If You Leave Me Now

As all the world knows by now, the internet's a great place to find recipes. Who hasn't gone to the web to search for a fresh new casserole, or tips on grilling chicken?

Today's blog features a recipe the world seems to have learned without the internet. Here's how to break a little girl's heart in five easy steps:

1. Let her live with her mother until she gets sick. Then have her mother abandon her.

2. Send her to live in an orphanage full of strangers. Give her nothing to call her own, not even one set of clothes. Make her share everything, so that she won't want to share anything. Train her to see all other children as rivals, not friends.

3. Give her false hope by bringing in a new set of parents.

4. Rip those new parents away from her by making them wait forever for a court hearing. A month is good, longer is better.

5. Bring the parents back. Then rip them away again by making them wait ten more days before they can even start the paperwork to take her home.

We left Mary around noon yesterday, on our way back home to wait for court. It broke our hearts to do it. She is too young to understand why we left, and too stubborn to forgive. We have no doubt that she will punish us when we return for court-- probably severely. It may take days to gain back the trust we lost by abandoning her.

Trouble is, we won't have days. After court comes a mandatory ten-day waiting period, because... Who knows why? The process has become so unpredictable that we don't dare wait out the ten days in country, for fear it will become three weeks. Much as we hate to, we're planning to fly home again after court-- which means abandoning her yet again. Poor child. If only we could wish the next six weeks away, for her sake and ours.