happy birthday to family

The songs in your head are now on my mind...

Of course it hardly seems possible that a year ago, we were ready to land.  Dr. He and an assistant met us at the (enormous) Beijing airport.  We were so tired, so unprepared.  We allowed our lives to gallop right up to the minute we had to leave, and the only quiet moments to ponder, to even try to still ourselves, were the ones in the plane. Mercy.

Of course (again) nobody is ever really ready to be a parent, but I thought the years of waiting would give us an edge.  Boy is that funny!  Walking into the foster home, looking through the dim interior for the baby we would be taking home, was maybe the weirdest naked feeling ever.  Struggling to understand the language, overcome with emotion (and more than a little fear), not knowing what would happen next...and then we saw him!  

It was more than good to have a week at BlueSky before joining our travel group.  I'm sure every adopting parent would covet that luxury.  For us, it made the difference between survival and crisis.  I learned how to use a catheter and colostomy supplies from some incredible volunteer nurses (American and Swedish), and I practiced under the watchful loving eyes of the ayis (who gave great advice I will never be able to translate).  I was so scared I wouldn't remember all the instructions, and that it would cost YoYo his life.  We spent our mornings around the dining room table, sharing peanut butter sandwiches with our little boy, wondering if he knew what would happen next.  We took turns rocking him, stole him away from the other children for snippets of bonding time without attracting attention.  We took walks around the block and navigated our first store outings without translators, we took him to our guest apartment and read stories to him and gave him snacks and napped.  It felt like we were doing something wrong (at least to me), or like we were playing house, pretending that this little one was ours.  I kept thinking any minute that someone would approach to demand whose beautiful boy-child we'd taken, and I would not have the language to explain he was ours.

Everyone at BlueSky was so gracious to let us ease into being with him, and I guess to let him ease into being with us.  The parties and gifts and care lavished on us made me wonder when they would find out that we are really just teachers and not royalty.  They were so happy for us, and I felt guilty to know we were taking their little Prince-even though I could tell myself again and again that the timing was just.   I could almost believe we were their fairytale people, and then the strain of all we were learning medically and the fear of what may come would overtake me and I would lash out at my dear selfless husband in private for tiny nothing things.  Oh, bittersweet, that labor brings joy and pain to life and commits it to memory.

Two of the kindest gifts came from the nurses.  Gunilla had lovely flowers in the guest apartment when we arrived.  Forever and ever those will be the first flowers I received as a mother.  Then wise Tammy stepped in the day before we had to take YoYo from BlueSky, and she insisted we go to the Orchard for one last date before parenthood consumed us.

She sent her driver (!) to collect us, and he carried us to an estate which had belonged to a very old family.  It was seized in the 40s, but lately has evolved (somehow) into a privately owned restaurant.  The gardens surrounding it are lush, sections of the orchard are intact--it is breathtaking.  It was somewhere during the elegant meal that parenthood dawned on us, and that epiphany carried us through the remainder of the journey.  Tammy was able to give us the moment of quiet stillness we needed before plunging in.  I thought of her this week as I transplanted creeping sedum to my beds of iris, now a riot of color.  I first saw creeping sedum banking iris at the Orchard, and I echo the combination now, in my garden, in thanks to Tammy and Gunila and Sunila and Dr. He and all of BlueSky.

Though the hope for another child and the shadow of grief for infertility sometimes feel like betrayal to the precious gifts we have received, I think we can honestly say that we are so very happy that we can hardly take it.  At the dentist yesterday, a nurse smiled to say we rescued YoYo, and I said with full heart, "No, he rescued us."  

4 is the magic number

Photos to come...my macbook crashed and the guys at the genius bar (no really, that's the name?) won't see me til 9 am Tuesday.  I am seriously compromised-I'm desperate enough to write this on hubby's macbook, the school one, which I prefer to call "The Hobo."

ANYWAY.

Monday-April 6! The little prince turned 4, and we were filled with joy, and I had no idea the emotional soup it would be (for me, in my head, trying to keep it all smooth and calm outside). 

YoYo woke up asking, "Am I 4?"  And it hit me (so so much harder than I imagined) that it is our first birthday with our first little one, and he is 4 and I've already missed so much, and I feel like a guest and not a parent (because we missed birthdays 1, 2, and 3), and I wonder about his birth-parents and what they are feeling.  

HOW is it that this way to family is so very unending with its happy/sad surprises?  YoYo knew just what I needed, a good 20 minutes of snuggle time before jumping into the day.  We had pancakes cut into 4's for breakfast, then some TV, and then lovely playing with the lovely toys the grandparents giddily stuffed our house with last week.  (PS-Grandparents, we know what you're doing.  Don't think we don't.)  Then off to school to pick up Shane for pizza lunch!  We ended up at the mall, thanks to the macbook-did I mention I HATE the mall?  

We played restaurant for dinner, and that was an absolute hit.  Our party party was last Saturday at the park.  Just YoYo, a very few friends his age, and the most glorious how-did-we-luck-out day weatherwise that has happened in the last three weeks.  Seriously-it's snowing outside as I type this.  Snowing.  April.  Tennessee. 

I'm relieved now.  This passage had so much potential for hardship-and I didn't have any idea it could until an idle conversation.  We've talked so much about turning 4, and he has been excited.  Then I talked to him about my cousin's upcoming wedding in DC, and the drive, and the hotel, and how fun it will be.  His response was a question.  "And then I can no go home to Mama and Baba again anymore? I will no see Baba ever?"  It took me a while to put it together.  Each birthday has been spent with different people-and each one has been followed by separation.  When he turned one, he was in Singapore, recovering from surgery.  He was doted on by a couple there, and he loved them.  A month after his birthday, he returned to Beijing.  Birthday number two came, and a couple of months later he traveled to the US for more surgery.  Months later, he returned to Beijing.  His third birthday was in Beijing, at BlueSky Healing Home, and it was packed with people who are part of YoYo's story-volunteer nurses, marathon runners, fundraisers, volunteer workers, teachers...all of them knew he'd be leaving soon for good and they came to say good-byes.  And less than a month later, we walked into BlueSky, and his first words to us were, "You will take me with you on a plane far away."  And he misses his sweet family from BlueSky.  He will talk about, "When I lived at HaiHe's house," or "When I was at QinQin's house," and sometimes the stories aren't even real, but his feelings are, and it's so hard to know that even though he is only 4 and may not remember much of this later, it is very real to him now, and it is grief and loss and separation, and it is profound, and no matter how much he loves his Mommy and Daddy, that love for him is mingled with the loss.  Our beginning as a family was the end of what he had already known and loved as family.

That this birthday came and went for him, without tears, with some rememberings, with much tenderness and laughter and play and singing and dancing, is a miracle.  And a gift.  I am so thankful for him every day, and I have no idea how it is that we are blessed enough to have him.  With hope for many more birthdays together.