He met me at the airport with roses and that "all over his face smile". He couldn't reach my neck in order to meet cheek to cheek, so he had to stand on my feet in order to deliver all of the anticipation that had built-up into that one moment.
He held my hand on the ride back to the orphan house, and reached out to hug me whenever I caught his glance. I had come back--again. And for him, that meant I had come home.
Throughout my stay, I filled him with grape water, hamburgers, and gelato's. I bought him tennis shoes, a back pack, and a wrestling ring,. I watched him play soccer with his friends, and cheered as if I was the mother of a professional athlete who was wearing her son's jersey on my back. We giggled at funny videos on my phone, and we held hands through the Zocalo.
We were together.
For one week, he had a Momma who spoiled him, and an older brother (I took my then twenty-something son) who spent time with him. He was the center of our attention, and the light that came into every room we entered.
He couldn't stop hugging us, because he needed to spend all of that stored-up affection he had waited a year to deliver.
The picture of that day in the airport is still my favorite picture...the one I keep in my kitchen so that I can see it in the room I seem to spend the most time in. It's the room where my family always gathers around our thankful table. It just makes sense that, in that room, all of our family is together: those in body, and those in a frame,...the one who has a place on my feet.
