Losing Ellie and My Gift

This post is about two completely unrelated topics.

First, on Sunday we lost Ellie.В I wasn’t all that worried because we lost her in a church in Taiwan.В Taiwan is about the safest country on the planet and church is about the safest place in Taiwan.В Not only that, but heaven help the person who ever tried to kidnap Ellie.В She would scream any kidnapper into oblivion.

So we lost Ellie in Taiwan in the church and the only reason that we were looking for her was because we wanted to go homeotherwise we probably would have let her remain lost a little longer.В When I finally found her (probably only 30 seconds laternot quite as dramatic as you were probably envisioning) she was in the church’s kitchen, sitting at a table, surrounded by Chinese women, eating noodles with chopsticks.В They were all speaking Chinese and doting over her like she was a starving porcelain doll.В She was sitting there eating like she was just one of the gals.В It was one of those images from Taiwan that will remain imprinted on my brain.В An imprint that will always make me smile and make me so grateful for the opportunity of living abroad.В I’m grateful that my children are learning to be comfortable with people of different nationalities, of different ethnicities, who speak different languages and eat different foods.В That’s something that even a book can’t teach.

Have I mentioned in the last 15 minutes how much I love living abroad?В I love this lifestyle!!!!!!!

The second part of my post is about my recently acquired gift.В Okay, it’s not all that recent; I have been perfecting it for the last 15 years and 4 months.В There was a time, when in order to concentrate enough to read a book, I had to have complete silence; no noise or movement whatsoever.В In college, I did most of my studying in my bedroom because there was too much noise and movement in the library for me to concentrate adequately.

However, life has a way of changing us and giving us certain gifts that keep us from going insane.В One of those gifts is a mother’s ability to block out just about any sound.В I’m so good at it now that I can read in the livingroom, surrounded by my family, even with a movie playing.В Not only can I block out TV, I can also block out whining, crying, screaming, smacking sounds, and any sentence which contains to word «Mom.» В And as I type, Ellie is behind me watching Spy KidsВ and it doesn’t bother me or affect my ability to concentrate on my writing in the least bit.В Before giving birth, I never could have done this.

Maybe it’s a pregnancy hormone induced thing.

Now here’s my attempt to tie this post together into one nice little cohesive package: В The only kidnapper that would stand a chance against Ellie would be a kidnapper who is also a mother and could therefore tune out her relentless screaming.В That could be dangerous!

K and the days of summer