Mizero

Gotcha Day!

2011-06-13T07:08:00.003-04:00

Believe it or not, it was my mother who reminded me recently that two years ago we left for Rwanda this day. I think THAT is worthy of a blog post!

So we are reading our blog from start to finish as a family- going thru it all again to remember the story, the search, the commitment, the struggle that was our paper pregnancy to Pacifique. And we are planning something special for this wee child- now 2.5 years old- who we met for the first time on the 16th, passed court with on the 19th and had forever with us on the 24th of June.

I've had Pacifique on my brain lately as two years later I learn to deepen my love and acceptance of him and as I fall back in love with his Mother Country, Rwanda. I've got every movie "Rwanda" in my Netflix queue, I'm starting a bibliography of Rwandan history and culture books, and yes... I'm dreaming of returning there. I don't know what is happening inside me, but something is brewing.

Perhaps what is brewing is simply our son, who likes us to call him Mugisha. Blessing.

Quote of the Day (maybe the year?)

2010-01-06T08:26:00.006-05:00

"Live fully and presently and wholly and that is about all you got. Give it your all, wear your heart on your sleeve, and be guided with love. Your children and babies need you to plan for the best, pray for beauty and grace, and teach them how to go through when things get tough."

Written by me to a group of women planning homebirth after a previous cesarean section. Recently their online group began talking about my story, since I'm the poster child for catastrophic rupture; their worst fear. I had the opportunity to address some of their inquiries and assumptions, as well as share the story of Trace's birth and death. It was quite a moving experience and this quote was some of the wisdom that came forth.

Colorado Trip Photos

2009-12-28T23:49:00.022-05:00

So way back when in October we had a great trip to meet Scott's family in Colorado. I'm wishing right now that I had some photos of the moment we got off the tram, doors opened to a whole audience of people awaiting their loved ones... black roping dividing us from those waiting. Mims and Pops stood on one side, us lugging all our stuff but most importantly their new Grandson on the other side. We see each other and both Mims and I begin crying. I have just kept a vision for more than three years and traveled half way around the world to a very foreign place and in that moment of looking at Mims and Pops laying eyes on their grandbaby for the first time, I am overwhelmed by a sense of some strange heroism... taken aback completely by the fact that I now know I did not do this for myself only... but that my journey toward Pacifique was truly for many, and for this mother of my dear husband.

Please enjoy some photos of our time in Colorado. Pictured below are Ariah's Uncle Patrick and Aunt Cari (Scott's sister and BIL) and his mom and dad (along with us).

Update on Clementina

2009-12-22T23:39:00.003-05:00

Well, it has been a while since I posted what I knew of the situation with Clementina. In that time, I have become skeptical of the credibility of this situation posed to me by our friend Happy. Before I sent any money to Rwanda for Clementina's care, there were certain specific questions that I wanted answered completely: like what hospital she was in, which bed number. What was her prognosis if she received medical attention or surgery? What of the sick baby? I did not receive answers to any of these questions. The lack of information made me suspect, but I kept at it with the help of some wonderful women who also have come to know and love both Clementina and Happy. We all tried everything we knew to get accurate information- calling Rwanda and even asking an American acquaintance now living in Kigali to go to the reported doctor and hospital to get information about Clementina. Her efforts were tireless, but she was unable to set her eyes on Clementina.

Some of you have donated, but please know that I am holding on to the donations until I have spoken with you directly regarding how to proceed. Please be in contact with me if you have sent something along... I have tried to reach a few of you to no avail.

I hesitate to write much about this here, as I do not want to add drama to an already tough situation. Suffice it to say I am very sad and worried. Sad because Happy was a good friend to me and others and I hate to believe that he knowingly misrepresented something in order to get money. Worried because maybe Clementina is indeed sick and in trouble... and if she isn't then it is going to be very difficult to help her going forward since my only way to her was thru Happy.

That being said, I am also grateful and proud that I listened to my instinct, slowed things down and asked questions. I am happy that I was able to have integrity with people's money and that I worked so hard to verify the facts of this situation.

I will keep you posted if anything develops.. and again, if you have sent a donation but have not spoken with me, please contact me.

