"Tio Le-er"

Unfortunately for me, I will not get to hear those words said again, in that same way. Fortunately for the little girl that said those words to me at least once a day, she has been adopted and now has a mother and a father. My little sobrina preciosa left yesterday and now I am left without a reading partner at night.

The first time I went up to read to this house, I thought I would read to 4 or 5 of the little girls. Annabelle was the one who showed the most interest though as she, despite being shy, put herself under my arm so she could see the pages. So, for the past 3 months I could count on hearing at least once (if not more) a day Annabelle ask me, “Tio le-er”. And so for the past 3 months, Annabelle and I have read together 3 nights out of the week. Sometimes she would sing or count or do something that made it seem like she wasn’t paying attention but she always knew where we were in the story and always wanted me to read one more. In the past month and a half, our nights became more interactive and she started to do half the reading. So, we would sit together while she sounded out every syllable of the word and then put the whole word together in perfect Spanish. This transitioned into the day as well where before, other than asking me to read she was too shy to want to talk (and by that I mean she could have talked and I could have acted like I understood everything), but then we started having conversations (yes, sometimes I did understand and could talk back) about favorite foods, favorite colors, and what stories she liked. I could always count on her being extremely excited about me coming up to read and really, that is a pretty wonderful feeling.

When I got back last Sunday, I learned that her adoption process had moved quickly along and that she was going to be leaving on Friday. I went into AnnabelleandKarl time over drive. So I read to her every night this week, until Thursday came. I went to go read to her, but instead I found a girl who had been crying all day. She had been so happy this week, which I presumed was because she was going to receive what she wanted, parents. On Thursday though, I think she had the realization that she was leaving a place with people she knew, people who loved her and a place where she had friends around her 24/7 to go to an unknown place with two adults that she had met only a handful of times. Her security blanket was being taken away but it will be replaced by a better one she’ll soon realize. So I sat with her Thursday night and talked with her until she fell asleep and then I needed to read to her, even though she was asleep, for my own well being. This little girl had taken an extremely fond place in my heart and I had to have one last night of reading to her even if this time it wasn’t going to be interactive.

I ate breakfast with her house the next morning and spent the morning with her until her parents came to pick her up. She had stopped crying and was busy taking, oh, about 150 photos with my camera. Quite a bit of which were of my holding her doll. She was all dressed up for the big day. I kept hoping her parents would show up later and later. It was amazing even to me how much I had grown attached to this girl. My selfish side of me didn’t want her to leave even though I will be leaving soon. The tears started to flow again when she started to leave and everyone wanted one last goodbye from her. She gave me one last kiss on the cheek and one last hug before they left.

All I wanted though was to hear, “Tio le-er.”