He Likes It!!

I woke up this morning and as usual checked my email first thing, and saw an email from our agency. "T" did indeed receive his photo album and they said the following:

" "T" loves his photo album. All of the children are calling him “the American boy” and he is very happy about this new name."

So tell me, why in the world did that bring tears to my eyes?

I thought a lot about it during my long drive this morning. With Matthew and Joshua I spent a couple of months staring at their faces that I had taped to my computer monitor at work. They quickly became very familiar and comfortable to me. It is quite a turn around to think that this time, our new son is doing exactly the same thing with our photos that we are doing with his!! And all the while his little buddies are calling him "American Boy" we are thinking of him as "Kyrgyz Son".

We are each beginning the bonding process, claiming one another as our own even though we have never yet met. For the uninitiated it may seem like a strange first step to take in a relationship as important as a parent-child relationship is, and wierd to those who have never done this before...but for us it is normal and natural. And no doubt for all of us, the person or persons we see depicted on paper and growing in our imaginations will be quite different from the real life person we eventually meet. Perceptions will be changed to reality and that will require adjustments for all of us. But for this brief moment in time our imaginations will run wild as we guess at what life will be like with this stranger, or these strangers, who live half way around the world from one another. Our dreams have a bit longer to take flight. But not much longer...soon we will be face to face, performing a dance that might seem a bit odd and stilted to outsiders, but a dance that is nonetheless quite necessary. And eventually, that dance will turn into a waltz as we come to really know one another and find ourselves slowly and gradually in step with one another over time.

Adoption is one of the most fascinting and wonderful life events. I sometimes find myself feeling sorry for those who have "only" given birth! hahahaha! And I'll bet there are those who look at me and think "How sad, she doesn't have any children of her 'own' ".

If they only knew...