Blessings,
Jaya

Clementina Needs Help

2009-12-05T07:18:00.000-05:00

Our family has been contacted with news that both Clementina and her young baby have been hospitalized sometime last week. Apparently Clementina has some growth or tumor on her uterus which is causing vast amounts of pain and needs to be removed urgently. Last reports said that she was in the hospital in excrutiating pain, yelling and screaming and crying for her baby who apparently is very sick with Malaria.

It has proved difficult for us to get all the information we need about Clementina and her case, but we do know that she needs care now and that the hospital will not operate until they are paid to do so. Without medical insurance (which Clementina does not have) the surgeons will not move forward with treatment. We are trying desperately to obtain doctors numbers and emails so that I can communicate directly with them about her needs and prognosis should the operation go smoothly. They need 1,20o USD to get this woman medical care and home again to her family, not to mention the fact that Clementina's landlord is now coming forward asking for the four months back rent she has not been able to meet due to her physical condition deteriorating. Rent is $50 a month, so I need to get them $200 for rent alone if I do not want the kids to lose their house at this moment in time.

I cannot really explain the feelings of unease and worry that I have been sitting with over the past few days as I have learned about this (I should include Ariah and others as well who have grown to love Clementina and her family and are very dedicated to them- I know that many people are sick about this, frustrated with the lack of information and also the feelings of helplessness and worry for Clementina's life). As a privileged American and a woman who showed up at a random moment and saved the family one time already, it is me who is being looked to to again move mountains. It is likely that the only hope of this problem being remedied lies in my hands and the hands that surround us. That is a heavy weight to carry at times like these, and I have had to think long and hard about what it means to have someone's life in your own hands... and those of her 5 children as well. They need their mama home and well. Without her, they are orphans too, maybe not with such a bright future as Pacifique has.

Where you come in... I am sure we can get the money wired over there in time for Clementina, but Scott and I don't have it yet. We need to fund raise it. We have some of the funds already, almost half maybe combined with efforts of some friends in the Bahamas who have come to know and love Clementina and her children too. Our goal is to wire funds obviously as soon as we have all the information, but we need the funds! Please please please, there is a donate button under the header of this page, please use it if you are so inclined to do something for this family this holiday time.

You may contact me as well privately at jayasun@vermontel.net or jsholliman@gmail.com.

I will keep you posted... I am feeling so responsible for this family and their future, and having the participation of others monetarily and otherwise meets my desire for help and care and brings such relief. Who knew that on the anniversary of the day our son was found, St. Nicholas day, we would be deciding the fate of a mother and her kiddos too.

Be blessed,
Jaya and family, Clementine's included

Happy Birth Day, Pacifique!

2009-11-15T16:08:00.003-05:00

Once there were two women who never knew each other
One you do not remember, the other you call Mother

One became your guiding star, the other became your sun

The first one gave you life, and the second taught you to live it
The first gave you a need for love, the second was there to give it

One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name
One gave you a talent, the other gave you aim

One gave you emotions, the other calmed your fears
One saw your first sweet smile, the other dried you tears

One carried you and birthed you, that was all that she could do
The other prayed for a child, and God led her straight to you.

Now, which of these two women, Are you the product of?
Both, my darling, Both, Just two different types of love.

~Anonymous

As we celebrate the birth of our dear son, Rukundo Pacifique, it occurs to me that we have not to date had any ceremony: no blessingway for the new mother, no birth passage to serve as a marker of welcome to this world and our family, no welcome home gathering or celebration upon entry to the US, and now, on this day we choose to celebrate Pacifique’s birth, we are not even having a gathering of community for him, for us. Oh, how I long for some sacred ritual or marker of his coming to us, of us coming to him; of the circle we have completed.

So in this age of technology, it dawned on me: I can request writing, blessings for Pacifique and his life, on his journey here to this Earth and to our family, from those who are gathered around us, who have been with us all along.

