Update (11/6/14):
This three part series chronicles the 3-day anniversary of bringing our children home from Haiti. We will now call each day “Family Day.” We used to call it “Adoption Day,” a name I thought far more respectful and far less creepy and evocative of human trafficking than “Gotcha’ Day.” After further reflection, though, and a brilliant essay by a young adoptee, I realized that we don’t so much celebrate an anniversary as we reflect upon adoption as a whole: every member of the adoption triad, my kid’s home country, culture, etc. Therefore, as Sophie did in this piece from Huff Po, we are now calling those days “Family Day.”
What follows in this series are my personal reflections on the first 3 days, rather than the story of my kids.
Part II
I’m not entirely sure how we made it to the airport, packed to the gills with clothing and supplies for us and the kids, water and snacks, and donations for the orphanage, just a few days after we’d received the call from Barbara to inform us that our children were ready to come home. It’s all a blur to me now, tucked away in the same part of my brain that harbors the exact feeling of the contractions that accompanied the birth of our youngest. As we stood in line to check our luggage, I thought back to that day over three years before when we had decided we would form our family through adoption. Our eldest was born that very day, many miles away, neither of us knowing anything about the other. But we would not learn of that little fact until after we’d unsuccessfully navigated the domestic adoption system for 20 months.
On the plane, it occurred to us that after we landed, we would no longer be just the two of us. Those were our final few hours of coupledom. We were going to be parents, and not the kind of parents who could ease into parenting, taking sweet, soothing walks with our newborn baby in a sling. We were going to be the parents of two toddlers, a 3-year-old and an almost 2-year-old—two small human beings who had already lived a whole lifetime each, with their own cultures, language, family (including the children and care-givers in the orphanage), and habits. They’d been together since our son was born. Never again would they be just the two of them either.
I held onto my husband’s hand, not letting go until we were safely on the ground in Florida.
After another short flight with me grasping my husband’s hand until we were both numb, we arrived in Haiti. Thus far, I’d only been in Haiti in fall and winter. I was not prepared for what summer had to offer. We walked out of the small terminal into a wall of thick, damp air that caught my breath and twisted it in my lungs. Dozens of men and boys offered to take our luggage and drive us where we needed to go. I’d done this a few times by then and knew to tell them we were waiting for Barbara in the Blue Dress. Everybody knew Barbara in the Blue Dress. Having arrived in Haiti for a short stay several decades earlier to help build a church, she’d stayed to do much more than she’d ever expected—build an orphanage, send kids to school, provide a safe place for mothers, teach women independence, build wells and provide purifiers for clean drinking water. For a long portion of this time, she traversed the bumpy, muddy streets of Port-au-Prince on a motorcycle. The drivers in the airport knew Barbara would be there for her people.
But Barbara never came. We waited for what seemed like hours, the time slowed by the acrid and oppressive air.
The luggage carriers and drivers returned. “We know Barbara,” they told us. “She hasn’t come. I’ll take you.” One man finally offered to call for a nominal fee since our cell phone was not working. Barbara had never gotten the email with our flight information, the internet being spotty and electricity even worse. She was on her way.
We waited. I cried some. I could not get to the children soon enough.
Just as we were once again surrounded by people insisting they could drive us to our hotel, an authoritative figure in a blue dress parted the crowd with her very presence. “Barbara!” She was greeted from all sides, by airport staff, by the luggage carriers and drivers, by two frazzled new parents waiting to pick up their children.
The hotel was just minutes from the airport. When we arrived our eldest was standing outside the pool with an American woman, another adopting mom on her way home. She had grown since I’d last seen her. As I hugged my daughter, the American woman slipped away and we were officially put in charge of this little life forever.
“Where is our son?” I asked. Barbara assured us that Johnny, her assistant, was on his way with our son. As if on cue, Johnny drove up to the hotel, our son lounging casually in the front seat.
Truthfully, I don’t remember much about that afternoon or the next morning, except that we swam some, my daughter ate a ton, my son ate very little, we napped and bathed, and we had to switch our flight for a later time the next day as we still had a bit of paperwork to sign with the lawyers.
What I will never forget, though, is lying on the hotel bed that afternoon, all four of us, and feeling at once completely lost, terrified, totally unprepared, happy, and more fulfilled than I’d ever felt. I would experience that disorienting combination of emotions once again, 11 months later, upon bringing their little sister home from the hospital and repeating that nap-time scene in our own bed, at home, our little family complete.
What I would not repeat with our third child, though, was the convolution of the positive, bright excitement of getting to bring our children home with the raw realization that our adoption, like all adoptions, also involved a whole other set of people and an entire culture losing what we were gaining.
You can read Family Day, Part I: Before here.
Stay tuned for Family Day, Part III: After tomorrow.
This was originally posted in July of 2012.
