Separated

This post is all about me, not about Little Bug.

One of the lingering and most common effects of Post Adoption Blues is the lack of that heart-wrenching feeling when you are separated from your child. Once I went back to work, I occasionally would muse about how I didn't feel this intense pull to be back with Little Bug immediately. I liked having my "me time" at work (I still do), but this lack of what I had expected to be an almost desolate longing when away from my baby never came.

At first I was hard on myself, as is normal with the PADs. I felt that my lack was proof of my deficiency. As the months went on and I worked through my blues and came out on a better side, I began to think that those intense, crazy feelings were the stuff of my imagination, something I had dreamed up when I built my ideal version of motherhood, and I was kind to myself and felt okay for not being overly focused on Little Bug when I was away from him.

That has changed....sort of.

I'm not weeping on the floor and calling my son's school begging to hear his sweet voice say "na" just once as he pushed the phone away from his ear, BUT I am thinking about him a lot more. Maybe thinking about him is not the right word, because I always thought about him, even before he came home.

Missing him.

I miss Little Bug when he is not with me. I've noticed I miss him when he takes naps, when he is sleeping at night, when I don't see him for a few hours, and most definitely when he is at school. It's this steady underlying desire to see him, coupled with a joy to just know that he is somewhere in the world, especially in my world.

It's one more way that I know that I am fully attached and bonded to my son, and that makes me feel good.

Sometimes it is the little things that are missing that make everything feel much more complete when the come.

Or in my case, it's a 30 lb Korean-American child.