big thoughts, some prayers

After a busy Spring Break, I am in Chicago with my art students, and somewhere in the night, our Travel Approval is making its way to our agency and then our home. I have not yet sent our completed visa applications out, I have not taken our immunization cards to get their updated stamps, I have not heard back from urologists, and, the worst--I have not sent the package we're allowed to send our son, and there is no way now that it could arrive in time for his birthday.

I look at the manner in which time has run through my fingers like fine sand, and I am at a loss to account for this. Now that I am warm and in my hotel for the evening, seeing snowy shadows flit outside in the streetlight, I find the doubts that this birthday thing raises come with other big questions.

Most of these are about Yoyo's beginnings. What was his mother's pregnancy like? Was it her first? Did she know something was off kilter as her son's body began to slowly split? Who saw him first, I wonder? Had they ever seen anything like his condition? And how, how in the world were they not overcome with fear to the point of stopping his tiny breaths? How did either of them find the courage to let go of him in the desparate hope that he might survive? What did she do in those first nights after he'd gone, what did she tell her own mother or the friends who wished her well all along her pregnancy? What did she do with the tiny clothes she had put together or the dreams, and how many times did she look away from the eyes of neighbors who thought some evil must surely have come upon her home? What will she think this April 6?

For his father, I hope. I hope that he does not fear himself or blame himself or his wife. I pray that it does not cast aspersions on his manhood or his ability to be a good father and husband. I hope that he is not doubted by his family or friends. What will he think this April 6?

For his mother, I hope. I hope that she does not fear or blame. I hope that she could somehow know that her Tian Yo is not just suriving, but is delighted and delightful. I pray that the moment of his birth and their discovery and helplessness to do for him themselves and courage to find a way for him does not lurk as a dark shadow between them. May God bring mercy between father and mother, husband and wife. May there be peace in their home, and trust between them, and no fear of tomorrow. May they eat dinner together and know they did what was best for their son, and may they have more children, to comfort them as they grow old.

And for that little boy, full of boundless energy, I dream...I dream that he will be at peace with himself and his birth parents and us and his siblings (if and whenever they come). I hope that someday, the story he has heard of in bits and pieces and segments familiar as Sunday School Old Testament prophets and lions and giants will become HIS very own story to tell and to build upon, a birthright, an inheritance, a hope and a future and an ebenezer of God's mercy and faithfulness. And that he will survive his wordy, sentimental, dreamy-eyed mother!