Friday, September 2, 2011

Degmen Tegenagnen - We Meet Again.

Photo by Tanya
Tanya’s car pulls into my parents’ gravel driveway. She is honking the horn, and waving her hand out the window. Meazi, Melese and I have been outside waiting for them to arrive from their five-hour drive from St. Paul, Minnesota. Peeking in her car, we see her boys Mintesinot and Tesfaamlak sitting in their cars seats, identical to ours, one with a cow pattern and the other with a butterfly pattern. My children have met lots of other kids adopted from Ethiopia. We have a large Ethiopian-American community in Los Angeles with whom we get together all the time. This August morning, at my parents’ lake house in northern Wisconsin, is the first time my kids are seeing kids whom they knew back in Ethiopia two years ago. They have come to spend the day and night with us....

Read the rest HERE.

10 comments:

  1. Once again you blow me away....this is so beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. beautiful article, and a wonderful connection for your kids. Streets better than how I could explain it, so I just linked to you instead. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. So so beautiful. You always bring the tears Julie!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like the Amharic title :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. My daughter E has a friend like that. Her family and our family were one behind the other on the waiting list for our children. Her mom and I became good friends over email, got referrals less than a week apart, and had (and passed) court on the same day. We did not end up traveling together to ET to bring our kids home, but I did meet their daughter in ET. And everyone told us that E and their girl, B, were always together. They live in one region of the country, we in another, and they were quite small when we brought them home. However, when we were able to get them together in Feb. (over a year after seeing each other), it was like no time had passed. They played together like they had in ET. I think there is something to be said for the bond that these children have. I'm glad your kids were able to see them and be together.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow, Julie, I don't know if I can express how much I love this article. It is happy and sad, so real and so full of the grief and the hope. Kids comforting each other is heart-wrenching and moving beyond expression. One of the last lines -- about looking into those eyes and seeing your past -- was just so beautiful. I don't know how to express my reaction better, maybe just to say I feel this article in my chest, like it is squeezing my heart. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. You have a true gift, you articulate things I think and feel but don't seem to have the words to say! Thank you! GREAT ARTICLE!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I just got around to reading this. Well done, Julie. Beautiful.

    ReplyDelete