Palm Sunday

Two years ago on a Palm Sunday we arrived in Addis Ababa to see these two gorgeous faces for the first time in person. And to say goodbye to them again, for an unknown length of time.  

We emerged from the airport on a beautiful Sunday- clear skies, sunshine everywhere. That smell- that Africa smell that is like nothing else in the world: people, earth, flowers, smoke, sun. I breathed deeply and felt instantly at home. Even before we left the airport we got the call from the social worker; are we ready to meet our children? YES. Yes we were.  And: sweaty, smelly, exhausted, jet lagged, absolutely terrified. I don't show many people the photos from that day (they will not be in this blog).  They are not framed, just as you would not frame or display the photos of yourself or your wife just after labor and birth. Sweaty, red faced, looking terrible, and also beside yourself with happiness.


It is a very odd thing, to meet your child and then leave them for months.
It is also a very odd thing to adopt a child.  I mean really- they don't look like you, they don't smell like you, they didn't emerge from your body after months and then hours of labor.  You emerged- from a car, from a plane. You entered their house.  We spent months, years waiting for them... they were just innocently living their lives until tragedy changed them.

When we met our children they were not our children. Not yet.  They didn't know that we were special to them-- except maybe they did. We wore nametags with their Ethiopian names on them. The older children read the names, and we think they told Daniel- hey, these white Americans have your name on them! Lily spent much of our visit chewing on my nametag. (It is now one of my prized possessions, a chewed-up baby-saliva stained nametag.)

We spent most of our visit pretending to be nice people who were visiting to give out presents and stickers. We played with and cuddled all the children. Indeed we could hardly keep them off us. I had at least 2 in my lap at all times. But, when the social worker came to take our photos for the Embassy, I pulled my son onto me and held him close. Then I let him go.

We saw our children for about an hour two years ago on a Palm Sunday.  Then we spent a few days in Ethiopia, sightseeing, shopping, going to court, breathing in African air. We left on another beautiful day, in the evening.  We arrived with full, nervous hearts and lots of hope. We left with nervous hope that our return trip would be soon, so soon. We left secure that they were legally ours. We left knowing that they were healthy and well cared for. We left lots of medicines and creams and donations. We left a box of crayons and a soccer ball and a slinky and some stickers and silly sunglasses and whatever else I could find in my suitcase that I thought the children could possibly enjoy.

We left our hearts there.

On Palm Sunday in Ethiopian Orthodox Christians make crosses or headbands out of their palms. They wear the palms on their heads and process as pilgrims to church.  Thousands of people walked through the city that day, visiting and worshipping and celebrating.  Getting ready to fast and pray during Holy Week. Honoring the renewal of Faith and Hope that marks this moment in the Christian calendar. 

That week in Addis Ababa I bought a tiny wooden cross on a thin brown string.  I put it on, and I didn't take it off again until we arrived back in Africa 10 weeks later to take Daniel and Lily home.  Like the palms the pilgrims wore on their foreheads, the necklace reminded me of my faith- in my children's continued health and well being, in this crazy process of creating a family called adoption, in the fact of a return trip, in their existence. 

For those of you in the process of creating your family or creating your life: have faith. Even if you need to wear it on your forehead or around your neck to remind you of it. 

The Wait. Part 2.

Look at that wide eyed happy couple without any gray hair! Awww....

I have three champagne corks in Daniel and Lily's "Treasure Box."  They are nestled there along with Lily's 'baby' shoes and the t-shirts they came home in, and the little gifts that the Care Center gave us on our last day in Ethiopia.

One cork is from celebrating our official entry into the waiting family list.  We'd been filling out paper work and reading books and going to classes for months, and now we'd finally jumped through all the hoops,  fulfilled all the requirements of our adoption agencies. Yeah! Now we get to Wait, Officially!

