"We're like friends"

We were outside, she hanging on the gate, which was closed, and Cocoa, the dog, lying behind us, worrying her rawhide bone.

We had been talking. Mostly, she had been talking--about Alison, a girl at school with whom she is having trouble, about how I looked like my father but my brother didn't, about how she wanted to visit Kazakhstan and me to commit to a year when we would do that, about whether we might live in Kazakhstan someday, about where I was born, if they spoke English there, and how to tell the difference between States and countries.

I had explained that Tennessee is a State, and "they speak English in all of the States." Which had prompted the question about how to tell the difference between States and countries.

I tried to explain the idea of political subdivisions, but that was kind of boring to her.

"Is this where you live?" she wanted to know, gesturing out to the street and beyond.

"Well, yes," I said, thinking that I probably hadn't understood what she was getting at. "This is my home," I said.

"It's beautiful," she said, looking out over what we could see of Waikiki.

We live on a hillside overlooking downtown Honolulu and Waikiki.

It was then that she gave me her assessment of our relationship.

She's talked a number of times about how I look like my father.

I think she's wrapping herself around the realities of adoption and dealing with them in her own way. Things have changed a lot this year--in her, in what we do together. She's deepening.

John, Monday, August 22, 2010

ps Tonight (the 26th) we had to decorate a picture frame with comments about what made us proud about Maia. This was an assignment from her 3rd grade teacher. Struck me as a pretty silly exercise in "self-esteem", but we took it seriously. My addition to the frame was that she made me feel proud because she made a timeline, learned how to ride a dirt bike, and learned how to be a dog.