Children of Dreams, An Adoption Memoir (24 page)

After time had gone so slowly over the past couple of weeks, the minutes became like a blur. In a matter of hours I would be leaving Vietnam. Joy had come so far in such a short amount of time. I was reminded of I John 4:18, that says “...perfect love drives out fear.” Not that I had given her perfect love, but God in his mercy had made up the difference.

John 16:24 says, “Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”

As we waited at the airport for our flight, I reflected on my conversation with Mr. King earlier. Why had God allowed me to even know about the investigation of Anne? I had to take captive every thought as every cell in my body cried out to Him to bring Joy home. God had not abandoned Manisha in Nepal, and I knew He would take care of Joy. Although she would miss me for a time, as when Jesus left his disciples, He promised them that their grief would turn to joy (John 16:22).

We boarded the plane in the early evening to fly to Ho Chi Minh. North to south, Vietnam is 1,615 miles long and 375 miles at its widest point. To the east, it’s bordered by Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos. Ho Chi Minh is located in the mid to southern part of Vietnam. As I peered out the window, I reflected back to when I flew to Nepal to adopt Manisha. Excited to be adopting my first daughter, I remembered looking down over the flat Vietnamese terrain on the way to Thailand. Little did I know then that just a few years later, I would be back adopting another little girl from Vietnam.

It was 709 miles to Ho Chi Minh, so the flight took only a couple of hours. We were served a traditional Vietnamese meal with chicken noodles that tasted even better than usual since it would save us from being hungry when we arrived. Joy settled in comfortably, and it was fun to watch her as her fear of new things had been replaced by a curiosity to explore.

She was seated to the right of me, her little legs just barely reaching to the front edge. I latched her seatbelt around her and, unlike Manisha, who gave me fits when I strapped her in, Joy was content to sit still. I lamented we weren’t headed to Hong Kong instead of Southern Vietnam. After so many concerns about health issues—scabies, anemia, skin infections, autism, being small for her given age, and developmental delays, I began to appreciate even more how perceptive she was.

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh after dark and although we weren’t able to see much, I could tell it was a lot different from Hanoi. A large city teaming with people, it churned with activity and brimmed with night life that was almost nonexistent in Hanoi. We took a taxi to the hotel, which was a little more upscale than the Lillie. With the Vietnamese adoption done, I felt a freedom I had not felt before. Sitting in a different hotel in new surroundings, I was excited—if only I didn’t have to leave Joy the next day. She now easily went to bed and slept through the night without waking up crying.

The next morning, a taxi took us to Anne’s home and in a brief downtown tour of Ho Chi Minh, I was surprised at how much it reminded me of America. Even more Western than Hanoi, it was a big metropolitan city full of people working, traveling, and enjoying life, a blend of Vietnamese culture and economic prosperity.

Was this not part of what the Vietnam War was about, to give the Vietnamese economic freedom and capitalism? Even today there isn’t religious freedom, but that may soon come. Perhaps the best way to bring about freedom of religion is to provide people with a feeling of empowerment. Freedom in one area is contagious—it spills over into others.

After seeing a little bit of Ho Chi Minh, I was glad to have spent most of my time in Hanoi. If I had to be somewhere in Vietnam for a month, I would have chosen smaller and more conservative Hanoi over Ho Chi Minh.

The taxi dropped us off at Anne’s home. Out front were tropical Vietnamese flowers and shade trees. The building was set back a few hundred feet from the main road, so it had a quiet, secluded feeling away from the street noise. When we walked in, we were greeted by one of her staff who took us to Anne’s office.

I had never met Anne before. She was six feet tall, a rather large middle aged woman, with on-going medical issues with her leg and needing a cane to get around. She sat at her desk in the middle of a spacious, rectangular room with a high ceiling. The desk was cluttered with papers and on the floor stood piles of folders. I wondered how she could find anything.