The first wait was the trickiest for me, because I had to learn so much during it.  I'm naturally a pretty impulsive, quick to action person. I don't comparison shop.  I decided to marry Andrew after just a few weeks of dating.  I picked the very first wedding dress I tried on. And so on.  So having to sit, and wait, and wait, and not go crazy was very hard.  It required a lot of learning and a fair amount of growing up.

During this time I regularily got the following comments: "Aren't you, like, adopting? What happened?"  "I'm just sure you'll get pregnant now!". "Did you hear ___________ (every single person of child bearing age I know) is pregnant!?", and "Are you still adopting?".

I was tempted to get a t-shirt that said, "paper pregnant" with a big blow up belly, but that seemed immature.

So, I learned to wait. I learned that some days are easier than others, and some days are harder.  And that either way, I was going to be okay.  I learned that sometimes I needed to avoid baby showers.  I learned that whatever I was suffering, it was probably nothing compared to what our future child/children's family was suffering.  And that turned out to be the truth.  While I was sitting around trying not to twiddle my thumbs, our children's family was enduring illness and loss and hunger.  I've read that some adoptive mothers remember feeling extreme anxiety or pain on the days of loss for their future children.  (Those smart cookies that kept journals.)  I'm not sure if Daniel and Lily and I were connected in that way.  But I do know that I thought of them,  a lot.

I really don't like going to the dentist (who does, really?).  But I remember walking home from the dentist's office on a freezing cold December evening, thinking, "Hey, this is one of the easy days. I'm doing okay. Look at those beautiful stars."  When I got home, there was a voicemail from our social worker waiting for me.  And the First Wait was over, just like that.

And the new wait, the much harder one, was just beginning.

Gratitude on Family Day

One year ago today our family of four landed in America, at last.  We were exhausted, smelly, grimy, over burdened and shaky but immeasurably happy.

One year later I offer some belated Thank You's....

to the flight attendant who filled bottle after bottle with warm water for Lily's formula with nary a complaint (maybe just one eye roll)

to the airport driver who let us ride in the "mekina" (car) through the terminal, fulfilling one of Daniel's (newly formed) life-long dreams.

to the flight attendant who let me stand up, holding a sleeping baby against my chest, even though the seatbelt sign was on. Because we all knew that if I sat down, the crying (ok, screaming), would begin again.

to the passengers to gave baby girl high fives and wiggled their fingers at her, over and over again.

to the other mother in the looooong, hot, immigration line who said, "Would your kids like a lollipop?". I am eternally grateful for your perfect timing and enormous kindness.

to whoever brought Andrew and I steaming hot cups of coffee in the airport terminal as our children met their extended family for the first time.

to the man at the long term parking lot who cheerfully and calmly fixed Lily's car seat for us.

to my mother and sister, who left macaroni and cheese in the fridge, and cookies in the pantry.

to our children, for sleeping through most of the flights, and being amazing, resilient troopers through that whole 24 hour trip.  We were, and continue to be, in awe of you.

to all the members of our church, and the co-workers and friends and family members who gave to our children so generously. We had such bounty and such kindness all around us.

It does, indeed, take a village.

Who would you thank, if you could, today?

The Wait. Part 3

Unpredictable.

It is common to offer analogies between adoption and the more typical way of having children, sometimes known as "home grown".  Here is my shorthand:

Applying to agencies/homestudy = Trying to get pregnant.

Waiting for a referral/match with birthmother = Pregnancy. Sometimes a very looooong one.

Referral/match with birthmother = Yeah! Sonogram! It's a boy/girl!

The Moment of meeting your child = Yeah! Super 4D Sonogram! (ok, this is a stretch)

The Flight Home = Childbirth. (painful, long and involving way too many bodily fluids)

Some day I'll tell you all about our flight home from Ethiopia, but like childbirth stories, really only people who have recently gone through it, or are about to go through it, will want to read about it.

I've already written about how the Third Wait is the toughest.  It is also the one with no analogy in the "normal" world.  Hence the difficulty.

