Morning Before

                              I woke up again this morning thinking about coming into my office and starting to write.  That's the hardest part sometimes.  Getting up.  If I could just get all those crazy thoughts to write themselves out while I was laying there, then I could edit them no problem.  As I am trying to figure out where this story really begins, I find myself poindering where I was on December 7, 1990.  My daughter, Emily, was born that day in Vidin, Bulgaria.  We are so connected that I am certain, if I could remember that day, I'd remember something, a feeling, a warmth, a knowledge that her time on earth had begun.  I know, as God did, that she was always my daughter.  It took me a while to find her but until I did, I knew that there was a piece of me missing.  I knew that my family was not yet complete.

                  I don't know a whole lot about Emily's early days.  I choose to believe that her mother loved her deeply.  She was a woman the same age as I was.  She kept Emily at home with her for a week before she entrusted her care to the Dom i Meke (the baby orphanage) in Vidin.  It was December in Bulgaria and my understanding is that heating oil and food were both often is short supply, especially in the rural outskirts of Vidin.  She loved her enough to never want her to be cold or hungry again.  She loved her enough to want her to be safe.  She loved her enough to relinquish her rights to hold her, cuddle her, nurture her and watch her grow up into an amazing young lady.  I am so deeply grateful to her for loving my Emily like that.   

               Emily's 6 1/2 years in the orphanage were okay I guess.  She seems to have suffered few ill effects from being an institutionalized chlild much of her early life.  I have to credit a great deall of this to the orphanage director