Birthday from a Suitcase

Zetta turned five months old today. We are very proud of her. She is sleeping through the night, adapting to a new culture and language, rolling on her belly and then back on her back, pushing up with her arms, and our new favorite: sucking her thumb.

Zetta is making a lot of friends pretty quickly. She is so tight with the people here that they have a nickname for her. They call her Zahra. This is a pretty common name around these parts; it means flower. She must have a sweet aroma about her. She seems to be able to make anyone smile. She also gets quite a lot of kisses. By a lot I mean she gets kissed more than the pope’s rings. Little girls on the street, random men and women in the market place, and the best one: a police officer.

We were having lunch in a restaurant nearby. I call it the tajine place because they make a mean tajine at a really good price. Anyways, I was snacking on my chicken when all of a sudden I see a police man making weird smiles and coos in my direction. I was a little freaked out at first but then I remembered: “I have a baby with me.”

After the officer had finished his meal, he politely washed his hands and then walked to our table. He extended his arms to get Zetta. “He’s the police I can trust him,” I thought. So I smiled and handed her over. He was hugging her and telling her how beautiful she was and kissing her like it was going out of style. After he felt he had adequately displayed his affection he handed her back to me and said, “Shookran,” with a big grin. And he was on his way, to fight crime, and be a beacon of justice and integrity in the village.

In thinking about the past five months and all the ways Zetta has grown and made so many people happy, I thought of a Merton quote my sister brought up a few weeks ago:

"My dry deserted bones, long bleached and polished by the winds of the Sahara, arise and relive at your command. And I'll rise and I'll unfold like the flowers of an ever lasting spring."

With the ridiculous amount of snow that this village has received over the past four months, the people are tired of this cold white Sahara, and it feels like spring will never come. But it seems they have noticed that there is a little “flower” in the village amongst all the snow. Maybe I am biased, but I have to agree with them: Zetta is a sign of the Everlasting Spring.

Happy Birthday kid!