This un-photographable moment doesn't have to do with our adoption story, but with someone else's. It is about a father who traveled the same week as my husband and I did to go get our son from Ethiopia. The father was older, and he and his wife already had a good-sized family at home, with children already grown and young children still at home. They were adding to their family a beautiful little three-year old girl, who was living at the same orphanage as our son. When we met J. at the airport, despite the fact that he was an experienced dad, he was nervous (weren’t we all?). He was nervous about how this little African girl was going to react to this white man that she didn’t know coming to take her. Would she accept him? Would she let him care for her? Would she be scared of him? Three year olds are unpredictable...and this little girl was having her whole life turned upside down, and J. was all alone for that first week.

That first morning at the orphanage we were so wrapped up in meeting our Ben that we forgot about J. for a bit. His daughter was in with the younger children and we didn't see them right away. And then we did. There was J., with this beautiful little dark-skinned girl in his arms, with her arms wrapped tight around his neck. She was smiling and so was he. He put her down and she looked up at him and took him by the hand as if she had been waiting and waiting for him. He was her Dad.

That week we watched their relationship grow. For that week there was no Mom to step in and do things for Dad and there were no siblings to compete for his attention. He learned how she liked her hair and that she was picky about what she wore. She learned that she could get him to do just about anything with that beautiful smile and deep dark eyes. By the middle of the week, she would not go back into her class at the orphanage, and although she would laugh with us and flirt with us and grace us with her pretty laugh, she would not let us hold her. That privilege was saved for her Dad.

Yes, I wish I had a picture of that gorgeous little Ethiopian girl, who was so happy to finally have her dad, that her little hands clamped together as they wrapped around his neck. Her beautiful dark skin on his bright white skin…neither one caring that they weren’t a matched pair. I wish I had a picture of that wonderful father daughter love that bloomed that week in Ethiopia.