When my daughter spontaneously hugged me the other day, and
thanked me for coming on her school field trip with her class, her affection
was so heartfelt that it nearly took my breath away. It hasn’t always been that
way.
Just one year ago, I found myself crying in a hotel room in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia.
Here was the culmination of a dream: to finally be a mom. With my beautiful new
daughter asleep in the next bed, I was supposed to be ecstatic.
—
It started when I began waking at 3 a.m., an inner voice telling me that I’d always regret
not having a family. I finally had a heart-to-heart with my husband of 20 years,
and told him that I felt that adoption was the right thing for us to do. He
hesitatingly but trustingly agreed. After a blur of adoption conferences,
adoption agency events and meetings with doctors, social workers, adoptive
parents and others, we chose international adoption. My husband and I found
ourselves attracted to the beautiful Ethiopian kids, who seemed happy and sweet
and bright. We decided that we’d like to give an older child a great home.
Back to Addis. Sitting in our hotel room, I kept wondering
why I didn’t feel more of a connection to this little girl? On some level, I
had thought that the minute I held her, my mothering instinct would kick in.
But while she was adorable and full of energy, she seemed to project, How did I get here? Who are these people? When
do I leave? She must have been absolutely terrified, and, frankly, we were
too.
She spoke no English other than a handful of words like “hungry,”
“toilet,” and “sleep,” and my husband and I knew about the same in her language.
Instead of her mom, I felt like the latest in a line of temporary caregivers. As
I sat crying while she slept that night, my husband reassured me that our
relationship with our little girl would build over time.
Once home in New York,
our daughter seemed to love the energy of her new city.
Soon, she started kindergarten and thrived there, making friends and picking up
English at an astonishing pace.
Then one day she packed up her stuffed animals and some
clothes and headed to the elevator of our building, crying and pounding the
ground. She said to us, “You, America.
Me, Ethiopia. I
go home.” Our hearts broke with her pain.
We decided to ask for help. A social worker from our
adoption agency, Gladney, spent a ten-hour day
coaching us. We found a therapist who had been adopted herself. We spoke with
other parents who had adopted older kids, and with those who had adopted Ethiopian
kids.
Little by little, we began to see small breakthroughs. She
asked me how to respond to a classmate who asked whether I am her “real mother.”
A couple of weeks later, I heard her tell a different child (in an I-can’t-believe-you-asked-that tone), “Of course that’s
my real mom!”
After six months, I started to notice that she would take my
hand more readily, and cuddle with me as we read together at night or watched a
movie. I felt so proud of her progress, her successes at school, her enjoyment
of books, her athletic achievements, her connection with friends.
A couple of months later, we went to a circus event where
she got her face painted like a tiger. She urged me to have mine painted as a tiger,
too, so everyone would know we were related. So I did, and we spent the rest of
the day roaming the city with our tiger faces, making people laugh and having a
ball.
Now that we’ve just celebrated our first year together, we all
feel very much like a family. My husband and I can’t imagine a more perfect kid
for us—she’s spunky, funny, smart, sensitive and oh, so cute. We can only
imagine the great things that year two will bring!
Arlene West can be
reached at awest@nybrt.com.
