why were you sad? "Because Mommy is at work," she said. "You left me there."

I asked her where she is, in the picture. She tells me she was "at school." I asked her if she remembers a long plane ride. "Yes, with Mommy!" she answered. Where were we going? She smiled. "Ummm, tell me!" So I told her we were going home. Who was waiting for us at home? "Daddy! Austin! Kitty!" Right.

What does she really remember? I'm trying to piece it together. I think she feels that her orphanage days blur together with her pre-school memories now. Maybe that's how she wants to remember it.

She loves to hear stories about when she was "little." Sometimes after a bath I carry her like a baby, and tell her she will always be my baby. She loves to hear that. We tell her that she used to call Austin "Sa sa." She laughs, it sounds so silly to her.

If she sees a family picture from a few years ago that she is not in, she asks why. Sometimes she'll point to something in the photo, like a couch, and tell me that she is hiding behind it. (she was really hiding within our hearts).