Connecting Dots

In November, I posted about my encounter with an Ethiopian gentleman at a restaurant near our home. To refresh your memory, I was telling the nice man at the restaurant how I wanted to return to Ethiopia and he told me that if I did then I needed to visit a specific village in the south. That village happened to be where LB's Ethiopian family lives. It was an amazing moment. Most of the Ethiopians I have asked about his village have never heard of it.

Well, it turns out that there is a part two to this story. Just a few weeks later, I was perusing a Facebook group I am a member of that consists of parents who have adopted from Ethiopia. A woman posted that she had taken a recent trip to the southern part of Ethiopia and listed some names of places where she took several photos in case people were interested in seeing them. One of the places she mentioned I knew was close to his home village. Even though it wasn't the exact place I was still interested so I emailed her. I got a quick response back from her and as it turns out she also went to LB's home town and had several photos!!! She told me she would email a link to the photos. Viewing the photos made me extremely emotional.  As I scrolled through them, I couldn't help but look for LB's face in the images. It is more beautiful than I could have imagined. This kind woman gave us such a gift. D and I made a firm commitment to ourselves and to LB that we WILL go back to Ethiopia but until that time comes I am so grateful to see the beauty through her photos. Since they are not mine, I won't post them here. However, if you are interested in seeing a few of them then HERE is a link to her blog post where she shares some of them. Everything is so green and lush and simply breathtaking. I long for the day when we can go. I still can't get over that in a matter of weeks both of these events occurred. Amazing!

I hope that over time we can continue to connect more of these dots for LB. I have a close friend travelling to the southern part of Ethiopia later this year and she is going to try and take photos of the hospital where he was born. I know that it may never feel like enough but I want to fill in the blanks as much as possible. There are certain things I imagine we may never know, like the time of day he was born and what the weather was like that day. Since it was January in Ethiopia I can guess 70s, sunny and perfect but who knows. Can you imagine not being able to tell your child the time they were born or how much they weighed at birth? They seem like such simple facts that most parents probably take for granted. I think of all that I know about my own birth. I could tell you little things like my mom watched re-runs of I Love Lucy to distract herself from labor pains and that the doctor was happy I was born before the end of the business day. But I am not going to let my sadness about those things negate how I happy I am to have these photos. I'm so grateful and I pray that someday this sweet face will see the beauty in it as well.