The other thing way in that adoption differs from most pregnancies is that it is extremely unpredictable. Most pregnancies and child birth stories are pretty much the same, except in the thankfully uncommon dramatic cases.  Excuse me, veteran mamas from the ChildBirth Wars,  but after a while they all sound the same.  And, I LOVE to hear childbirth stories. No, really. :)

Adoptions... oh boy. They are all over the map. Each step can take either days or weeks or years. Each step involves multiple decisions that can take you in multiple directions. It's a "Choose Your Own Ending" story, only, it's your life. Domestic? Foster? Private? Infant? Child? International? Which country? Special Needs? Siblings? Boys? Girls?

One of the reasons Andrew and I choose to do an Ethiopian adoption is that, when we started in 2009, that country had a simple, easy, straightforward, predictable process that would be about a year long.

Mwah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

There are all kinds of reasons why none of that was true. Some good reasons. (Ethiopia started paying more attention to international adoption and scrutinizing the process more carefully.) Some not so good. (So many folks wanted "easy" adoptions that Ethiopia became a target for corruption.)

In the end, we have beautiful Daniel and Lily.

In the middle, holy hell. Unpredictable! At first it was just paperwork hiccups.  One agency needed a letter from a therapist I saw 10 years ago, saying I wasn't, in fact, crazy.  (Or, I wasn't 10 years ago.)  We changed our age range and needed to read more articles and have more conversations with multiple social workers and attend an extra class.  Because that TOTALLY prepared us for adopting a 5 year old boy. Uh-huh.

We had it pretty easy, though, and got a referral very quickly.  We were all set to fly to Ethiopia and bring them home! Then. The one trip process became a two trip process. The time between the two trips doubled, then got longer, then became, "too difficult to predict".  Some bureaucrat in Ethiopia who was supposed to process a big pile of letters started only doing 5 a day.  One day in March I checked our email and found a notice from our agency that said, in effect, "We have no idea when you'll be able to bring your children home, but it could be next year. "  I cried all day.

That day in April, in Ethiopia when we finally met the judge, and she finally said, "They are yours," I had to ask our translator/social worker to say it again about 5 times before I believed it.

At this point, there is just a trickle of adoptions being finalized in Ethiopia.  Newer programs are being started in other poor countries in Africa.  Other new-to-adoption couples are hoping for a simple, quick, predictable adoption and are learning just like we did that simple, predictable adoptions are unicorns.

I don't recommend the Ethiopia program to people who ask me for advice. The two of them, that is.  (I do recommend adoption though.)  However unpredictable and complicated the process is, it is beautiful, and it will teach you many things about yourself and the world.  And it will prepare you for parenting, which is the most unpredictable, complicated and beautiful thing of all.

The Wait. Part 1.

Piles of things waiting to be packed for our second trip.

Two of my favorite blog authors are enduring the Third Wait right now.  Their posts range from exhausted to frustrated to weepy to angry to confused to heartbroken. The Third Wait. The hardest one.

In Ethiopian adoption there are three waits.  The first is the wait for referral.  Depending on what your priorities or limitations on what type of child you would like to adopt the first wait can be a few months to a few years.  Want to add a healthy, young girl to your family?  Sit tight, you will be waiting 3 years.   Want to add a 12 year old boy with a diagnosed medical condition to your family? Go ahead and buy a plane ticket. He is waiting right here.

The second wait is the most predictable and probably the easiest.  After you've accepted a referral, you wait for the Ethiopian courts to process your case and schedule your court date.  This usually takes 4 months. During those 4 months there is a lot to do.  You finally know who your child is, so now you can plan: doctors, schools/child care, decorate their room!, clothes, and your travel plans.  Also, there is paperwork to do. (There is always paperwork to do.)

The third wait sucks.  There is just no way around it. It's a mountain. Can't go around it, can't go under it, can't make it magically disappear. You just have to go through it.  And there isn't even any paperwork to do!

