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."