And I have these moments where I desperately want to just reach out my finger and push the power button — hold it steady until everything goes black. Turn it all off, power it all down.

I don't think he remembers feeling lonely or unloved, or bored or maybe sometimes hungry. But the scars are still there, carried in his little soul across the water, crashing like waves into our lives.

Before he was ours, a year felt like a long time, like for sure we'd have it all figured out by the time he'd been home an entire year. Now, it feels like an instant.