The Ending and the Beginning

This is Part III of a series of posts - the last installment of our journey to adopt our daughter from China.  You can read Parts I and II by clicking the links below or scrolling down.

Part I - The Beginning

Part II - The Middle

Said it before, sayin' it again...be nice if you leave a comment.  That's all I got.

The word I would use to describe our arrival back in the states is trepidation.  I was fearful.  Run-down.  Tired.  Sick.  Emotionally wrung out.  Physically spent.  Bruised inside and out.  And so concerned about what we had just done to our family. 

Keira had worn me down.  Worn us down.  Every positive interaction (albeit few and far between) was met with bewildered stares between AB and I.  Almost shrugging our shoulders as if to say "I don't know what she's doing??"  There were isolated smiles or singular touches of her little hand.  Almost invisible if you were watching from the outside.  We were too wounded to see any of her positive behavior as a sign of healing.  Maybe that sounds strange to you, but from this seat it was even stranger.

We were constantly taken aback by how much our long-term ideas of Keira were so vastly different from our new reality.  Over and over...like someone throwing ice-cold water in your face.  Dream...reality.  Dream....reality.  Our time in China was riddled with "cold-water" experiences and we came home numb.  Shockingly numb.  Even if she did smile, at that point we wrote it off as a passing fancy.

The first few days at home were terrible.  No, let me re-phrase that.  The first few days home were some of the hardest of my life.  That's truth.

And it wasn't Keira.  No, no.  It was Quint.  He had lost his mind in our absence.  I could go on and on...but just know that three weeks apart from your parents when you're two...in a strange new place, with family you don't get to see too often...all the rules are out the window, the regular schedule and

routine...even the regular discipline - gone.  Then you come back home and the first thing you see is your parents holding this little baby and she's in your "spot" up there in Mom and Dad's arms.  

It was bleak.  Grim, I tell you.  He was one of the unhappiest two-year-olds I've seen.  The grieving moved from Keira to Quint.  While she, bless her heart, started to get comfortable in her new surroundings...with her new family...in her new home and bed...poor Quint wailed for a week  straight.  Nothing consoled him.  He was completely affronted that this new baby was in his home.  He was trying desperately to re-acclimate to Anton and I - to his routine - to his life...and here was this new little person, always getting in the way, always needing, always there.

For whatever reason, this had not occurred to me.  This grieving and loss that my son would endure.  Perhaps because I was so completely overwhelmed upon returning from China - and what we had gone through - that I didn't think...didn't imagine that he would be anything but excited and glad to see us.  Instead he was angry.  Indignant even.  Pushing every limit.  Crossing every boundary.  Crying endlessly.  Whining tirelessly.  Wanting his own bottle (he gave them up a year ago).  Wanting baby toys.  Baby food.  To be held like a baby, rocked like a baby...to watch baby programs, to be babied.  And the tantrums...oh the tantrums.  

One afternoon I sat on the floor and cried, while he kicked and screamed and tantrumed beside me.  I said "I want my son back...I want my little boy...the one I left three weeks ago" and on and on I cried and he cried and we finally spent our energy on tears and just laid there exhausted from our mutual tantrum.  

There were other moments when I would feel so overwhelmed between the on-going grieving of both of my children that I would just crawl into bed at night and cry next to Anton.  Him sleeping and me trying to stifle my sobs so as not to wake him.  Puffy eyes the next morning while making bottles, pouring cereal and folding laundry.  So glamorous.

The stress level was a 10.  Forget that.  Level 10 doesn't cover it.  Call it 20.  Days this went on, and day in and out I felt like it would never, ever end.  

Keira was acclimating slowly...but she was acclimating.  She seemed to enjoy her home.  Seemed to really snuggle into her new bed.  She appeared to appreciate that we started a schedule right away - with feedings, naps and bedtime that now came at regular predictable intervals.  I could see right away that this routine gave her deep comfort.  It was almost tangible, in a way.  She was happier.  Rested.  More content.  And thus, more prone to laugh, smile, or touch.  But not too prone.  Just a bit.

Think what you will of us - but we were still brokenhearted.  Anton and I would check in with each other frequently...often several times a day - how do you feel, are you feeling any better about her, is she making progress, do you feel yourself bonding yet, do you love her, is she coming around, are you coming around, are we getting there?  I can tell you that each time and for several days...maybe for the first couple weeks - the answers were usually "not really" or "I guess a little bit" or "sort-of".  Not the dream...the reality.  Cold water...over and over.

The house was a royal wreck.  The laundry piling up.  The suitcases sitting, waiting to be opened and unloaded.  Even that felt too monumental.  Re-live that trip by unraveling those overwhelming weeks of travel from out of those suitcases?  No, thank you.