If you will please leave a blessing, a prayer, a thought in the comments section, I would be so grateful and happy to collate them in a little wee book for Pacifique to have along side him in this life of his. So that in some way, as he grows, he will always know the love he has been given, the gratitude and joy with which we celebrate his life and his getting here. So that he will see, know, just how many people have witnessed and celebrate the Miracle of him joining our lives in physical form.

Thank you, dear ones, for keeping the circle around us all. We are blessed indeed.

Rwandan Family Aided by Vermont Community

2009-08-10T13:18:00.027-04:00

When we were finally refused our adoption request in June of 2008, I knew I could either in that very moment of holding that dismal piece of official letterhead praise or curse God. I decided with a deep inhalation to say "thank you" and believe that miracles can occur in ways that hurt and ways that make us blissful. This refusal was a miracle showing us where a door was closed, where our child wasn't- not in Rwanda in June of 2008. I could have felt many things in addition to anger... guilt, shame, embarrassment after holding our own hands out to many in this community and then taking the money to travel all the way to Rwanda only to fail at achieving bringing home a child. "Thanks for the money... I had a great life-altering trip to Rwanda!" In fact, there were all the above feelings of course, but we focused on the acceptance and gratitude mostly. I knew that I went for a reason, and the truth is we assisted an entire family because of my trip at that particular time. To the family, I was an angel who came into a desperate situation and changed their lives forever.

While in Rwanda in 2008, a young Rwandese man named Happy befriended me and took me to the slums. Happy knew a family who was suffering greatly- a widow with five young children who lived in a "house" literally falling down around her. My blog entry about that woman, Clementine is here. In the time since meeting her, our family and other friends in this community and a dear friend in the Bahamas have successfully sent all her children to a good school, clothed them, helped her move twice and taught her to make jewelry. She lives now in a beautiful home in a good neighborhood and has a small store that she runs out of her front room. Her neighbors are supplied with fuel, grains, soap, and other various staples and she is able to pay for rent and food on her own!

She still struggles as many Rwandese do to supply everything needed for her children. In an effort to keep supporting her, I asked her to make as much jewelry as she could in the days I was there. On the day we left Rwanda, Clementine brought the jewelry to me and I now have the task of selling it for a better price than she could receive for it in Kigali...

Joyeuse before and after our assistance
... isn't she beautiful?

Mama Clementine could not wait to get Ariah into her arms. The walk to Clementine's place was about 15 minutes, finally taking us between homes and gardens, laundry lines and privy's. As we we approached Clementine's, people were yelling to each other, to the family, that we were coming. Clementine ran up to Ariah, gasped, covered her mouth with her hand, began to cry and then grabbed Ariah up and held her on her hip. She hugged Ariah and wouldn't let go and for the long while where her eyes were closed, I imagined that Clementine perceived this beautiful 7 year old American as her life-saver. The one who changed the lives of her entire family. Of course others helped, but I don't know what Clementine knows about the people that helped to change her life and the lives of her kids. I just know that she was grateful beyond words to Ariah.

Ariah had brought along some necklaces of her own to give to the kids. One got given to a neighbor girl rather than Clementine's child. It was definitely overwhelming to be in a sea of kids who all wanted to touch Ariah and us as well, and not obvious which ones were Clementine's kids at first. (The boy in the green and baby on photo right are Clementine's.)

The little girls on photo left and right below are Clementine's kids. The one in the pink next to Ariah never left her side or let go of her hand.

The same two children last year when I visited their home...

Clementine's new home! In a great location with cement floors!

Her store supplies are on the left of the photo, but she uses the front room as a sales location as well. In time, with some additional money raised, Clementine and my friend Happy will build a shed type cupboard to enclose the supplies from the elements.

Clementine before our help in the photo below- she was so worried and sad when I met her, just hopeless and helpless. When we saw her this time, she was happy and even had bulked up substantially since they now have food for their bellies!

Many people have woven a web that has sent us to Rwanda twice now. Each time, we were able to touch other people as well as ourselves and we hope to continue the support of this mom and family as well as the orphanage and others. I offer this blog as a tangible way to say thank you to each and every one of you who have helped along the way. You have indeed shifted many lives with your love and compassion. Should you desire to contribute financially or in any other way to the continuation of support to this family, please let me know at jayasun@vermontel.net.