The third wait is after you've traveled to Ethiopia to meet your child/children and appeared in Ethiopian court. Your children are legally yours.  Only you are back home in America and they are still living in an orphanage.

During this time the US Embassy in Addis Ababa reviews your case, interviews birth family and sometimes does an investigation into the circumstances of your child's abandonment or relinquishment.  This can take a few days, or a few weeks.  In the rainy season, nothing happens at all, because the roads to the villages where your child was born have been washed out. The third wait can be a few weeks, or a few months.  You will get an email from the US Embassy with your visa appointment 1-2 weeks before you travel. You will pay a ridiculous amount of money for plane tickets to make that appointment because goddamn it, you have waited long enough.

I have very little useful advice for the Third Wait.  My coping strategies were compulsive nesting and cookie dough.  Most of the women who traveled to Ethiopia with us were either the thinnest they've even been, or the heaviest.

Here is what I would say to those enduring the Third Wait: if you've got the energy, use it. The nesting impulse is very strong. All that mothering you are waiting to do has no outlet.  At one point during this time, I found myself: making chicken stock, baking muffins, sewing curtains and freezing produce at the same time.  I was never tired, except when I was exhausted.

(People who know me in real life will say, but Becky, you seemed fine! Yes, that's because I went home every day and ate a bowl of cookie dough. It is amazing how good that can make you feel, temporarily.  Also, my sister did me the great service of needing help planning her wedding. Nesting, deluxe!)

Here's what you shouldn't do: worry about your children. They are fine. And anyway there is nothing you can do for them so you may as well try not to go crazy thinking about them.  Also, don't eat too much cookie dough that you can't fit into any of your clothes.  Don't Google MD any of the medical issues your child may or may not have. Those are not good ideas.

Here's what you can do:  Pray. Ask others to pray for you. If you are not the praying type, sit quietly in a chair with a cup of tea/glass of wine and think about how sitting quietly in a chair is not something you are going to doing again for a long, long time.  Savor the silence. Cook your favorite meals and freeze them, because you will not be cooking, properly cooking, for a long time either. Do all those little projects that need to be done. Make your house beautiful, then take a photo of it to remind you that your house was once clean and beautiful.  Very soon and for a long time it will be filled with noise, plastic crap and unbelievable amounts of crumbs and cheerios. Go out with your partner and your good friends and gaze upon them.  This is what it is like to be out in the evenings with people you love without worrying about if you will be late for the babysitter.

As much as the Third Wait shreds you, you must try to treasure it.  This separation only brings you closer to your child and your child's first family.  For them, the separation is permanent.  The universe is so large, and your child so far away, but in this way, your heart and their hearts are right next door.

Daddy's Girl

In the process of having a child the "normal" way, there are several universal milestones: the pregancy test, the pregnancy announcement, the first sonogram, the birth, boy!? girl!?.

In the adoption process there are different special milestones.  Parenting classes, the homestudy, paperwork finalization, dossier completion... really none of those are very much fun.  You don't make cute postcard announcements about your dossier being accepted, momentous as that is.  But, there is:

THE MOMENT.

The moment adoptive parents first meet their child (or children).  It could happen in a hospital, a foster care agency, a social worker's office, even a hotel. Or, an orphanage.  When we first decided to adopt from Ethiopia I fell into a youtube vortex of Moment videos.  Ethiopian agencies typically videotape these meetings, and they are universally heart warming (heart rending?).  An eager, nervous American couple rushing up some steps.  Kind, smiling nannies and nurses.  A small frightened child who smiles wide when given a brand new toy, and a brand new family. Smiles, tears.... ahhh.... I couldn't get enough.

So, our moment?

We don't have a video of it, which is fine because it was unforgettable, of course.  Nervous American couple, rushing up some steps.  Kind, smiling nannies.  Lots and lots of children.