She rolled back from the desk and stopped her activity to talk with me about Joy. After a while, she told me about herself and how she came to be involved with adoptions in Vietnam. Her many stories reminded me of a cat with nine lives.

“By the way,” she said, “A family in Gainesville, Texas will be here in March to adopt Thi My-Sa.”

Before I could find out more, another adoptive family stopped by. Since they had some business they needed to discuss, I thanked Anne and got up to leave. As I walked outside to take in some fresh air, I met another adoptive parent with his little boy who was about three. We talked and shared our stories.

His new son was recovering from abdominal surgery and had a temporary colostomy. I was touched that he and his wife were willing to undertake the adoption of a child with such a serious medical condition. As he shared with me their adoption journey, he told me about a biological son of theirs who had the same malady. When they got word of this little boy, they knew he was meant to be their child. I heard similar stories from others in my brief stay at Anne’s home. Does God not bring each child to the family that was meant for them?

There were several children that Anne was fostering, and she had also adopted a little Vietnamese girl that was four. Her daughter, Jade, took a liking to Joy and wanted to show us her bedroom. We followed her upstairs and she gave us a tour. Her room looked like any other American child’s—brimming with Disney movies, books, and stuffed animals.

Afterwards we went back downstairs as Anne’s staff had prepared lunch. Joy was clingy and wouldn’t let me out of her sight. I think she feared I was going to leave. She would get excited playing with the other children and leave me, only to come running back to make sure I was still there. She had stacked her little suitcase beside mine to reassure herself I wasn’t going anywhere without her. I hated the thought of leaving her in just a few hours.

One of the cooks came in and coaxed my daughter into another room to feed her. I knew this would be the best time to leave. I didn’t want to let Joy know I was going as it would be too heartbreaking. I would have to slip away quietly. I remained silent without saying goodbye as the staff person carried her off into an adjoining room. I sat a little longer wishing I didn’t have to go. I asked someone to make sure she was happy eating.

“She fine,” she said. “She eating.”

I thanked her and grabbed my suitcase, eyeing Joy’s suitcase that now stood all alone beside her stroller. It would be a difficult three weeks until I saw her again. I walked slowly down the long hallway out front to wait on the taxi Anne had called for me, which showed up a few minutes later.

“I need to go to the airport,” I told the driver. My heart was heavy as I prayed for Joy not to forget me during the time she would remain with Anne. I flew back to Hanoi and slept one last night at the Lillie Hotel, missing Joy immensely. The room was so quiet and lonely without her. Wondering what she was doing, I called to see how she was.

“She is fine,” Anne assured me. “She cried a little when she realized you were gone, but she’s okay now.” I wondered if she told me the truth or if she just said that to make me feel better. Knowing Joy, I was sure she cried a lot.

The next morning I paid the hotel bill and finished packing all my suitcases to leave. It was amazing the clutter I had managed to accumulate that I didn’t want to take home—half-eaten bags of food, diapers that wouldn’t fit in the suitcase, Christmas decorations that weren’t worth saving, and toys that Joy had already lost interest in. After feeling at times like a prisoner stuck in Hanoi over Christmas, my time in Vietnam was coming to an end. The next morning I said my goodbyes to the folks at the hotel; the lady in the “dungeon” who, according to Jenni, made the best Jasmine tea on the planet, and the lady at the front desk who had been so kind.

“Please thank Jenni again for the stuffed animals,” the receptionist told me. One afternoon before Jenni left to return home, my sensitive, young traveling partner had emptied her backpack on the counter and several beloved stuffed animals tumbled out. She had planned to take them to an orphanage, but when she found out how needy the young lady’s children were, she decided to give them to her. It was a touching moment as the receptionist received them from her.

I took a taxi to the airport and boarded the flight back to Hong Kong. Unlike when I left Kathmandu several years earlier, leaving Hanoi was uneventful. As the plane took off and flew over the city, I looked down at the streets and buildings receding beneath me that had been my home for the last four weeks. January 1st, 2000, would soon be upon us, ushering in a new century and millennium full of hope and promise.

