Lela's Mother's Day thoughts

Lela the seadog. She had her first sail on a big boat last Saturday. The Soundwater, a two-masted schooner used for environmental education around Long Island Sound was taking a boatload of town and village officials and environmental leaders and one kid out for a cruise around the Bay. Guess who got the most photos ops.

In our house it’s really Mothers’ Day. Lela was drooping around at the end of coffee hour after church on Sunday and I asked her what was wrong. She said, “I just feel a little sad.” I asked her if she wanted to talk about anything and she just buried her head in my shoulder. When we got home, and Jamie was putting Lian down for her nap, we talked again. I reminded her we had talked about writing a letter to her birth mother when she had felt sad around her birthday in January. Did she think that would help? Yes, it would. So I transcribed while she talked.

Hi Mama,
I really miss you. I really enjoyed living in China. My name is Lela. My sister is Lian. My papa takes really good care of me. My mama does too. I really love my family. We live with our cats and dog. Their names are Sneezer, BigEyes and Sally. We take very good care of them, even the fish in our pond, when we feed them they get very big and healthy. They enjoy swimming in the pond, they like to swim, swim, swim until their fins get tired. All our pets are very happy.
If anything bad happens to my parents, I’ll go live with another family.
From Mama and Lela

Then we wrote to her Ayis, the caregivers at the orphanage.

We love you, nannies.
I know I enjoyed living with you. If anything bad happens like a tornado comes, we’ll hide in grandma’s cellar or garage. If anything bad happens there, just tell me. You will always be the nanny of me. I like to be Cinderella and watch Mary Poppins, and we like to watch all day, but when we do we don’t go to sleep.
Love Lela

Note – we live in a part of NY that gets tornados once in a blue moon, but papa showed her tornado clips on the Weather.com after reading the Wizard of Oz (kids version.)

Then she made up and sang an original song, “Livin’ with the Pines Family”

“When I’m live with the Pines Family, I love twinkin’ my eyes, I give out a yell and I cry now, I just like livin’ with the Pines Family, Lela loves me.
I am a little, little girl named Lela. I am very happy that I live with the Pines Family. I love the Pines Family!”
I had the foresight to grab the camera and get the song on tape (on chip rather, which is how I know the lyrics. There were more words, but they started to get very silly once she realized she had an audience. And no, I’m not posting it because then you’all would see my very messy kitchen.) She watched the playback of herself several times and then cheerfully trotted out the door to go visit Grandma. I love her complete lack of self-criticism, there’s none of the issues yet to come, like how I look, sound, am dressed etc. Right now she can bask in the certainty that she is the center of our universe. I am so glad she can talk to me and tell me what’s on her mind, I hope to retain that as she grows. And that she has connection and ownership to her life in China. So much history for someone so young.