"One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

Faith, they say, is the belief in something that cannot be seen. Adoption, I say, has the same definition.

We finished our last adoption requirement today - our one year post-adoption evaluation - a portrait of our family - I will call it. First Alex rushing out to show our social worker the crocuses that have opened with glory, just today. Cate running to the driveway and jumping in circles around her. And then all-out sibling warfare. In my eternally optimistic mind, I reassure myself it was merely an opportunity to show my skills as a parent - the careful line between negotiation, teaching and running for my life. In the end, it was okay.

And so we answered questions about Cate and our life and our joys and concerns. And as intrusive as it seems to most people, we sat for a couple of hours with someone who is now a friend and talked about the wonder of our life as a family, over all that has transpired in a year. We wondered, together, over the miracle that each of these lost children are placed just where they should be, that the children we are raising are our children, that they belong, without doubt, in just the place they happen to be.

When she left, I was sad to see her go, to end this formal relationship, and joyful that we now proceed like every other family.

For more than two years, a giant basket has been a part of our landscape. It started as a single folder. And it has grown. It is stuffed to the brink with papers and copies and documents and receipts. It is the paper trail to our daughter. I have long imagined the day when it would be gone, sorted through, thrown away, just the final documents filed away for posterity. The day has come. But I can't do it. Maybe it is because I am a writer by nature. I have been trained to value, not only the final product, but the process. I know the power of the written word, the power of the pen. From the handwritten notes and application forms to the letter of seeking confirmation and final travel approval, these papers have a history with me. I doubt I will part with a single one.They are the path to my daughter. I am staring now at the overstuffed basket - its mere sight an emotionally charged experience for me.

I am a procrastinator, not because I am lazy, but because I like to get things right. And I work best under deadlines. Life as a reporter at a daily newspaper suited me. It was fast and changing and the deadline was always just at the end of my nose. Adoption is not like that. It is long and hard and filled with twists and turns and uncertainties and doubts. On this, I did not procrastinate. Endless paperwork is the only concrete form it takes until a child runs laughing through your home. You have to believe in what you cannot see. The papers become something to hold onto as you long to hold your child.

And now, here is Cate. How easily she could have stayed forever in China. How easily she could have been placed with a family in California. Or could she? To me, there is no doubt that here is where she was meant to be. She wouldn't have landed in another spot any more than Alex would have landed in another spot. And that is the sheer, miraculous wonder of adoption.

And now my children sleep upstairs. A year has passed. The process, the papers, China, the newness of being a family... they all recede. Now we are here. Here where most families always find themselves to be - doing laundry, making lunches, cleaning up from dinner, wiping bottoms, negotiating sibling warfare, putting on jammies, brushing teeth. They are the taken-for-granted stuff of life. Like every other mother, I take them for granted. I complain. I nag my children.

And then I see the basket, over stuffed with papers out of the corner of my eye.

My gratitude knows no end.