This article is from a four-year-old journal entry. Sarah is now six; we adopted her and her brother Christopher in 2005. I hope you enjoy the jaunt down “memory lane” as much as I did!
Every night before we tuck her in, two-year-old Sarah watches intently as we perform a series of little rituals so familiar to most parents. Each step must be executed perfectly if we hope to get any sleep that night.
Closet light on, check.
Shades pulled down, ceiling fan on, check-check.
Piggy, Dolly, and Dorothy the Dinosaur tucked in, check-check-CHECK.
This week we added another step that we ignore to our peril: pajamas must go on backward, or she will ditch her diaper, soaking the carpet and/or bed linen, depending on where she decides to sleep that night.
My favorite part of the routine comes next. “Snugga, snugga,” she reminds me. Lovey in one hand, bottle of water in the other, she straddles my lap and presses her chin into my chest, arms flung out in an all-embracing hug. I drape a special blanket over her and hug her tight, and her little face peeks out with a serious expression. “I-la-OO! I-la-OO!” she prompts, swaying back and forth. As I begin to sing, she pops her bottle contentedly in her mouth and for once that day, sits perfectly still:
I love you, a bushel and a peck,
A bushel and a peck and a KISS upon the neck,
Kiss upon the neck and a barrel and a heap
Barrel and a heap, and I’m talking in my sleep about you, about you …
The second time around, Sarah casts aside the bottle so she can chime in the last word of each line: “ … PECK! … NECK! … SHEEP!” (Okay, so her diction isn’t perfect.) It’s all very precious, and I know if she is still with us years from now, when adolescence hits, I will long for the days when she used to hug me with such abandon.
Yes, if she is still with us. Sarah is my foster daughter. I’ve had her and her brother since she was six months old. (Christopher is partial to Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You.”) Sometimes I watch them sleep at night, and marvel at how much I love them—I never expected that love could be so fierce, so all-encompassing, so unabashed. Biology, schmiology; these kids are mine.
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