PICTURES FOR YOU

2009-08-05T23:37:00.016-04:00

Meeting Nola for the first time

Pretty proud I learned to carry him african style

With our dear neighbors

Pacifique with his Great Grandfather age 91

Ariah and Pacifique

cabbage head

Housekeeping (not the kind you will rag on me for)

2009-08-05T22:53:00.006-04:00

This entry doesn't count as real writing; I have had on my to-do list "Blog Entry" for weeks now and I just never get to it. I guess there is nothing pressing and I don't feel obligated to write, and hanging with the kiddos is taking all my time or something. That and I clearly don't know what to write about now that we're home. Anyway, do stay tuned for some re-vamping, maybe add a playlist or something as well as post pics from Rwanda. Coming soon...

But for now, two things: 1) If you sign in as "anonymous" and neglect to sign your post (nearly everyone last post) I have no clue who you are. Maybe you want it that way, but this blog thing certainly seems personal enough on my end (I think I've shared deeply intimate stuff with you) that it warrants you signing your names to any comments. 2) Either I am a crappy writer and failed to get my point across or something... My post about when do I give up entirely was not about me wanting a spotless home above all else. It was not about me valuing cleanliness more than the precious moments of childlike joy. It was not about me not feeling thankful. Heck, it wasn;t even about what the kids will remember... really.

It was about the in and out of my days. It was about the "if you give a mouse a cookie" syndrome of motherhood and the struggle a meager homemaker and housewife and mother has... the ongoing attempts to "do better" or "do more" or "at least get dinner on the table" that in my case, anyway, are typically met with failure by the end of a day. That attempt to finally once and for all get the entire house vacuumed rather than the move-the-vacuum-around-all-week-from-room-to-room running behind. The futile attempt of course.

Can't I be grateful for the miracle of my family and also be struggling as a mother and housewife and homemaker? Give up entirely? Really? Are there really those of you out there who give up on it entirely? Wait... don't answer that. I cannot imagine. No, you must struggle as I do to get it all done- the homeschooling, the fun, the snuggling, the nurturing, the cooking, the errands, the spontaneous wrestling, the cooking, the communicating with your spouse, the family meetings, the gardening, the cleaning, the cooking, the laundry... the alone time where we as moms take care of our precious selves... oh, and earn some supplemental income too. I can't imagine letting any part of it go entirely.

No, don't you fret. I am not missing the important things in life. I know how important each moment is, that is a lesson not lost on a mother who has buried the future of her beloved child. I do not miss the importance of children and their joy- after all, I have searched the world over for our child and brought him home. In fact, I get it. Look at the pictures on that blog entry. Look at the faces of the children. I get it. Really.

But I struggle to do it all like so many moms do.

Over and out. Stay tuned. Rwanda pics to come.

When Do I Just Give Up?

2009-07-20T16:50:00.011-04:00

I am stuck in the never-ending cycle of thinking I can get the house clean, organized, and well... peaceful. It goes like this: Evening time and I am looking at the house trashed from the day and I think, "Tomorrow I will really bust my ass and get this house whipped into shape! I will even make a nice dinner. Finish the laundry, get the accounting done and bills paid, follow up and the odds and ends of the adoption." I go to sleep and try my darndest in the morning. I make good progress despite the fact that the phone rings off the hook and my mom tells me more stuff than I had imagined when I call to ask a simple question about the company picnic. Around 11:00am I realize that I am not making such good time as I had hoped, am behind already in my prediction of just how much I can get done in one day, but Scott reminds me that there is still day left... except that I need to think about making dinner NOW because dinner can be a major production with everything else going on around here interrupting things. If I need something out of the freezer I should have done that last night so it would be thawed. So nevermind the freezer.. wish FlyLady had sent a reminder about that. Hmmm... peer in the fridge... nothing obvious, might as well wait till later. Lunch time for the kids. Today Ariah invited a friend over so she could be occupied while I worked. I even had a whole list together and resolve to do it! So... lunch... by now I have caught on that the girls have converted the almost clean living room into an American Girl hide-a-way.

