My Amanda

Your name means "Greatly Loved" and that is as you've always been. You came to me on the first day of the new year, 1992, dark haired and chubby cheeked, a picture of health and everything I'd hoped you would be. I was only nineteen years old, and so scared that I would not be a good mother. So scared I would do something wrong, something to hurt that beautiful baby girl you were. But, without words you said you'd wait for me to figure it out. Said these things took time, you knew. Or maybe I just imagined you saying that as I watched you sleep.

You walked early, you talked clearly. You laughed with a wisdom beyond your years. You loved Barney the Dinosaur, and you still do even when others tell you its something you should have outgrown. You took your younger sister by the hand and taught her to walk with you, and later you even let her lead the way because she insisted. You taught her to ride a bike and helped her learn to read, because you said it was not fair that you should be able to do something that she could not. You've been her best friend for her entire life and she knows that - no matter what happens - you'll be there. Not because she insists, but because you want to be.

You saw me divorce your father and though you hated me for it, you held me so that I would not be alone. You saw me fall in love again, and you accepted a new person at the head of the table. If he's good enough for you, you said to me, then he's good enough for me also. And you forged your own relationship with him, finding out who he is for yourself. And you loved him not because you had to but because you chose to.

You embraced our plans to give you another little sister with both arms and your full heart. You learned all you could about the country of Kazakhstan, and even learned some Russian so that - someday - you might be able to take her hand and go with her to that place from which she came. So that you might be able to teach her the language that no longer makes sense to her yet still sounds strangely familiar in her ears as some forgotten dream. You'd do that for her because you're you and that's what you do.

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