By the time I was in second grade, I had started to sense that I didn’t quite fit. There was already a quiet understanding growing in me…something unspoken, but real. I knew I was adopted, at least in the way a child can “know” without fully understanding. I was the tow-headed, awkward, chubby little girl with soft features that didn’t quite match the faces around me. My parents were noticeably different than I was – physically, emotionally, even spiritually.

They poured themselves into the company. Into busyness. Into surviving. And there was me, left to my own swirling thoughts. Different. Complex. Watching the world more than I lived in it.

At that age, 90% of my time was spent with Clara. She was my constant. My compass. She didn’t have family anymore, not that I understood the details at the time. But I felt the ache of their absence in her. She carried grief the way some women carry pearls…elegant, heavy, and always close to her.

Her apartment became my real home.

I’d ask her questions…about why my nose was shaped differently, why my hair was lighter, why I didn’t look like anyone. She never gave me complicated answers, just comforting ones.

People don’t realize how hollow adoption can feel for a child. Like walking through the world barefoot, looking for somewhere soft to land.

But with Clara, I belonged.

Around that time, I was six years old. Already devouring chapter books. My imagination was wild and endless. I remember lying in her lap one hot summer day, her legs folded beneath me. She began to tell me stories of her homeland….Norway. The details, I’d later realize, were mostly made up, stitched from threads of longing and magic.

She told me about a girl with hair like sunlight, who lived in a village where fjords met the clouds. A brave girl who followed a glowing reindeer into the forest and found a hidden garden that only appeared to the pure-hearted. There were trolls who guarded bridges, and whispers in the wind that spoke in riddles. It was all make-believe. But to me, it felt like scripture.

I fell asleep like that, right there in her lap, wrapped in her voice.

She didn’t move for two hours. Her legs went numb and burned beneath me. But she stayed perfectly still, covering my small, sweaty body with her towel to protect me from the sun. Another quiet act of love. One of many.

I dreamed of that story that night. And for the first time, I dreamed of a place where I truly belonged.

Because with Clara, I always felt safe.