The "Five O's" Grows!

Today is the one year anniversary of Ruby’s Gotcha Day. I will never forget the moment I saw her for the first time in person. She was across the waiting room in the arms of one of the orphanage staff. At first we weren’t sure it was her because she was SO small, but she was wearing the shirt from the outfit I sent to the orphanage in a care package. Up to this point we only saw her in four pictures and three, six-second videos which I watched over and over every day studying this beautiful little being. I studied her thin, patchy hair, knobby knees, beautiful eyes and how one is smaller than the other and how she was fascinated by her hands and played with them as if they were her only toys. I was her mother, yet she had no idea who I was. She hadn’t been lulled to sleep by the beat of my heart for nine months or memorized the sound of my voice from the depths of the womb. She didn’t recognize my familiar smell or search out my face in the crowd. The profound responsibility and pr