Letter to a Child

Dear Little Sister,

There will come a day when all this tense excitement will be forgotten. You are too little to understand right now how eagerly your mommy and daddy are looking forward to meeting you, to holding you in their arms. And although they will tell you how much they hoped and wished and prayed for you, and how they longed to hold you , and rock you to sleep at night, to cuddle you and stare into your beautiful eyes, they can not tell you what only the rest of us know. How their excitement and eagerness was so huge, was so gigantic, was so utterly uncontainable that it spilled across thousands and thousands of miles, not just to Ethiopia, where you were born, but all across the United States, and Canada, and across the whole wide world so that people who could smell the air of all the seas and oceansthat cover this planet, which, in terms of planets, is a moderately sized one. Mind you, in terms of people, it's actually quite large.

You need to know this, because if it comes from them you might be skeptical. You might not believe that women in the strange land of Texas set aside what they were doing to spend time praying for you, and that women in places of no consequence, but so far distant from you and yours that their homes may indeed seem exotic gathered at their computers to celebrate you.

You may wonder, some day, if you were destined to be raised as an upstate kid, why were you born so far away? And I tell you, at this point, I sometimes wonder if it wasn't so you, so little now, had to be born so far from your mommy and daddy so that all of us could be more greatly blessed by the outpouring of love they already feel for you, never having laid so much as a kiss upon your forehead.

You may not agree with me, but I truly believe that every act of kindness and love and giving in this world somehow affects us all for the good. We are each and every one of us more blessed for having witnessed the love your mother feels for you, and for that, I, for one, am grateful.

May you soon be held in your mommy's arms. May you soon be covered in kisses by Big Brother and Big Sister. May you soon be comforted by the sound of daddy's voice. May the love that stretches all around this globe, for you, stay with you all of your days.

Bright blessings on you, Little Sister.

Love,

Slee