Today, I feel like I need a good cry.

Nothing in particular is wrong. Sometimes, I just get too many feelings at once. It gets overwhelming. So I just crank a quarter turn on my emotional release valve. And let go.

This last weekend was Fourth of July. On Thursday, friends came over for a visit, and we had a wonderful dinner of Indian food, where we talked about family, jobs, children, and the future (she’s seven months pregnant with their first). We let Honest Girl run all over the empty patio, watching the trucks drive by on the road, and laughed while Honest Baby ate her body weight in saag paneer, smearing it into her hair and clothes with joyous abandon.

I was overwhelmed with friendship.

This weekend, my family and I went to a party to watch fireworks. Honest Husband played lead guitar in a band, and sang for the entire crowd. Honest Girl ran to her cousin, held hands with her Uncle, drank “yemmonnade” (lemonade), and squealed in delight when the fireworks lit up the sky. She pointed to airplanes and helicopters, explaining to me that she and her cousin will fly “up in the sky” one day. She danced to her father’s music, and strummed his guitar after he finished singing a song just for her. Meanwhile, Honest Baby smiled and clapped. She let everyone hold her. She never cried or fussed, and her open, trusting face and easy smile made all the older girls fall in love with her. They carried her around the party, cooed as she crawled and toddled around, holding on to one finger, and laughed while they watched her bounce up and down to the rhythm of the music. Then, she watched the first ten minutes of the fireworks, and fell asleep in my arms.

I was overwhelmed with pride.

This weekend, Honest Husband entertained all of us at the party on Saturday, playing requests that his tipsy relatives called out until midnight. I don’t know if he even managed to eat any dinner. Then, after getting home around 2am on Saturday morning, he woke up on Sunday, took all of his girls to breakfast, and began working on our kitchen countertops. He laminated all of our countertops, and finished the edging on them, even though he was exhausted. And he kept going, even after he cut himself badly on a belt sander (and bled on the counters and garage floor). But he kept going, even in the high heat and humidity. He finished all of the gluing and prepping, just so that he could install countertops (and a stove and sink) later this week. For me. For us. For our girls.

And I’m overwhelmed with love.

Then, last week, I heard that K, the woman at my daughters’ daycare who adopted her heroin-addicted cousin’s child, was in danger of losing her little girl. The girl’s biological grandparents, five months after K took her in, are challenging her adoption. Now that K has nursed her, loved her, cared for her, brought her back from the brink of hopelessness, they want to take her away. Now that K’s son (a boy with kind, sleepy eyes in Honest Girl’s class) has started kissing this girl, calling her “sister,” they want her removed from K’s home. Today K goes to court, to fight for her family. When she took that little girl in, the girl was diagnosed as “Failure to Thrive.” Last week, at her six-month appointment, she was up into the 50th percentile. She’s growing. She’s eating solid foods. Her face has become round and her eyes clear. She no longer suffers from the sharp, wrenching gut pains that are associated with children born with opiate addictions. Because of K.

And today, K may lose her.

A mother may lose her child.

And I’m overwhelmed.

So, please, if you see me today, and my eyes are red, don’t worry too much about me. Just send me a kind smile. An understanding smile.

I’ll be sure to give one back.

Because it’ll be a good cry.

 

I don’t ask for it often, but please pray for K. She is facing a mother’s greatest nightmare: losing her child. Biological or not, this little girl is hers. Pray for them. I know that it will mean a lot to K.

 

Addendum (7/8/2014): I spoke with K yesterday when I went to pick up my girls at their daycare. She officially lost all custody rights, and her adoption was halted. Her little girl is being “transitioned” to her biological grandparents’ home over the next two weeks. In order to fight the order, K would have to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees that she and her husband just don’t have, with very little hope of ever winning.

They have lost their little girl. Their daughter. She looked tired, but said, “She’ll be with family now.”

We both knew how wrong it felt to say those words.

She didn’t cry.

I did.

This is not what American family courts were designed for. It can’t be. It just can’t.

Thank you all for your prayers and positive thoughts. Even if they didn’t provide the outcome we all wanted, I’m sure that K felt them, and was comforted.