Sacrifice and resurrection
This is what love is
This is what love is…
And teaching us to love each other
As we love ourselves
And laying down our lives for someone else
And even when we fall
He loves us through it all
His gentle guiding hand
Keeps understanding
He knows the tears we cry
He knows our hearts may lie
For us again, He'd die
He came and gave His life so we would know
He is what love is
Now I know what love is
He would do it all again
He would die for us again
Cause that's what love is
When Jory was placed in my arms, I couldn’t believe I was finally a mother. It took days for me to really come to terms with the fact that I was finally someone’s mommy.
Years ago, I saw a 48 Hours where they followed a father to Russia to adopt his son. The journalist asked the father if he loved his son then, as they watched video of the father and son together in those first few days in a hotel in Russia , and the father paused, looked at his wife, and said something to the effect of, “I don’t know if I was in love with him. But I would have fought to the death if someone had tried to take him from me.”
I don’t know when I fell in love with Jory, but I know it wasn’t love at first sight. I don’t believe in love at first sight, I believe love comes with knowledge and time. Maybe it was during the 1AM, 2AM, or 3AM feedings and he introduced me to the world of Conan, heaven help us Carson (yikes!), the hilarity of Becker, and to Pope John Paul II. Okay, so we only caught the end of the Pope’s life, you know the awful death watch that was going on and then his funeral. Though I did find out a lot about the Pope and found myself liking him so much Jory almost got the middle name John-Paul, but I refrained. Though if Jory’s little brother, Jack, ever comes along his middle name will be John-Benedict. Yes, we got all caught up in the process of choosing the next Pope and fell for Ben XVI, as we like to call him. Did you know laymen are in the running to become Pope? The thought did cross my mind to baptize him Catholic? Yeah, my son is the Pope. Wouldn’t that have ROCKED?!!? But I digress, maybe it was those loving brown eyes or the almost dimples or the engaging, laid back attitude. Or maybe it was the way he would fall asleep on top of my chest like a little angel….Whatever it was, I fell hopelessly and completely in love with that baby boy and have been and will be for the rest of my life.
I can still remember getting the call at Beacon if I was interested in picking up a preemie from Cedars. A few hours later, I was sitting in a rocking chair learning from the NICU nurse how to feed the little girl, I called Willow . Willow was the sweetest, little thing and I loved her as my own for the entire three months she lived with us. How could I not help but fall in love with the tiny four pound beauty, who had even captured the hearts of the NICU nurses? I was sad to see her leave and I pray that she is in a loving home being taught about the One who placed the moon in the sky. I’ll never forget the experience of picking up a baby from the hospital though I was more than shocked to discover Cedars doesn’t have loaner baby car seats, the County hospital give out free ones but not Cedars?!
Fostering Willow helped me realize that Jory and I were ready for us to add a bouncing baby girl to our family and three months later Sasha entered our lives. Sasha. Sasha. She was such a great little girl who cried so softly as a newborn, you had to be on top of her to hear her cry. I don’t know when I fell in love with her, but it must have happened as I discovered how God clouds your mind so you can’t remember what it was once like to wake up every four hours to feed someone, or just how tiny newborns are, after your first is out of these stages. I think He does it because if you remembered just how sleep deprived you were or how hard it was to shop with the baby, who can’t hold his head up yet and hollers every time you put him in the Baby Bjorn, you’d only have one child.
Life with Chew Chew and Jory was going great until the phone call from her CW, who informed me about a relative who was interested in taking custody of her. My heartbeat stopped. Was someone trying to take my baby? Why would anyone do that? Didn’t these mysterious relatives understand how much I loved my daughter? I didn’t know what to do, what to think, until a wise man, we’ll call Rudy told me all I could do was love her with all my heart and keep living and planning for life like I had been doing. So I took this advice and ran with it. And five months later, as I placed my baby in the arms of her new mommy in that cold, sterile DCF office, tears flowed and my heart ached as Mell whispered in my ear, “I’m sorry.”
I was hurting for myself, for Sasha, and now for Mell and Johnny. What a way to be introduced to the world of parenting. When Jory came home there were no tears of sadness, it was a happy time all around. Mell was finally a mommy and it was partially marred in sadness and heartache.
And six weeks later when Rowan was placed in my arms, I saw a cute little baby girl only 2 ½ months younger than Sasha, but who wasn’t Sasha. Once Rowan got acclimated to fact that she was no longer one of five kids under the age of five like in her wonderful, loving foster home and that the only real noise makers in the house were the TV and Jory when he came home from school (boy, did her face light up when he bust through the door), she loved me, Jory, and Oma whole heartedly. Sadly I felt like I was babysitting. Though I did discover how little people pay attention to babies when my uncle said, “Finally Sasha got a little color to her and some meat on her bones.” Yeah, cause all white/Hispanic/Jewish and black/Samoan babies look exactly alike.
I knew one day, I would love Rowan as much as I loved Jory, as much as I loved Sasha. Fake it ‘til it’s real was something I saw more than once on my foster message board and that’s what I was going to do. Before Rowan, I naively believed that any child under one was a blank slate….after Rowan, I quickly discovered that was not the case at all and that six-and-a-half-month-olds have their own likes, dislikes, and personalities. And I realized that thumb sucking was like nails on a chalkboard to me, maybe one day her thumb won’t be so tasty.
Somewhere along the way, doing the day to day living, my love for my Principesa grew and grew...until she was my own. Rowan was my precious big girl. Jory, Rowan, and I were happy threesome waiting for the arrival of our newest one. With the loss of Sasha, the learning to love Rowan, I told myself these experiences were so I could be prepared for the adoption of Layla.
