11! And My Dreams Come True.

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.” ~Harriet Tubman

Kyle and Owen turn 11 today. They are taller than me, and they are larger than life. But they are still my babies. I was about their age when I began dreaming about the life I wanted to live. I’m living it. And these boys are a big, huge piece of it. They are my dreams come true. Today we celebrate their birth.

This day is always emotional for me. I have to use my imagination to picture what the scene must have been like, in Cite Soleil, Haiti, on the day they were born. Sometimes I let my mind go there, and I try to imagine it. Hot and sticky and raw, people pushing the confines of everything, and twin baby boys about to begin an epic journey. We have records that say K & O were born at 2pm. Their birthmother would have been in labor right now, eleven years ago. I cannot even fathom it from her perspective. I wish I could have been there.

I never thought I’d be that adoptive mother — all melodramatic about grieving losses and missing pieces. But here I am. I’m her: all weepy and flooded with emotion. Thinking about all we’ve gained and all we’ve lost has become an annual event for me on this day. It is so much more than my sons’ birthday.

My sons, however, are all rich-lightness and dreamy-eyed leading up to May 8th. I check in with them, thoroughly and consistently, year-to-year, as we approach this day. But, at least so far, they aren’t like me with this day. They understand the grief, the loss, and the missing pieces of it. They know the impact. But they save their own churning emotions for their Adoption Day. Birth Day seems reserved for pure celebration.

So, I guess, at least for now, we take turns. They have their annual upheaval in January. Me, in May. This has become our pattern. And while their January is so painful for me to witness, in the past couple of years it’s become clear to me that they enjoy seeing me all choked up and pensive and wrought with my May emotions. They seem to savor observing me go through it– they smile at me, tease me, and hug me or pat me on the back. “Oh Mom!” they say, and they appear filled with what I can only describe as elation, exhilaration, glee. They love it.

When they were little and they’d be struggling or sad, we’d talk about how my hugs and kisses and whispering-of-sweet-nothings were meant to “fill up their love tanks.” I’d see them downtrodden and ask, “Do you need your love tank filled?” And I’d pull them up onto my lap and fill them right up. I see them now, at 11, getting their love tanks filled up on seeing how deeply I ‘get’ the love, loss, and depth of it all in May. I think they like seeing (need to see?) their mama all broken up over the missing pieces, while at the exact same time creating the celebration of all the awesome. While I’m weepy over losses, I’m also the most joyful mama you could ever imagine as I make May 8th their happy birthday. That’s the essence of adoption: all loss and gain, joy and pain, mourning and celebration wound up together.

I won’t always be able to make their dreams come true. But I’m happy that, even now, at age 11, I still can a little bit. They are embarking on their own paths now; beginning to follow their own dreams. They’re at that age — they’ve got their own lives to live, their own dreams to make real. So, this year, to honor their wishes, despite my own selfish missing-of-it, there is no big birthday bash for my boys. No huge party on the lawn. No bounce house or marching band or piñata. Not even a special birthday dinner. It is basketball practice tonight and a big bball tournament tomorrow. Entirely their choice, their love, their spirit, their dreams-come-true — their AAU schedule made anything else impossible — and Kyle and Owen are 100% good with that. With no party in the works, there was a much bigger gift budget. They had big dreams of iPods and Beats headphones (they live on a college campus, after-all, so only the Beats are the ‘real deal’). And this morning their end-of-the-bed presents made their dreams come true.

These pictures capture the morning of their 11th birthday entirely. No big party this year, but the same birthday boys, as happy as can be, just bigger by the year. Only their mama was choked up and teary-eyed behind the lens snapping these.

It is messy and complex. And I wouldn’t want it any other way. It is the dream I imagined living. 11 years in, I am more and more grateful for them by the year.