True in my Heart

I couldn't help but cry. After a long day and missing dinner with the kids I came home to find them busy qt work on their scrapbook from Disney World. They are very creative and love paper craft stuff and their therapists suggested it as an outlet for working together and to raise their self esteem. Little Mama can even be on a scrapbook club at middle school next year.

So I turned a table in our kitchen to a scrapbook zone. Since I gave up my workspace when the kids came I no longer had all my supplies in the same area. My husband hates where it is but for now it's good for them. And there they were all three girls working quietly when I arrived home. They were struggling with how to make the pages come alive and asked for my help but they made a really good first stab at it!

They had a picture of me with Belle my favorite princess and they wanted me to write this in cursive on the page "Mom with her favorite princess.". I paused. I struggled to find the right way to say it without hurting their feelings.

"I will write whatever you decide but I want you to take a few minutes to think about how you might feel down the road 5 years when you are living with your Mom and this book calls me Mom. Are you sure you don't want to put my name because either way would be ok with me."

Little Mama sitting next to me is shaking her head no. JB is looking at me like I'm nuts and Gabby, my sensitive little Gabby says "it will still be true in our hearts. You are our Mom and you were during this trip and so that's what I want to put." then she started to cry.

To which of course I started to cry. Somehow I managed to pull out something about how'd I get so lucky to have such sweet kids to love back. To make them think they were happy tears. But I was crying for all the reasons I cried yesterday. Their potential, their struggle to heal, their dreams, their fears and the fact that no one can tell us what will happen. My fear that they will leave and i will never see them agian and i will spend the rest of my life wondering if they were ok. And deep deep down in my heart I had to beat back the hope that the album we were working on would never leave this house. That it would be the first of many family vacation albums. All with pictures of me labeled Mom and them labeled my kids. Because if that hope surfaces and then gets crushed I'm not sure how I will survive it. Or how our family and friends will. And no matter how much I preface and prepare them for reunification their hope is the same and I never realize that I could be responsible for more heartbreak to be heaped on my family.