Laurie Klein, Scribe

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“The Food of Love …”

by Laurie Klein 28 Chiming In

The food of love? Well, we are making cookies today . . .

My granddaughter perches on the kitchen stool, one loose-cannon leg kicking the rungs. She’s chatty, a tad restive. She waves the baby chick cookie cutter above her head. Then, surprisingly, she falls silent, pointing to the decal that spans the soffit. With a five-year-old’s zest she proclaims, “If music be the food of Love, pla-a-ay on.”

“Keira,” I marvel, “you’re reading!”

She grins briefly, then returns to cutting birdies from dough. Keira, aka Kiki, was once a hypersensitive infant we carried around on a pillow. She suffered acute sensory issues. Traumatized in utero by her birth mother’s drug habit, our little fledgling now reads Shakespeare.

Oh, the ageless effervescence of wonder — it tingles all over my body. I’m older than the average grandma, eager to savor each stage of growth while I still can.

As my friend Judi Carlson says, “What piece of our heart did God create to receive this kind of miracle? We adopt fragile children. And those children adopt us.”

Kiki, our impish dynamo, seldom sits long enough to hear a story through to the end. So when did the skill to read click? She’s a girl with places to go, faces to make, boundaries to test.

“All done,” she sings out. “Now what?”

I slide her tray of ginger-bird cutouts into the oven. “Eight minutes,” I say. “Want to see the baby robins?”

We tiptoe to my bedroom window to watch the ramshackle nest on our deck.

awaiting the food of love

Three fledglings yeep and chirr, jostling each other. Then, like harrumphing uncles, they rotate positions.

She wants to know why they are fighting.

“They’re getting too big for the nest,” I say. “And maybe they’re itchy. Look, they’re taking beak-baths.”

[Click & watch] IMG_0548

Chirping, Mama Robin swoops to the lawn, nabs a worm, heads for the nest. She embodies music, the food of Love — countless times each day.

I’ve watched her spread wings and tail over the nest during two hailstorms, her quivering pinions jeweled with ice. She’s giving her young every chance in a world where statistics show only 25% survive their first year.

The oven timer goes off, and we head for the kitchen, Kiki bouncing ahead of me — and off a wall or two. The thought comes to me, she’ll be okay, despite her rough start in life and her madcap ways. The cherishing God who knows when a sparrow falls is with her, and will be, long after I’m gone.

Whoever wrote Psalm 91 knew a thing or two about love: “[God] will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.” For now, I’m grateful the Deity shares part of that privilege with me.

Kiki and I frost the cookies and top them with sprinkles. Another gift. The robins, too, seem sent. Vulnerability dressed in feathers chooses my deck. My time. Me. From the nest’s inception to sky-blue eggs to scruffy hatchlings, I’ve eavesdropped on this family-in-progress day after day, for weeks. A living psalm.

Kiki takes bird cookies home to her mama. A few hours later I find the nest empty. Abandoned. I’m surprised by the ache in my chest. And how it spreads.

I would have loved to watch them fly.

Since then, I’ve used this breath prayer throughout the day, the one that’s been singing itself in my head lately, helping me let go.

(inhale) Lord of every     (exhale) quickening,
Watching over     egg and wing,
How you cherish     everything!
Taking flight     or nestling,
I live     to sing
All that you are,     my King.

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What helps you release a cherished hope or a beloved being already in flux?

You might also enjoy this one about Kiki

And this one, if you missed it, about the nest

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: adoption, cookies, feathers, fledgling, gingerbirds, love, music, nest, robins June 2, 2022

Chosen Again, Moonshadow Day

by Laurie Klein 38 Chiming In

Moody skies. A cliff. An abandoned stroller . . .

chosen chariot awaiting

Who took the baby?

+++

May I tell you a story?

On August 21st the solar eclipse will, in some locations, turn day into darkness. I wish you could know what the day means for our family.

On this day a year ago, an unwanted child was born to a drug-addicted mother and unknown father.

The parents would not cradle or feed or rock their baby girl.

