Long ago, when we were naive and thought we had the whole wide world of possibilities ahead of us, a little girl decided to come live with us... and change our lives forever. We had a number of lessons to learn, she knew, and some karma to clean up. (photo at left, age 2 -1998)
We were totally unsuspecting and entered willingly into this relationship, without the slightest thought that anything would be "amiss". We looked into our future and it seemed to include a cute, sassy, precocious little girl... happy, bouncing, talkative, playful, talented... doing things like playing soccer, taking ballet classes, going through an "I love horses" phase, having sleepovers with her many friends, loving her daddy, and eventually talking on the phone too long, liking boys, and having door-slamming arguments with her parents over some article of clothing or a movie she wants to watch. Just the typical girl stuff, ya know?
She had other plans, though. She introduced them to us in degrees, so as not to shock us too much all at once. I won't outline every grueling detail of that process here, as some of it is painful to open up again... and we somehow have a much brighter perspective on it all. We choose not to torture ourselves by wallowing in grief over lost dreams.
We got the cute, the happy... the playful... and the loving her daddy part. What else really matters, anyway? We are humbled by her presence, and grateful for the opportunity to learn new things from her every day. She is wiser than we are... she is our Katera Elise.
I will give a brief overview of what transpired before she became the tween she is now, in all her unique glory... for the benefit of all of you who didn't go through that with us... next time.
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