This isn't going to happen. A man my age warming up baby formula, peeling back dirty diaper and holding my nose as I deposit them into a bag.
This isn't going to happen. An infant wailing, me lifting her over my shoulder, just above a small towel, and tapping her back until she burps out a bunch of gunk.
This isn't supposed to be happening, but it is, to my wife and myself, a baby girl with all the shrieks, coos, hiccups, big eyes, soft breathing, and happily waving hands and feet.
She was brought to the orphanage in Port Au Prince from a village outside Miragoane. She was given little beyond sugar water for the first six months. She weighed just 7 pounds, was barely responsive, and had an inflammation in her eyes.
We took her to the hospital to get her checked out. We decided to get her here for a few months to try and address her serious, potentially life threatening issues.
There is a new sense of vulnerability as a result of the attack on Rushdie.
It explains how she ended up in Michigan.
Everything else isn't explained by it.
The first thing my wife and I think when we wake up is how the baby is doing. As we stare at her face for hours, it feels like the time has stopped. It was like the sinking of our vocabulary into a series of meaningless words. Absolutely! You are a hungry little girl.
We sound like dolls with their "talk" button pressed.
Those of you who have raised children know what's going on. It is the first time we have done that. We have watched more than 70 kids through the doors of the Have Faith Haiti Mission & Orphanage since taking it over in 2010, but we have never had a child as young as this one.
Never at our age. When I was a kid, I asked my parents how old they had to be to have children, and they said they had theirs in their 20s.
There was no mention of 60.
We are well into that decade buying packs and plays. We put Nadie into a car seat so the sun doesn't make her squint and cry. We undressed her and put her on the scale in the doctor's office.
It's about that doctor thing. When I email Marty Levinson from Haiti, he immediately agrees to see Nadie, and has been overseeing her comeback ever since. His staff applauds loudly as his weight has gone up from 7 pounds to 10 pounds.
Her iron deficiency has disappeared. Her blood levels have gone up. Her brain size has gone up. She is called a miracle by the man.
There was no arguing here.
We spent hours documenting Nadie's attempts at rolling over, pointing as she kicks the little plastic shapes that hang from a mobile, and making noises to make her smile.
We are curious about her. She has a small grip that catches our attention. We find her sleeping fascinating. It is only through the help of our family and friends that we are allowed to keep talking about the baby.
Our family and friends have joined in the nurturing of this small miracle, watching, feeding and changing her right alongside us. They did it for a long time. They don't want to wake up Our world has undergone a complete and instantaneous transformation. The house has been turned into a nursery within a month.
It shouldn't be a surprise. The 25th anniversary of my book "Tuesdays With Morrie" led me to revisit some of the conversations I had with my college professor who was dying from the disease. Morrie told me that he wouldn't tell anyone to have or not have kids, but that there was no other experience like it.
If you want to know how to love and bond with another, that's how you do it.
I don't want to miss that experience.
Thanks to life, we are getting our chance. Nadie will return to the orphanage in the future and grow up there. She isn't ours, it doesn't matter I know that love for children has nothing to do with your blood or your heart.
She is not ours, but we are hers all the time. It isn't supposed to happen at our age. How lucky we are. Is it?
ContactMitch Albom at malbom@free press.com. His charities, books and events can be found atMitchAlbom.com
The original article was on the Detroit Free Press.
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