Then I eat lunch myself, sitting amongst the dirty dishes left on the table by the girls, feed Pacifique and encourage the girls outside. They skip the bathing suits and sprinkler and head for the plethora of blackberries instead; they are on a mission to make soup. A while later, they are lugging the house furniture out to the front yard. Gawdzukes... my June Cleaver plan is unraveling! They are looking for paper, and finding the rolls of tape. The kitchen becomes a large scale STICKY (think lots of honey to sweeten their "soup") disaster and my hopes for a clean house and peaceful dinner go outside with the table and chairs.

I am quickly becoming June With A Cleaver! Turns out they have decided to have a sale of their blackberry and now mint echinacea soup in the front yard. Ariah's friend apparently can't do this so easily where she lives off the beaten path in the hills. We are in town, almost at the crossroads, so we get a bit of traffic here and the girls look like ants going back and forth from front yard to house to gather supplies.

They set the price and it is not priced to sell, I'll tell you. Judging the size of the miniature shot glasses they have lined up at the front of the table, and wondering how much dirt is in the "soup" I cringe and resolve to hide in the bushes so I am not regarded as anywhere near involved with the sale. With time, they manage to sell thru the soup and head for the kitchen to raid the organic lemon juice supply and more and more lemonade is made. Scott has returned from his errands and gives them appropriate plastic cups. At some point, they discover that holding Pacifique up to the road along with their lemonade sign really attracts the customers. In the end, they have a blast and make a huge profit.

So now Scott is cooking dinner, the kids are counting their loot, and I am blogging while Pacifique fusses on the floor in the other room. The office desk is a complete mess and I am finding myself with my hopes for today dashed but planning how to correct this insanity tomorrow. After all, it is a new day. Right?

Afloat

2009-07-08T15:37:00.004-04:00

Many would wonder why if I fought this long and hard to find Pacifique why now I would be torn inside out, feeling inept and awkward with my ability to parent him. I used to be a good mother: loved mothering fiercely. People even wondered why "me" of all people had to lose a child; as if the mother who frequents the Rutland, VT Wal-Mart and slaps her child when he yells would be more deserving of such a retched circumstance.

Pacifique is gorgeous: he has the most luscious sateen skin, huge eager eyes, a squeal of pleasure that ends in qiggles half of the time. Heck he even cuddles right into my chest and sucks his three fingers: a habit that pre-existed our time with him, a method of self-soothing necessary for orphanage survival. But now he presses against my heart and lays his warm head just under my chin, and yet I am beside myself at times with anxiety, impatience and anger. He cries and I want to stop up the hole where the noise comes from with any material nearby. Something spills or drops and I am fuming. The normal follow up question would be, "what the heck is my problem?"

I've decided that the learning curve, especially without the running start of pregnancy, required for parenting two children is a steeper incline that anyone with only one child could ever have anticipated. I have never been in this territory before: dividing my already precious little self between the needs of two children. But moreover, I realize that I have work to step into the position (that isn't even the correct word choice)of MOTHER for this wee one, Pacifique. I have been so far reluctant to become or believe that I am his mother.

I think of the woman, his mother, who brought Pacifique into this world. She grew this child under her own beating heart, fed him with her body and her breath, and rode the waves of pain that opened her entire being to allow Pacifique to push past her body and become his own separate life here on Earth. I know what it is to lose a child forever. I imagine this mother everyday, and what she might be doing or feeling. If she walked back thru the door yesterday I would have handed him to her saying I had done the best I could while she was gone. No way could I stand between a mother and her child. But it is time for me to step into the honor, the sacred path, of being Pacifique's mother. Today, I drew my protective circle around him and donned my mama bear claws. Today, if the woman who birthed our son walked in the door, I would pick him up, clutch him to my chest and pray for what to do next. No handing over, no more thinking I am just the temporary guardian of this little soul.

My blessed friend and midwife for Ariah held the space for me to see this aspect of my disconnect to Pacifique and to my mother-self. It has been uphill since, and for the first time in days, I feel I am alfoat. This is uncharted territory, this new life with Pacifique. With the support of many around me, I am slowly coming home to myself and stepping into the love that awaits me and us all.