I was living Groundhog Day - the movie. Every day the same.  Four bottle feedings, Quint's meals, twenty-seven hundred diaper changes between the two of them, blankets and play-time, and tantrums, crying, toys everywhere, dishes everywhere, and grieving and napping and a blur of the same thing over and over and over again for days on end.  Lots and lots of sweatpants and baggy shirts and unkempt hair.  Oh the humanity! (heh)

And can I just tell you?  All those things I had collected for her over the four years we waited? Couldn't have cared less about each and every one.  Her outfits?  Whatever...  Her hairbows and frilly dresses...assortments of books, toys, purses...all of that?  Did not care.  I dressed her in clothing that seemed comfortable for her - and usually it was a plain onesie and cotton pants.  Or pajamas.  Sometimes just pj's all day long.  Seems silly maybe - but oh the dreams I had over those four years of dressing her in all those perfectly beautiful outfits...  The Dream?  No...sadly, the reality.  Ice cold water.  

So two weeks went by after coming back home and we saw people who had cheered us on prior to our trip...had encouraged us along the way, held us up, motivated and strengthened us.  We saw them...introduced them to Keira and we tried to smile.  Tried to put on a brave face and tell the good stuff that people like to hear.   But the pity-party we were having behind closed doors was vast.  I'm sad to admit that to you.  It's just the truth.  We were knee deep in change, and it wasn't feeling good at all.  Our lives were different, yes - but our reality was so different than the images we had conjured up for so long...so very different...it was painful to have to reconcile them to the truth. 

Keira started to make obvious emotional progress by week three.  We're on week five now, since coming home, so I'll share with you the overall view.

They were little things at first, like I mentioned.  A smile here.  A giggle there.  A wiggle/giggle here and there.  Then came the relaxed nature.  A sort of...I don't know...internal sigh from her.  She would sit and chatter away on her blanket during playtime.  She would smile more easily when I would talk to her.  She would reach out to me when I approached her to pick her up.  She was warming up.

Then came the laughter.  For so long, my attempts to make her laugh were met with a chagrin.  Literally.  She would wrinkle up her forehead and pull her eyebrows together in a scowl.  That morphed into a deadpan expression.  Followed by a slight grin.  Then...and without notice...a full-on belly laugh.  It took weeks in each others space to hear that deep, honest belly laugh.  Content...happy...safe laugh.  One that almost made me weep with joy.

Slowly, so slowly...she began to touch my face during her bottle feedings.  Remember, she would not let AB or I feed her unless she was facing away from us or had no skin contact.  Suddenly, she was cuddled into the crook of my arm, and touching my face.  Gently.  Exploring and trying to memorize me.  Feeling my cheeks and my nose, my mouth.  Her little chubby fingers running back and forth over my lips.  I cried the first time.  Like salve on my wounded heart.  She was accepting me in her way.  Saying to me that she was getting there.  That she was trying...

Hold on to me, she said.  Don't give up.  I'm almost there...wait for me.

One night while she happily chugged away at her bottle and held my face in her hand, I said her name "Keira".  She immediately looked into my eyes.  I said "I waited a long time for you, did you know that?"  Her eyes stayed on mine.  "I love you so much...I would wait so much longer"...and I nuzzled her nose.  She smiled and cooed.  Then I realized what I'd said.

I love you so much.

Just like that.

I hadn't said that before.  Hadn't said "I love you".  It was too hard to say.  Too hard to mean it. 

Then I realized what else I had just told her.  I would wait so much longer.  And maybe what I really meant by that was "I will wait for you, even though we're together now.  I'll wait for you."

And I knew that I meant it.  What a peace came over me.

From that moment, we changed, she and I.

Call it what you like...bonded, falling in love, the "moment", the "magic"...whatever you like.  But she became to me what I had been waiting for.  My little daughter.

The past three weeks have been good to us.  Hold on to your hats...I've actually used the terms angel, sweet little love, baby doll, sweet baby, mommy's princess, pumpkin, and sweet-girl to both reference her and describe her.

The real progress being that I actually mean those things.  She is my princess.  My angel.

Anton loves to say "so do you think you're bonding to our girl, Mommy??" with a big grin on his face, as I'm covering her with kisses or tickling her chubby little legs, or squeezing her tightly to me and cooing at her.

I kiss her all day.  I snuggle her, squeeze her, and hold her close.  I love the way she smells.  She smells so good.  Fresh and sweet, just like a baby girl should.  Her hair is so soft.  Her skin is so soft.  Her feet tiny and perfect and adorable.  Her fingers perfect and chubby.  Her eyes...so big and beautiful and her eyelashes...long and stunning.  Her cheeks, edible.  Her legs and tummy...round and full and so...squish-able.   Her smile melts my heart.  Her laughter...contagious.  You can't help but to love her.

Still, I could say none of this before.  Because I didn't see her.  It hurt too much to get close to her.  She wouldn't let me see those things.  Couldn't let me.  It hurt her too bad.