Layla would be close to one-years-old, she would be grieving for the loss of the nannies that took care of her, the other kids who she had grown up with, for the loss of her birth country. She might shut down because of all the changes- - because the Vietnam version of Tide didn’t smell like the American version I would smell like; because she’d go from a large room with ten other babies about her age, to a house with only two older kids. And I thought maybe Layla might be fine, but I would be the one having hard time adjusting to this new little one. I figured if I felt like I was babysitting again a la Rowan, then I knew with time I would be madly in love with Layla. And if Layla was the one that grieved for an extended period of time, then I would call Mell and get advice and tips on how to handle things.
So with these game plans in my head, I stepped on the plane headed for Vietnam . And never had I been more grateful to the greatest agency in the world, IAAP, and the greatest adoption agency owners, Dick and Cheryl, for the fact that I wouldn’t take custody of Layla until the day she would become legally mine. Koala Bear and I weren’t blown away by each other upon our first meet and greet, I still thought it was a bit surreal. And then the next day, reality snuck in as Layla was put in my arms, the bottle I brought with me was filled with formula, it was off to finalize her adoption, and then bam!! She and I were legally connected for life. Over the next few days, Layla and I got use to each other, discovered the hidden treasures of Saigon and Hanoi , hung out with Lisa, Nancy , the rock star, Michael, Barbara, and cute James, and started falling in love.
Upon returning home, I realized and recognized that I had been living in fear.
II Timothy 2:17, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Every since I stepped off the plane at LAX and heard Jory’s birthfather wanted to start having visits with him, the fear crept in. When I would dress Jory in the mornings for the visit, I worried about how to dress him. If I dressed Jory too cutely, his birthfather would see Jory was the greatest little boy in the universe and would work his case plan and get him back. On every visit day, I instructed my SW to stay in the room with Jory and if she had to go to the bathroom, she’d better take my son with her. (She was a mom, she knew how to pee and hold a baby at the same time.) I was deadly serious. Jory’s birthfather only visited four or five times, but the fear remained, though it eased after the visits ended and disappeared when the judge banged the gavel and Jory was legally mine.
But I allowed the fear to live with me again, when Sasha’s CW mentioned the mysterious relatives who wanted to adopt my December girl. Stepping off the plane from Heather and Brandon’s wedding and finding out a court date had been set and the judge would decide who would adopt Sasha, sent me in a tailspin. I didn’t know what to pray for. Did I pray that she stay? Did I pray what I prayed for Sasha and Jory, before her, since the day they entered our home that God’s will be done in their lives? I remember reminding myself that if I had the faith of a mustard seed I could move mountains, but nothing brought me peace. I sought counsel from those I considered to be wise, but their words didn’t bring the peace I longed for. Peace came when once again the judge banged the gavel and Sasha’s custody was transferred to Mell and Johnny. God had answered my prayer and His answer brought me peace and the confusion to an end.
Like a never ending cycle, Rowan’s arrival brought the fear back again. I tried to keep it bay. I prayed for peace and wisdom, but it was so hard- - when instead of dealing with a racist, clueless, unhelpful CW a la Sasha’s; I was dealing with a CW, who had no common sense and was high off the power her job gave her. When always in the back of my mind is the knowledge that in a heartbeat a CW and/or a judge, who may or may not have my child’s best interest at heart, could rip my baby away and I would have little to no recourse.
I’ve always compared adopting to riding a rollercoaster, but adopting from foster care is…is like riding a rollercoaster with a blindfold on, having no idea what the layout of the ride is, or how long the ride is going to last. All you know for sure is that the ride will eventually end. And while you riding, people will periodically jump into your car to give you information about the ride, what’s coming next, when the ride will end, sometimes that information is an outright lie, sometimes it’s a lie by omission, sometimes the information is outdated as soon as it leaves the person’s mouth, and sometimes they jump in to tell you that there is nothing to tell you.
With Layla I was able to love freely from the start because there was no CW lurking around, there were no possible birth relatives out there or half-siblings’ adoptive or foster families out there waiting to take my little girl away. All of this had been handled and dealt with before I landed in Vietnam, before I said yes to the referral of one, Tra Minh, born on January 21, 2008 (Yes, Nancy I know. I hear you in my head.) There was no fear. There was only peace. And while Layla did grieve, she put her best face forward and opened her heart to me, loved me, smiled at me. I don’t know if I ever felt such freedom since those early days with Jory. I regret the love I could have given and could have been receiving had I not let the fear take over, but thank God my eyes have been open I recognize what I allowed to happen and maybe in the future I can help someone else avoid the path I traveled.
Oh how God has blessed me with Layla and her love. I’m crazy in love with this little girl, who has only been with me for five months. My koala bear has a mommy radar that goes off if I’m away from her for longer than five minutes or too many feet away. “Mommy is thirty feet away and has been for five point five minutes- - engage mommy alarm.” The cries start, I go running, and after a few seconds of being in my arms the crying and tears stop.
My aunt came over and picked up Layla and upon hearing the screaming, Layla was quickly handed over to her Oma. My baby girl was saying, “You don’t know me like that.” Oma did try to make her sister feel better by saying, “Don’t feel bad. She treats me like that when Yash is in the room.”
The time I worried about her and I not bonding was for naught. We are bonded and in love. Layla is my down for whatever chick, my ride or die chick. Even in my dreams or in the deepest parts of my imagination, I never could have imagined a baby more loving, more giving, more adorable, smarter baby girl in the world, then Layla. I am truly one blessed woman.
I love you forever
I like you for always (though I won’t always like what you do)
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be
Layla having fun rock climbing. I just put her there to take a picture, then she surprised me by actually climbing. Did I mention my baby is a genius?
Jory, Sasha, and Rowan.
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