Children of Dreams, An Adoption Memoir (17 page)

Upon landing and disembarking at the Hanoi airport, we stood in a long line to retrieve my bags. As we were waiting, we met two other women from Canada that were also adopting. Their adoptions required two visits and they were on their return trip to complete the Giving and Receiving Ceremony. They had already met their new daughters a few weeks earlier.

After going through customs and finding all of my bags, we dragged everything outside into the wet, humid Hanoi air to take a taxi to the Lillie Hotel. There were many vans waiting outside the airport to provide transportation for foreign tourists. We motioned for one, and a driver came over and loaded our bags into the back. I turned on the video camera as we pulled out into the overcrowded streets of Hanoi.

It had been raining and the wet streets sprayed moisture on the cab, making everything look distorted and blurry. The roads were clogged with cars, vans, motorcyclists, bicyclists, and funny looking vehicles called xichlos. A xichlo is a three-wheeled, pedal-powered rickshaw where the driver “pumps” the rider along the road seated in the front.

Honking horns created a cacophony of noise that screamed back at me from the past. Within me an overwhelming sense of familiarity arose as I stared out the back of the taxi. I can’t believe I am doing this again, my emotions shouted, recoiling as fear set in, and my mind, fatigued from lack of sleep, cried out, I’m in a foreign country adopting another child! Somehow out of this mix of chaos, fear, worry, and exhaustion a spirit of peace enveloped me. I knew God would be with me and would calm my anxious heart.

The taxi driver dropped us off on Hue Street at an inexpensive hotel. Located up two flights of brown marble-like stairs, a sign written in English advertised the “Lillie Hotel” in large tan letters. A tall Philodendron in a ceramic pot stood by the stairs. At ground level beneath the Lillie Hotel was the Ristorante Roman where we frequently ate. Jenni
helped me carry my bags up the stairs, and we entered through a solid glass door that opened into a sparsely-decorated, brown-tiled foyer.

Although the hotel accommodations were rather plain, the location was attractive since Hue Street is one of the major arteries into downtown Hanoi. The hotel was also situated just a few blocks from the famed Hoan Kiem Lake, which symbolized politically and geographically the epicenter of the quaint capital of Vietnam.

Exuding warmth and charm and more conservative than South Vietnam, Hanoi had the feeling of an old-fashion town. On the north side of the lake was a labyrinth of little shops where the storeowners sold their wares. It was enjoyable to walk along the streets strolling in and out of shops. The Vietnamese women were always ready to help me find whatever I needed with a warm smile and gentleness so characteristic of their nature. They particularly catered to Western tourists and adopting families offering baby clothes and accessories at very affordable prices.

I was surprised by my first impressions of North Vietnam. I had expected to see more than just vestiges of communism as a result of the Vietnam War. Quite to the contrary, the Vietnamese had adopted a lot of our Western culture—selling our music, speaking our language, and owning their own shops, resulting in a vibrant, capitalistic economy. My uneducated mindset of a people living in apathy or without freedom was turned on its head as the North Vietnamese appeared to be hard-working and content. They showed an endearing love for their children, were kind to me, and harbored no ill will toward Americans.

Against this backdrop of normal everyday life, having been a teenager at the height of the Vietnam War, vivid images from the past still lingered in my mind of the bloodshed spilled. It was hard to forget the nightly newsreels splattered across our television screens showing dead bodies blown apart. The horror of a country devastated by the ravages of war was seared into my consciousness. I didn’t expect it to affect me so deeply after I arrived.

Everywhere were stark reminders and memorials of an era gone by. It seemed surreal to be in Hanoi. I kept waiting for a “bad guy” to show up and handcuff me. I had to remind myself that was another world, another time, and another place. A forgiving spirit over the devastation wrought on their land just a few decades earlier had brought renewal and hope. Vietnam was a land of dreams and vision for the future. Now I had come in search of mine.

Chapter Twenty-Three

This last deception will be worse than the first

Matthew 27:64

December 6, 1999, 5:00 P.M.

I felt exhilarated to have landed safely. All of our bags arrived in one piece, including the one with the broken zipper, and we checked into our room, number 504, at the Lillie Hotel without any problems. I had no tours of the red light district of downtown Hanoi as I had in Bangkok.

Aside from being tired and hungry, my adrenaline had kicked in as I anticipated receiving my baby. I walked back downstairs to the lobby to get more information from the desk clerk on when that would be. The young woman at the registration counter knew Anne, my contact person, as many adoptive mothers had previously stayed at the Lillie Hotel. I was surprised to see the other two ladies from the airport already in the lobby. They were crowded around a young man that I did not know. The young Vietnamese lad spoke very broken English

“Your baby be here soon,” he said to the young lady I came to know as Jackie. She had a husband and five-year-old son back home in Canada.

So that’s how it worked, I thought. Anne had a contact person at the hotel that would have the babies dropped off after the adoptive families or mothers arrived.

He looked at the second Canadian lady, who was an older woman, and said, “Your baby be here soon, too.”

I was excited for them and could hardly wait to hear the same words spoken to me. My heart fluttered in anticipation to meet my new baby. This was the moment for which I had waited so long. The other mothers cleared out of my way so he could address me with news about my baby.

“There is problem with baby,” he said to me.

“What?” I asked. “What problem with my baby?”

I thought he meant some sort of medical problem. My excitement to be in Vietnam and anticipation of receiving my baby evaporated into worry and fear. He started to explain more but because of his poor English I couldn’t understand most of what he said. I briefly reflected back to Nepal and how fortunate I was that Ankit spoke English so well.

“When will I receive my baby?” I asked. I could feel my blood pressure rising as I tried to control the tone in my voice. The receptionist at the desk tried to help with translation, but the most I could get out of either of them was that he didn’t know. Anne would call me tomorrow.

