She Waited with Me

Flydah. A friend in Kenya. Excited about my DAUGHTER who was coming soon. The year was 2015. Our girl was to come home on April 14th. We’d only found out about her ten days before.

We were going to meet them. The two people who had made her. One of the people who cared for her after taking her from where she’d had her arm fractured. (A baby home.) And her. Our precious daughter. A girl I chose and hated choosing. They’d given us two to choose from. That was never part of the plan. We were to be told about one and then have 24 hours to decide. But, we were Black and so we didn’t have to be scrutinized as much nor matched as perfectly as others who were Black. We didn’t care what the baby’s skin tone would be like. We didn’t care about how kinky her hair would be. I didn’t even care if she was HIV positive or not, though her future father did care and did not want a positive child.

We waited. 24 years in the making. My daughter was coming at last. Born in my heart as a wish when I was ten years old. Waited for. Prayed for. She had been a plan in the marriage planning days but then her father to be had changed his mind.

I still don’t know what made him decide to adopt. It sure isn’t fatherly feelings. But here she is. And it was also because of her that I felt I couldn’t divorce in 2016. I thought I owed her mother to be the two parent family she’d wanted for her daughter. Little knowing that she would not care. And would want me to be free!

Flydah, Mama Abigail, waited with me. Asking when our daughter was coming. Unlike my mother in law and my mother, she had always viewed her as my daughter. Not some foundling. Not an act of charity. But a daughter.

Tuesday will be 11 years since we met her and welcomed her into our family. At her request, we will celebrate and be happier on this day than on her birthday, a day that reminds her that she wasn’t born to me, her mother. April 14, 2015 is the day for my daughter. The day she met her mother and became hers.