Mother Africa

Driving home from dropping my girls off at school the other day,
a CD came on in the shuffle.

It was the Asante Children's Choir CD and it had been there for months.
Number 2.
Filled with songs from a group of beloved children who we'd grown to know and love and call by name.

When we had layed our eyes on them, they had all looked the same.
Same pale blue shirts and khakis.
Same short dark hair.
My girls had asked me if there were any girls in the group, not realizing that over half of them were.

We had offered to host a couple for a period of five days that would become seven.
Then four more a month later.
Then five more a few weeks after that.
And then, inside, for a time that had no end.

We always ended up with the same two, not completely by chance.
I would send emails begging for Capi and Divine because we had fallen in love.

Over a course of fewer days than fill a month they had become part of us.

Saying goodbye to them the final time had been possibly the hardest most painful things I'd ever done.
As deep and affecting as child birth.
Releasing from my body two beautiful girls that in my heart were mine.

When they left, I had tucked notes every place I had been able to think of in the hopes that they'd find them one lonely night on the road as they unpacked the few things they owned.
The few things that were now mixed with a pile of dresses that were too small for Alena that I'd handed them before I left the room and sobbed.
They had danced in front of their mirror and I felt ashamed for months to look in mine.

I hoped that they even understood that my love was not brought on by a one night flurry of emotion because of some great slide presentation or a heart-felt plea from a pulpit for a sponsor.
It was not spurred by ankle bells or grass skirts under good stage lighting.

I hoped they knew that this love was formed on quiet afternoons amidst a sea of nail polish.
That it grew with wafts of the Vaseline that they put on their hair after showers they had taken together because that's what they were used to.
It bloomed with the cards they left each time they were gone on the road that said that they wished they could stay with us forever.

This was a love with roots that spread under an ocean that sprawled under a small dirt floor, and that had sprouted its buds inside me.

We told them we would come see them.
They had asked if we "knew the year."

The CD played as I passed grocery stores and four bedroom homes and cars with spoilers added.

In the beginning of the CD a young boy's small voice talks of the triumph of the African spirit through all the blood-shed and self-destruction.
Then he says, "Arise! Oh, Mother Africa. Arise."
and I realize that from that very first day they climbed into the back of my van
I have taken that phrase as a plea.

Please.
Arise and
MOTHER Africa.

You.
Kerri Green.
In your white mini-van scattered with excess.

Mother Africa.

And with tears still as easy as the day they said goodbye,
in my heart I say I will.

Orphaned No More

It's the final day.

Today.

The day we say goodbye to Capi and Divine forever.
Or at least until we board a plane and fly across the ocean to their village in Burundi.

The pain lives in my chest and seals my lips and then comes spilling out of my eyes.

Constant actually physical pain.

This morning, I mentally willed them to leave some of their things behind.
Things I could look at and hold later when I'm facing what is sure to be an unbearable void.

We loaded in the car and headed out in the rain to make their 9:20 drop off;
My sadness not lessened by the sounds of Sarah Maclaughlin singing "I'll Be Home for Christmas" on the stereo.
Sarah can make anything even more sad than it already is with her voice.

I don't remember most of the drive.
I feel like I had spend the majority of it looking at their faces in the rear-view mirror.
Trying to memorize them.
Their eyes.
Their beautiful and perfect smiles.
They just sat silently looking out the rain drenched windows.

It was as if the gray of the outside had invaded everything
- spreading like a drop of ink in water and turning everything murky.

I thought about the last 6 months.
I thought about the first time I saw them.

I had been disappointed they were so old.
I'd thought the little ones would be cuter.

Cuter.....

I had no idea the impact those two girls dressed in pale blue Asante shirts would have on me and my family.

That our lives were about to be permanently intertwined with girls we had never seen from a country we'd never even heard of.

I remember trying to even understand what they were saying their names were at first.
I made Capi say hers four times.
Capita? Capitola? Capitilli?

Capitaline.

Just call her Capi.

I remember thinking Divine looked sad and feeling that that look of needing nurturing behind her eyes was perfect work for me.
I wanted to fix it.

The first day, in a sea of dark faces, they'd looked all the same.
We had trouble figuring out which one was which.
Which ones we were taking.

But now, after all this time, we can pick them out in a dark room, just by the way their shadows walk.

We've memorized them.

That Capi prefers her breakfast hot, and denies she snores.
That she's a joker and full of mischief.
That she likes saying "No" to a question just to get a rise out of you.
"Capi, Do you see the house with 5000 lights right in front of you?" "No."
That she likes being tickled and loves to help with the baby,
which I gladly let her do anytime she wants now after finding out about the time she walked, at the age of four, with her sick baby brother on her back for miles in the jungle trying to find help for him.
Help that I don't think ever came.
So I let her hold all she wants.
She coos.
She sings.
She strokes.
Then she teases Paige about being fat with love in her voice.
Her voice that sounds like a song, somehow.
In spite of the unimaginable she's suffered.

I know that Divine is by far the Fresh Beat Band's number one fan.
That she loves thoughts of mystery.
We taught her about the tooth fairy.
She taught us true Christmas as she literally danced with joy over a gift of a bag of Doritos, which are her "best food."
What a lesson to learn.
Divine is smart and quiet.
I can see something deep and painful in her eyes, but her laugh sounds like Tigger and it brims over with joy.
"Hoo hoo hoo!"

I thought about how our pictures with them span the seasons.
That the first ones we have are of us in the yard painting and spraying each other with the hose. We were warm and smiling unsure smiles.
Not knowing really what to expect from our meeting.

Now they are all wearing hats and coats and we're looking at Christmas lights and the looks in our eyes say FAMILY.

We went to the fair.
We went swimming.
We went to a movie.
We went to In N Out.
A LOT.

Now each time we do those things, they will be haunted with the memory of the two girls who changed our hearts forever.

I don't know how I'll do it.
How I'll let go tonight and turn around and walk away.
How I'll make my hands un-clasp.

I don't know how I'll comfort my kids who will be devastated.

I want to lay in front of their bus,
but instead, I make sure their travel bottles of shampoo are filled.
Crying as I do it.

It's too little.
It's not enough.

They've made my own needs feel small.
What a beautiful, meaningful gift!

What a blessing and a relief to take our eyes off of ourselves.

I wrote them letters that I will give to them tonight as we watch their final performance and say goodbye.

This is what I wrote, in a way they could understand:

and

I hope they never forget us.
I know we'll never ever forget them.

The orphaned girls who were orphans no more.