Referral Pictures

We have H's referral pictures that we received (2 years ago next week!) around the house. We have one framed upstairs on our dresser, and 2 on the refrigerator with about 5 other pictures. I'm thinking about removing them. As I scuttle around the house, especially now that the Christmas season is about us, I am really seeing the house a lot more than day-to-day. You know how it is - you just wander by things and don't really look. Which is really sad, cause we've filled the house with beautiful and memorable things, but, I digress...

When we got those photos...well, I could never ever imagine NOT seeing them everyday forever. They had been a fulfillment of years of waiting and hoping. Years of infertility before that. Pain, frustration, longing and lots of anger during the wait. I clutched those pics for the 2.5 months that we waited to go to Hunan. I lived and breathed by those 3 little pictures.

And now, when I see them, I feel next to nothing. I remember the excitement, and that's about it. And as I write that, it sounds horrible. But, that's not H in those pics. That's not the funny, obstinate-as-all-hell-and-just-as-smart drama queen. The one who has grown into loving gymnastics and Mandarin class. The one who will control all eating and bodily functions for days as a point of showing control. The one who snuggles up into my lap and says "no play mama...snuggle. The one who grins ear to ear when she knows all the letters on the signs of the stores and can make the letter sounds...The face in the pictures is a chubby infant face sticking out of a stuffed animal, and I really think it looks nothing like her. It's a living doll, propped up in poses for little 4x5s to be sent to an office as a stop-over to a world away from where she was as a petition to join a family. She looks blank in them. She looks like everything she is not - passive, cooperative of manipulation, bored, uninterested - in these photos.

I have sentimintality for these photos, but that's about it now. And that shocks me. People will tell me that I want to deny her history. No, I'm ok with that, that's how she came to us. Maybe it's a lack of memories associated with the photo. I've got a pic of her in Dada's arms at her first father's day. I have a pic of her at a local teaching farm in the field with a wildflower branch in her hand. I have a pic of her grinning ear to ear with a cookie...all these images, I remember, I can smell and hear what was happening when I look at them. Those are the ones I want to stop next to the coffee table and cherish.