Eyes

It’s in the eyes.  The eyes stare at you and get into your soul.  You will see them all day long.  Those eyes will make you fall in love.  Those eyes will make you want more.  Those eyes will make you want to heal them. 

We were lucky enough to get a baby picture of Sasha that was taken when she entered the orphanage.  She was being held up by an orphanage worker; swaddled in a stained white blanket.  The picture used to make me sad but now when I look at that picture, I see the same beautiful girl who kisses me every morning before she gets on the bus for school.   I see her brightness.  There is no more need or want.  There is only happiness.  I was organizing our pictures the other day and I pulled this one out.  Sasha and I scanned it and edited out the stains and the flash reflection in the background but we left her eyes alone.  We laughed at how little hair she had and how she looked like a burrito.

Eliana’s birthmother ‘s beauty struck me from the first moment we met her.  I was completely comfortable looking into R’s eyes and sharing my feelings, my love for her and her baby.  R put her soul out there and we embraced it.  We loved R and we needed R and her baby from the moment we met her.  We needed her just as much as she needed us.  After we brought Eliana home, I spent hours looking into her eyes and promising her the world.  She knew her mommy and she held my gaze. 

What’s amazing now is that Sasha and Eliana have the exact same color eyes.  They are both greenish-bluish-greyish-brownish-hazelish.  They are ever-changing depending on the weather, their mood or their clothes.  Their eyes are not my eyes.  Their eyes are my love, my healing, my ‘more’. 

Now that I’m on the other side of infertility, I realize that when I looked into Sasha’s eyes in that picture and Eliana’s birthmother’s eyes in person, I was looking into a mirror. I needed to be a mom.  They needed me to be a mom.  Together we healed each other.