I sit on the rickety auditorium
chair with the camcorder on my shoulder and I can feel the tears well up in my
eyes. My six-year-old daughter is on stage, calm, self-possessed, centered and
singing out her heart. I am nervous, jittery, emotional and trying not to cry.
"Listen, can you hear the sound, hearts beating all the world
around?" she sings.
Little
round face turned up to the light, little face so dear and familiar and yet so
unlike my own thin features. Her eyes look out into the audience with total
trust...she knows they love her. Eyes
that don't look like mine. "Up in
the valley, out on the plains, everywhere around the world, heartbeats sound
the same."
The
face of her birth mother looks out at me from the stage. The eyes of a young
woman that once looked into mine with trust now gaze into the audience. These
features my daughter inherited from her birth mother...eyes that tilt up at the
corners and rosy, plump little cheeks that I can't stop kissing. "Black or
white, red or tan, it's the heart of the family of man...oh, oh beating away,
oh, oh beating away," she finishes.
The
audience goes wild. I do, too. Thunderous applause, and they rise as one to let
Melanie know they loved it. She smiles...she already knew. Now I am crying. I
feel so blessed to be her mom...she fills me with so much joy that my heart
actually hurts.
The
heart of the family of man...the heart of courage that shows us the path to
take when we are lost...the heart Melanie's birth mother showed to me. Melanie
heard her from deep inside the safest part of her. This is the heart of courage
belonged to a sixteen year old girl...a girl who became a woman because of her
commitment to unconditional love. She was a woman who embraced the concept that
she could give her child something no one else ever could... a better life than
she had.
Melanie's
heart beats close to mine as I hold her and tell her how great she performed.
She wiggles in my arms and looks up at me. "Why are you crying, Mommy?"
I
answer her, "Because I am so happy for you and you did so good, all by
yourself!" I can feel myself reach out with tendrils of love and hold her
with more than just my arms. I hold her with love for not only myself, but for
the beautiful and courageous woman who chose to give birth to my daughter, and
then chose again to give her to me. I
carry the love from both of us...the birth mother with the courage to share,
and the woman whose empty arms were filled with love...for the heartbeat that
we share is one.
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