Though the wait for Jubilee is frustrating and difficult, we realize that it is almost over. We will have our daughter home before Daniel needs another haircut; before the next time I need to buy sugar. Her room is (almost) ready. As soon as the piglet-colored paint has cured (yes, we had to paint again, its a long story), we will apply the flowering branch decal and hang the shelf that will hold her dolls and other nicknacks. Her Etsy-made bedding just needs to be ironed and stretched over the frame of the crib that Brave slept in until last week. Her pinky-blinky clothes need to be washed and put in the drawers that are, at the moment, still stuffed with overalls, pickup-truck T-shirts and Batman pajamas. On top of this dresser, her face stares out from a white picture frame, her full lips pouting, her black eyes seeming to question the world at large. I stop into her tiny pink room in the quiet of the evenings, after her brothers have been kissed and blessed and stacked into their triple bunks for the night. I sit down and look at her face. Sometimes I softly cry. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I just sit there, like I'm waiting for a bus, because in this last stretch that is more or less all we are doing. Waiting.
The other night, Zion looked at her picture and said, "Mama, MeiMei looks sad" (MeiMei means "little sister"). I said that she looks sad because she doesn't have a family. He looked up at me with that incredible attitude he has,
the attitude we didn't see coming when he was a baby, and he said, "She duhhhhhs now!"
