let lemons be angry

"Now you can walk without looking behind you." That was what finally made me cry. For days we had been walking with our hands stretched out behind us. Two steps and we would turn back to look. And there we would see little hands reaching out to cling, little feet dragging themselves, no sullen mood really sullen. And there was more: limbs to be pulled out of bed, waiting outside shower cubicles to pass the princesses their towels and clothes under the door, brushing our teeth in a circle, hanging their nametags around their necks, tucking them into bed, singing to them. When they had been packed into their bus and left without promise of return, we walked back suddenly alone, suddenly handsfree, and not knowing where to look anymore.

That was one of the two things that made me cry: the separation. The other thing was akin to the baby penguins singing "in my room" in happy feet. I don't know quite what it is, an admiration of beauty, a stirring in my soul of incomprehensible angelic thoughts, or a joy so deep that it wrenches tears, the same way too much love becomes hate. The feeling came when I saw the children spontaneously jump up to sing and dance for their social worker when she came to visit, and I saw all the boys sing, "store your treasure in heaven where it'll last forever" by memory. That same feeling came on the last night, when everybody wrote their wishes on balloons and let them shoot up to the night sky, and joseph leapt and shouted, "I trust you GOD!"

It's a feeling of eternity. I felt it first when dotz sang at coffeehouse night. It's plain eternity stretched out in my view, and it makes me cry.