10

i remember 10. it was big. it was like having those 2 numbers instead of one gave me footing to stand on. like i had arrived into myself. an awareness, that everything up to and including 9, didn't have. 

i've watched rose arrive here too.  shirt tails flapping behind her as she wizes by on her bike. wearing her favorite birthday gift of all, prescription-less glasses. she is her own.

i've watched her arrive here. and it's been a beautiful path. a different path than my other three in some ways- because of course it would be. denying that would be weird and wrong. she's had more things to figure out, more things to interpret, more looks to navigate, more internal questions to wrestle with .

part of standing on your own 2 feet at 10 and biking away boldly in your unnecessary, by-choice glasses is knowing who you are and being okay with it. it's embracing that yeah, your family is mixed. the parents that look like you don't speak your language and live 8000 miles away and the ones that tuck you in every night and check your homework and teach you to do the dishes, don't.
and that is inherently full of loss. it just is.

it's the kind of loss that creeps up on you like fog.  the kind that hides and pokes its head out when it's not expected. the kind that lingers and when i see it, catches me off guard and stings like a slap and says, 'don't forget, don't you ever forget, she didn't ask for this, she didn't choose this.' it's a loss that needs an ear. that deserves respect and time.

i try. i try to keep an eye out for it, an ear out. i try to speak for it when i feel it's there but too shy to come out because i know that sharing that unnameable loss can be vulnerable. and i try to teach her to have an eye out for it too. to know that it's there and that it's okay. that it's normal. that it's not shameful. that complicated emotions are allowed and welcome.

each time we move through a patch of that fog, she stands taller. her gorgeous confident self, aware that life isn't fair, that it has loss but that's okay. it also has choice. and while it is far from perfect, we are in it together and she is so deeply loved. i remember when we first got rose, people used to say how lucky she was and it always hit my stomach in a sour way because i was the one who felt lucky. and i was right. the privilege has been all mine!

i love you with all of my heart.

happy 10th birthday rose!