Tantalus

I wish I could tell you I was biting into a peach right now. I thought I would be; my first tree's fruits will be ripe this weekend. But by Thursday, I'll be on an airplane headed to Africa, so I won't be harvesting them. Fortunately, I have the kind of friends who show up for me when the chips are down, so I can count on them to go up there and feast. And lest you suspect me of irony, I assure you that my gratitude for the appetites of friends is exceeded only by my thanks for the way they have carried my family and me through the last seven days. It's been a helluva week.

Last Monday, several weeks earlier than we expected to hear anything, and fast on the heels of a peach ice cream-enhanced dinner party I'd catered the night before and intended to blog about, we received word that we were to appear in a court in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to finalize the adoption of our new son. All kinds of paperwork, vaccinations and other preparations were, shall we say, pending. (I'm not going to excoriate myself here for any failures of organization.) A couple of days later, we learned that our 5-year old son, Gus, had a skull fracture that required surgery to avoid sending him into childhood and beyond with a dent on his forehead.

When should we do the surgery? Oh, tomorrow would be best.

A day and a night in the hospital and then home to all that needed to be done. And so my gratitude, my happy delegation of peach-picking duties, stems from a sense of karmic debt: so many of our friends have stepped in during this busy time to help out--playing with Gus while we've packed and run errands, donating supplies to the home that has sheltered our new son while he's waited for us, calling and stopping by just to check in. They deserve all the peaches they can eat.

Our friends at Abyssina Restaurant here in Memphis tell us it's mango season in Ethiopia. But I'll be glad to come home with my new baby boy so I can make him some homemade peach baby food and then write about it.

For a few weeks, now, peaches have been all around me, beckoning. But I've insisted on waiting for my peaches, from my trees. And now, I'll just have to wait again. I'm getting good at waiting--waiting almost 18 months for this little child, waiting for the doctors to come and tell us Gus's surgery went just fine.

So now it's your turn to wait. It'll be a couple of weeks before I write again. Don't go away, now. The peaches are coming.