I will tell you, there are moments when I regress just a little.  When she regresses just a little.  When we panic just a little bit.  She still has moments of raw grief that are hard on all of us.  The hands will pull away.  The back will arc just a bit.  She pulls away from the kisses.  She cries too long...and won't be comforted.  I panic, I can't lie.  I'm always a step away from where we were.  Trying desperately to run the other way and get us as far away from that searing pain as possible.  We can't go back, I shout in my mind.  We can't go back...it hurt so bad.

But sometimes that's how grief operates.  Regress.  and back.  Regress.  and back.  Like the waves.  Like that...for a long time until suddenly you can't really remember when all that crazy stopped.  You're just so glad it did.

We have a ways to go.  But I see now more than ever who she is and who we didn't see in China.  Who we couldn't see...through her hurt and pain and brokenness.  It makes me ache.  I want to go back and love her better in those moments.  Understand her more.  See her.  Hear her.

Maybe it wouldn't matter.  Maybe it would hurt just as bad, sting just as much, wound just as deep.  Because her pain is her own - and she did with it all she could and the only way she knew.  But oh, if I could only have side-stepped my own deep pain to love her better through hers.

I think we learn this way.  By looking back and using that view to better carve the one in front of us. It's how we grow and change and move on.  Experiencing my own deep grief over broken dreams while she experienced her own brokenness actually put us in the same place at the same time.  Crossing each other in our pain.  How could we have met in the middle and made peace with each other any other way?  Her with me.  Me with her.  I accept you.  I trust you with me.  Taking tiny baby steps towards finding comfort in each other.

People have asked me if I would have loved Keira sooner/better/more if she had behaved in China the way she does here at home...happy and comforted and giggling all the time.  Certainly.  I imagine I would have had a lot better bonding experience.  It goes without saying, I think. 

But there is something to say for the pain and how it carves you differently than joy does.  It marks you differently.  I look at Keira and I say "look how far we've come" every day.  I think  "you can do it, baby girl!  Keep trying...keep reaching for me...I promise to meet you there" and I feel my heart expanding deeper and wider when I'm with her because I'm so proud of her and how far she has come.  How much she has overcome to be present with me.  How much she has parted with and yet still can smile, laugh, and learn to love all over again.

It's the path we're on - and there's no use wondering how different it would have been had she been a different baby in China.    Had she grieved differently or not at all.  Had she been healed instead of broken.  No use because we'll never know.

We only know where we are and how far we've come.  And it's a long, long way from those hot, frustrating, agonizing first moments in Civil Affairs.  A long, distant way from those hours that felt like years in each of those hotel rooms as we struggled to keep our heads above water...struggled just to hold her or to speak any words of comfort.  From those tangibly painful moments of rejection that are etched in my memory.  We're far away from that.  Safe.  Sound...and recovering. 

We're reconciling ourselves.  Righting ourselves. 


Reconciliation is a strange thing.  Trying to bring two things together.  Two lives, two kids, two parents, two countries.  In our case, once again, it was the dream versus the reality.  We HAD to reconcile them.  Make peace with them.  Find a way to have them meet in the middle, make amends, and try to move forward.  Everything in you says "no, it's not possible" and yet...

Our journey would involve grief.  That was that.  There was nothing to do for it, but let it happen.  Our daughter was her own person...had her own feelings even at her tender age, whether we could accept it or not.  She was broken in her own rite.  There was not a magic wand to wave and make her pain or her humble beginnings disappear, as much as I wished for it in those first days together.

Quint, though only two, could not be convinced his sister was safe or would be a good and happy part of his life.  He had to and still has to figure it out for himself.  Learn how to grieve and let go that he is no longer the sole-center of our attention.  Accept that he has a sister who will depend on him as they grow older...and hopefully learn to depend on each other as the years go by.

Anton and I are no longer parents of one amazing boy.  We are parents of one amazing boy and one amazing girl.  Each different, each unique, each special.  Each abandoned...breaking my heart to type those words.  But each found.  Each a part of us forever.  That's reality.  Reconciled, painful, endearing, beautiful reality.

We wanted children.  That was the dream.  We have two beautiful children.  One little boy from Ethiopia.  One little girl from China.  Two countries.  Two parents.  Two children.  Not what we thought.  Not even what we dreamed all those years ago when we said "I do".  But so much better than the dream.  So much better. 

As for the future, time will tell.  Right now, we're certainly still in recovery.  Still healing.  Still finding each other.  Still learning.

But we've committed ourselves to a goal that involves adoption.  A goal that involves children.  I have no idea how it will pan out - what it will look like - or even if it will involve us adding to our own little family.  I just know we are certainly listening for God's timing and His will.  And not getting rid of any baby clothes just yet.

In the meantime, it's just the Beginning...

Posts Coming up:  "Redeemed" and "A Letter of Thanks".  Don't miss them!