I was glad to be on my way back to Gainesville, but part of my heart would remain behind as I thought about my “Bundle of Joy” in Ho Chi Minh. But only for a time—I believed God would bring Joy to me because God loved Joy more than I did. She needed a “forever” home and I needed a “forever” little girl from Vietnam, the second of my “Children of Dreams.”

Faith is refusing to give up, believing in dreams not yet seen, and knowing God gives us both. Hope had already arrived and Joy was on the way. The days till January 25 would pass quickly. I began to think about all the things I needed to buy, like a baby crib, a high chair, and diapers.

I couldn’t wait!

Chapter Thirty-One

Wednesday, January 26, 2000, 5:30 p.m.

He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children

Psalm 113:9

East Coast storm paralyzes airports, roads, rails

January 25, 2000

From staff and wire reports

(CNN) … Heavy snow and strong winds in the eastern United States put the freeze on travelers around the country Tuesday, with blizzard-like conditions closing airports from North Carolina northward and causing significant delays and cancellations of flights into and out of the region… New York’s LaGuardia and Philadelphia International Airport were completely closed. Very few flights took off or landed at JFK and Newark airports, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (CNN.com, January 25, 2000 )

My conflicted feelings wouldn’t be erased until Joy landed safely on the ground in Jacksonville. Anticipation, worry, frustration, fear, hope, and joy wrapped up in one. How the human heart can contain so many emotions at once is baffling. Surely the jars of clay we live in weren’t made for such spiritual beings as we are. Words too limiting to express my emotions, I sat glued to my television screen watching the scene unfold where runways were shut down due to the massive snowstorm. The adoption agency had phoned to tell me that Anne’s flight had been delayed leaving New York because of the blizzard. Anne had another little girl named Amber that she was escorting to a family in the Newark area. Anne, her daughter, and Joy wouldn’t arrive until Wednesday, January 26, around 9:30 p.m. It had been one more unexpected delay and one more day to worry had I let my emotions run rampant.

The last three weeks since flying home from Vietnam had seemed surreal. Nothing extraordinary happened when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000, marking the beginning of the new millennium. Once the initial worry of a global crisis passed, I crammed as much math and reading into the hours as I could so I wouldn’t feel guilty after Joy arrived and Manisha and I skipped homeschooling for a few days. Joy’s room was decorated and made ready with a borrowed crib from the Murphys. I had purchased everything I thought I would need, including a car seat, high chair, diapers, and a diaper changing pad, and hoped I wasn’t forgetting anything important. Joy would be my first and only baby because Manisha wasn’t a baby when I adopted her.

Having such a young one in diapers, single parenting, homeschooling, and working full time seemed daunting, but is this not what I had chosen? I reminded myself that as hard as things might seem in the beginning, no child ever went to college wearing diapers. Mine certainly wouldn’t be the first.

I had made numerous phone calls to Vietnam in the previous three weeks to Mr. King at the U.S. Embassy on the progress of Joy’s adoption. Each day was a step in faith that God would bring her to me. With the beginning of the new millennium, I imagined a new beginning for the three of us as a “forever family” brought together through God’s providence and love. I longed for children years earlier when I was married and couldn’t get pregnant. Memories of a distant past that no longer held me captive, chains loosened from the emotions that bled of hurt and betrayal.

Forgiveness had helped me to let go and embrace God’s love. I hoped God would give me the grace to run the race set before me with perseverance. Single parenting to one child can be overwhelming. Did I really know what I was getting myself into? I am sure Mary, the mother of Jesus, must have felt the same when she found herself with child under dubious circumstances, but she never questioned God and rejoiced over the baby within her womb. The feeling had never left me that there was something missing before Joy. I knew I was supposed to have two children. Now our family would be complete the way God intended.