As we've oftentimes stated before, Poppy's mind seems to constantly reel and plumb depths that flabbergast us. Why just the other evening while sitting on the couch with her, she reminded me that she did not come out of Mommy's (Victoria's) tummy, but out of another mommy's tummy, and that Willow did not come out of her mommy's tummy or Victoria's. She then counted them up and said that we had three mommies around our family. I don't recall spending that much time talking to Poppy about this, nor does Victoria for that matter, and in fact she usually doesn't like to think or talk of life before she entered and became a part of ours.
Well, as many of us know, there's no guarantee that when we bear biological children that any of them will turn out the same, and we're often surprised and sometimes end up asking ourselves, "Did this child come from our blood lineage?" Now there's no mistaking that Poppy and Willow come from different blood lineages, not only by looking at their outward appearances, but by also peering into their inward character and constitutions. For example, last night we went to the Chinese New Year's Parade in San Francisco (I understand one of the largest such festivities in the country), and watched colorful float displays, illuminated dragons that stretched for several meters, and marching bands pounding rhythms and tunes all in celebratory honor of the Year of the Ox. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, although the parade did seem to move awfully slow at times. While waiting on the curbside with thousands of others for the next element of the parade to go by, a boy outfitted with a large dragon head and blinking eyes stooped down to the girls' level while they were sitting in their double stroller. Advancing ever closer with head bobbing up and down, the dragon eventually came within a foot or two of the girls' faces. Willow looked up, stared straight into the frightening mask, and keep eating her Cheerios as if dragons like this were commonplace in her life. Poppy on the other hand tensed up, recoiled, stiffened her back and pushed herself into the stroller seat as far as she could to escape the horrifying creature. She then burst into a high shrill cry with voluminous streaming alligator tears that were almost impossible to stop. The dragon wouldn't leave and kept staring into their faces until he finally darted over to another unsuspecting victim. While cute on the one hand, it was quite pathetic on the other. And while these two girls may very well be sisters, there's no questioning that they're two very different image-bearers of God as simply evidenced by this one experience (among many). Our love for them ever grows, as it does for all of our children, and in spite of their differences there's no one favoring over the other. All of our children are ever shaping our lives and being used by Him to hopefully transform us all the more into the likeness of Jesus.
Raising a diverse brood,
Tom (& Victoria)
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