They’d never be the metaphorical sun and moon watching over her world.

The baby, traumatized by Lithium withdrawal, could not settle and would not eat.

Our daughter, Rachel, agreed to work with her in the Neonatal Care Unit.

Love ignited their first moments together.

Rachel took this baby . . . into her heart.

Irresistibly drawn, she and her husband would rescue her, raise her, and nurture little Kiki into wholeness.

chosen to be cherished

Perhaps Kiki sensed she’d been chosen, because she relaxed. She ate and slept. Her new responsiveness to love lit up the room.

Homecoming

Ongoing drug withdrawal consumed compassion, patience, and stamina.

Even tightly swaddled, sometimes Kiki could not bear to be touched, and I carried her around and around the house on a cushion. As with so many of our solutions, the pillow trick worked but wasn’t foolproof.

Weeks passed. Red-eyed and shaky with fatigue, Rachel and Damon agonized over her anguish. She shrieked and flailed.

“I’ve got you,” Damon would whisper, holding her close. “I’ve got you.”

Is this what it means to be chosen and cherished by God?

To be rescued, again and again—no matter what. To be made part of a family, given a new name.

Sometimes few words are needed. Touch is all.

Kiki’s suffering raged on.

Will the clouds part?

People who follow total eclipses wonder: Is our equipment good enough? Will the clouds part? We’ve come all this way . . . what if the wonder eludes us?

As caregivers, sometimes we miss glimmers of light when our loved one’s pain is vast and their progress, incremental.

We doubt our ability. God seems remote. Hidden.

Who will hold us and say, “I’ve got you.”?

We turn to “the man with starlight in his veins,” as writer Brian Doyle once called Jesus.

Then we offer ragged presence.

Chosen Again, Moonshadow Day

chosen one
“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kiki is thriving.

On the solar eclipse we’ll celebrate her first birthday . . . at the courthouse. We’ll witness the finalization of her adoption. She’ll be formally chosen, again, and for always, in a court of law . . .

. . . with all manner of declarations and testimonies, photos and signatures.

Can you imagine the hugging? No words needed. Touch is all.

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Did it take long to find me? I asked the faithful light.
Did it take long to find me? And are you gonna stay the night?

“Moonshadow,” by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)

More of Kiki’s story here

 

 

 

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: adoption, cherished, chosen, eclipse, love, moonshadow August 20, 2017

Love and the Stork’s Apprentice

by Laurie Klein 18 Chiming In

Some stories are so tender, they’re meant for only a few eyes. This story reveals hard things, and hopes long-guarded. I’ve covered the heroes so you can see their goodness, but they won’t feel the world’s glare in their faces. I trust you to do the same.

###

Can a young, single, entrepreneurial girl be almost full-term—and not know it?

Let’s call her Larkin: Girl-on-the-move, literally and figuratively, traveling across country with a new boyfriend. Unexplained pain prompts their detour to our city’s Emergency Room. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Small Wonders Tagged With: adoption, hidden, longing, love May 2, 2017

Windfall: Urgent, Instant, Demanding Joy

by Laurie Klein 24 Chiming In

Windfall —”an unexpected gain” — who wouldn’t want one?

Oh, have I got a story for you, a tale worth a roomful of candles and cake . . . windfall of candles

S.O.S.

One week ago the local adoption agency phoned our eldest daughter, mother to our 16-month-old grandson. The agency’s request was urgent, the need, dire.

A struggling newborn in the Deaconess Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) needed someone to help her learn to eat. Hopefully, to thrive. Overworked nurses wanted someone calm and caring to hold one tiny girl, coax her into life. Would our daughter come?

She and her husband weighed the risks. There were many.

Still, she went. Stepped right into miraculous, heart-wrenching chaos for five days. We met our newest little one in NICU that first evening. Ashen and frail, with an awkward feeding port in her skull and cords snaking off to various monitors, she looked like a small electric doll. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: adoption, love, Risk, unexpected, windfall, wonder, yes August 30, 2016

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Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography

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