Ukraine Adoption

What's old is new again

So I have been staring at this beige, textured wallpaper in the foyer of our home for years, wanting to tear it down and paint the walls some welcoming, warm color. But then we would want to change the railing on the stairs too, the light fixture is outdated, the hall closet is looking sad. Together, this is a costly job. So we do nothing. And years go by. We are frozen in indecision. It's too daunting to take on.

Day after day, it crosses my mind. Finally on Saturday afternoon, I was walking through the foyer like I do a dozen times a day and I stopped at the corner, leaned forward to get a closer look at the wall, and tugged at the paper just a little. And a little more. Then I called out to Austin and Tara: C'mon guys, help me tear this wallpaper down! And so we did. John didn't know what to make of us when we were laughing and pulling and falling down. Tara took a long sheet of it and made a makeshift slide on the stairs. Austin thought she was crazy, but she convinced him to sit down and give it a try. By now even John was laughing. "C'mon Daddy, slide down!" Tara pleaded. But he's tall and he didn't want to risk injury.

We rolled up the old wallpaper and stuffed it into big garbage bags. There's sort of a catharsis when you start such a project. We all stood there looking at the blank walls, what's old is new again.

And now we have no choice but to plow forward. Painters will give us estimates for the job, we'll browse through colors with cool names like pumpkin, cookie crumb and first anniversary. Yes that's a color in the brown family. We'll do one project at a time, over time. This process symbolizes so many things in life. You can't get what you want until you finally get started. Take is slow, but take the first step.

I can get really sentimental and remember the time I filled out the very first form for Tara's adoption from Ukraine. It was fall of 2003 that we were talking about adopting. By the following June, we turned in all of the paperwork overseas. We found her in February 2005. The process was very intimidating, but once I filled out that first form, I kept right on going.