“Tomorrow?” I repeated. That was totally unacceptable.

“Please have her call me tonight,” I yelled at him, “immediately!”

I was visibly upset that I was talking to him and not to her. How could she do this to me? How could she not let me know what was going on and send this guy who spoke such poor English to be the bearer of bad news? Being fatigued and jet lagged from the trip did not help. I felt slighted that the other ladies were receiving their babies and I wasn’t.

The time difference made communication back to the States difficult. It was too expensive to call so we had to rely heavily on fax and email. No one had met us at the airport and I didn’t know who this young man was that was speaking to me. In my anger the only word that seemed to fit was “crony.”

I sent an email to Jill, the International Adoption Coordinator at the adoption agency, notifying her that we had arrived safely but there was a problem. Could she please contact Anne and have her phone me. I related to her what I knew, which wasn’t much, and asked her to please find out what was going on. Nine thousand miles away, I didn’t know what help she could be. The Midwest wasn’t that much closer to Hanoi than Gainesville.

Because the hotel was so small, it was easy to detect other activities of the guests. I discovered the two women whom I had met earlier had their babies dropped off within the hour. I could faintly hear the sounds of a baby crying down the hallway from my room. Jenni and I sat in our hotel room not knowing what to think. I felt badly that she had accompanied me all the way to Vietnam on what was supposed to have been a wonderful experience of adoption and Vietnamese culture. We emptied our suitcases and watched Vietnamese television without interest. The excitement of being in a foreign country had lost its appeal and dissipated into emotional survival, one hour at a time.

“Maybe we will hear something good tomorrow,” Jenni tried to encourage me.

“Yes, maybe,” I responded, still feeling unconvinced.

Jenni quickly dozed off into sleep land but no matter how long I closed my eyes, my mind kept replaying the scenes of earlier in the day. At 3:30 a.m., wondering if anybody had sent me an email or fax, I gave up and went downstairs to the hotel lobby to check, but I found no faxes. I asked the night attendant if I could check my email using the computer in the internet room. In the middle of the night there wasn’t a line waiting to access it. He turned it on and gave me the password, making a note on my account to charge the nominal fee for email use. In comparison to phone calls, it was a pithy penny, but no emails had been received in my inbox either.

I felt like we had been abandoned and forgotten. If it was 3:30 a.m. in Hanoi, it was 3:30 p.m. in Gainesville. The adoption agency would have received my fax, so why hadn’t they responded? I went back up to my room and climbed into bed.

I finally succumbed to a restless sleep with lingering thoughts of the other women with their babies and fear that I may never receive mine. It seemed like only moments later that I was awakened to Jenni moving about in the room. My nightmare returned as I came back to reality.

“I am going to go down to check my email again,” I told her. I grabbed some clothes, quickly dressed, and hurried back downstairs to check the computer.

I found this email sitting in my inbox from the adoption agency:

Dear Lori, I emailed Anne right after I got your fax. She has emailed me back and told me that she has been in touch with her staff person in Hanoi and the staff person staying at the hotel with you. Anne stated that their information regarding the birthmother is she is asking for money. Anne has not confirmed that so she did not want to inform you of hearsay until she has all the facts…it may be nothing, which she sincerely hopes is the case. She says it is a frequent occurrence with the distances and difficulties in communication to get misinformation and also for there to be last minute delays. Anne assures me that they are doing everything that they can to tend to the situation. Anne said
she will inform me once she has concrete information. [The director] said that oftentimes in these situations God is given the opportunity to prove Himself strong and overcome difficult situations. We are praying for God to prevail. Jill.

I had assumed I would be working with Anne when I arrived. It was upsetting to me that she wasn’t in Hanoi, but as I found out later, she lived seven hundred miles south in Ho Chi Minh City. That meant I had to rely on the “crony” who spoke no English.

I shared the email with Jenni without saying anything.

“This is horrible,” she replied.

“I know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Wait to hear something from Anne or Jill. What else can we do?”

Later that afternoon when we walked down to the hotel lobby, we found Anne’s “crony” in a heated argument with another man. About five feet eight inches tall with medium tan skin, he wore beige slacks and a black leather bomber jacket. He couldn’t have been more than twenty to twenty-five years old. The arguing was disconcerting, and I could tell he was not happy to see me. He and the other man quit arguing when they saw Jenni and me approaching.

I tried to ask him one more time for more information, but it was like asking one of my six cats to tell me which one had left an unpleasant present on my front doorstep. If anything, he only exacerbated the situation because he didn’t appreciate my emotional state of mind. The young lady working at the desk tried to translate for me.

“They can’t find the mother. She is hiding,” is all I could understand.

“Come on,” Jenni said. “Let’s go get something to eat in that Italian restaurant.”

We walked down the stairs to the Ristorante Roman just below the Lillie Hotel and sat down in the first booth by the window facing Hue Street. The hostess greeted us and asked us what we were doing in Vietnam, questions I didn’t feel like answering. I let Jenni do the talking. We sat for a long time and I didn’t say anything. Jenni let me think, and I stared out the window watching the cars and motorcycles motoring up and down the street.

The waiter brought us our food and I said a half hearted grace, wondering where God was in all of this. Lots of things went through my mind, some of which seemed irrational. I wondered how much Jenni would understand if I tried to share some of it. I finally put my tea down, looked her dead in the eye, and said, “Jenni, I really feel like there is an Evil that is preventing me from adopting a child.”

She listened intently and I wondered if she thought I was crazy. Again we didn’t speak for a long time and I picked at my spaghetti and slid the meatballs around my plate. It was normally my favorite meal, but I had no appetite. Even though Jenni didn’t know what to say, just her presence was comforting, knowing that she cared and was willing to listen.