On our first visit we were pretending NOT to be adoptive parents. Since the time between our first trip to Ethiopia and the children actually coming home was so long and so unpredictable, it was in the best interests of Daniel and Lily to think we were just some nice Americans with some nice new toys for the orphanage.  We played it cool.  (I know, this sounds horrible, but actually it was much less stressful for us, knowing that Daniel, especially, would not suffer during the WAIT. After our travel dates for the second trip were secure, the nannies started to talk to him about us and show our photos to both the children.)

So here is what happened on that amazing first day. First we played with Daniel and his friends in the big kid room. We brought markers and paper and traced their hands and feet (so I knew what size shoe to buy for him.)  We gave everyone hugs and kisses.  Daniel got a few extra, but nobody noticed. We were good actors. :)

The babies were in a nursery upstairs. Andrew got his turn first to sneak upstairs to see Lily.  After a few minutes, we switched.  I came into the little room.  Lily was sitting with a few other babies on a big mat.  I tried not to scare her by rushing over and scooping her up.  I sat with her and started to interest her in some rattles.  She was one year old, but still catching up developmentally from those early months of hunger.  She couldn't crawl or walk. (Hence our shock when we came back just a few months later to find her walking and climbing!)

There on the mat, little Lily gave me some very skeptical looks.  She was loathe to be picked up or cuddled. Then Andrew came back in the room.

She gave him a wide smile and lifted her arms to be picked up.  He carried her around the room, talking to her, and she grinned and grinned at him, sending me dagger looks over his shoulder.

Great, I thought, 5 minutes in and she's already Daddy's girl.

And she still is. ;)

We still have all those drawings and handprints from our first visit to the orphanage.

Here is hoping that all those children have found a family too.

The afternoon we left Addis Ababa it was pouring rain. Hardly surprising, given that it was the rainy season. But it made getting the hat back that much more difficult.

Daniel's hat. The same one as Daddy's, exactly. In a newly created trans-racial family, this small similarity was one of our only tangible links.  Something that said: We belong together.  We'd brought the matching hats with us on our very first visit to our new 5 year old son and new 1 year old daughter.  Blue baseball caps from our favorite local team.  Daniel wore it all day that first visit, and on their first visit to the guest house.  After days of eating and playing and meetings and farewell ceremonies, we were heading home at last.

But where is the hat!?

Hours before in my exhausted, feeble attempts at organized packing, trying to make sure we had enough bottles/wipes/changes of clothes/snacks for our epic trip home, I realized we'd completely forgotten the hat. It was at the care center. When we picked up the children for the final time, they wore traditional white clothes. I noticed another boy wearing the Hawaiian t-shirt Daniel had worn on our first visit.  So probably some other child our son's age was wearing the hat, kicking a soccer ball around the courtyard.

We drove in the rain through the city, surrounded by piles of suitcases and other families tense with exhaustion and nervous anticipation of a 24 hour trip with new adopted children. I watched the faces of my children. The baby, up later than usual, was wired and curious, peeking out from the carrier at the rainy city. Daniel was quiet and attentive, feebly responding to the driver's jokes and attempts to get him to smile.

After I'd realized that the hat was at the care center we begged our local driver and guest house manager to help us get it back. With several airport pick-ups and drop offs to arrange, and the constant rain storms, we got little reassurance that the hat would get to us in time.  I tried to explain the significance of the hat. Of course we could buy a new one, of course it was just a hat. But, it was The Hat. The one we gave to our son the first time we see him as our son. The hat in the video we will watch over and over of our meeting day. The hat we are building this fragile new thing on: our family.

After several phone calls and conversations with drivers, a plan is made. We are not told of the plan, in case it will not work. But it does.

We stop on the side of a roundabout, and a young social worker from the care center runs up to our van, holding a newspaper over his head, and our precious blue hat.  My husband retrieves it, and puts it on Daniel's head. His tiny, serious brown face breaks open in a wide, wide smile.
America, here we come!