Tonight Pacifique awoke crying, very early compared to the normal routine of needing to eat. Ariah and I ran up the stairs and found him crying unlike we had heard before. She wanted to pick him up, but I knew he needed his mother's touch, and I scooped him up and encouraged her to rub his back instead. He burped. Twice. Still he cried, but snuggled into me with his entire being. Lied against my core, my heart, with the warmth of his whole everything. This little fellow needs me and only I can sooth him like I did. He soon fell asleep, trusting me with all his weight, to hold him fully. And I will... forever.

Home Now

2009-07-03T05:35:00.003-04:00

It's five thirty Vermont time, and boy are we all jet-lagged. Last night at six, I lay on the bathroom floor moaning and wondering why I felt as if I had drank an entire bottle of cheap booze the night before when I haven't touched alcohol in the time since we heard about our miracle news from Rwanda. There just hasn't been time to drink. Still, I felt as if I had alcohol poisoning and all I could do was moan and complain all day. Not the best homecoming possible, but then at least we got home. Ariah fell asleep with me on the bathroom floor while trying to decide about dinner, crying because she couldn't decide if she wanted noodles or rice or broccoli or green beans. After 15 minutes of painstaking deliberation I took it as indication that she was too tired to do anything but sleep. I managed to move from horizontal to vertical long enough to make it to the bedroom, and we zonked out for the night. That left poor Scott on duty with Pacifique, but he's used to taking care of everything after we have a baby, so to a degree it is par for the course. With Ariah, I had a nasty recovery from the surgery that brought her into the world, and with Trace... well... Of course I wasn't able to do anything. Dad was up with Pacifique twice in the night- but the boy is still asleep for the tenth straight hour otherwise. That is a blessing, since we wondered if he would be all backwards schedule-wise form the time change.

We arrived in Wednesday night, midnight, after a admittedly hellish day on the plane. Flight leaving Addis was late departing, and four people in three sardine can plane seats is uncomfortable at best. There were times I had both children in my seat and the man in front of me nearly decapitated my knee cap when he rammed his seat back into me. Neither Scott or I were able to sleep as the seats are configured so that the only place your head can go is forward when you doze and we all know just how conducive that position is to sleeping. The flight was uneventful but long and when we arrived in Dulles we had about an hour and a half to clear immigration and customs, get our luggage out, check it back thru, check into United Airlines and RUN thru the airport for our Boston flight. We made it, running thru security and cutting in front of people, out of breath. The only truly hairy point was going thru customs with Pacifique. We hand the immigration officer our four passports, and he looks at Pacifiuqe and says, "I need the Yellow envelope". Silence, then he repeats. "Do you have the yellow envelope that came with the visa?" My breath catches standing here in the immigration line, people behind me, the final port-of-entry that we have been anticipating for so long, and I say, "You are kidding, right?" followed up very quickly with a "You officers probably don't joke, do you?" The officer is getting very uncomfortable and nervous. He is kind, not irritated at all, just exceedingly worried for the situation. We go over the details while my heart moves to my throat. "They gave us the passport and visa only, no yellow envelope. No one mentioned a yellow envelope. Scott went to pick up the visa.. .I wasn't there." Finally after about what feels like a suspension of time for at least 5 minutes, Scott digs in the black back pack we have been lugging around Kigali and Addis for over 2 weeks. The one we decided after much deliberation to include our adoption paperwork in even though we were technically finished, rather than get rid of the load and include it in with our checked baggage. He fishes around and pulls out a yellow-tinted manila envelope. "Is this it?" And the officer breathes a sigh of relief. My god, Oh, man my nerves... I could kill the guy right at this point. I guess he just doesn't pay attention to the details like I do. Like if the Consular in Addis handed me Pacifique's passport along with a hermetically sealed yellow envelope, I would likely inquire, "What is this big fancy envelope for with my son's photo on the outside for? Ah, but the point is we had it. If I ever become a Embassy Consular, I will be certain to tell people what that fancy important envelope is for. I will stress it to them, in case they decide to toss it before traveling home to lighten their load.

We board the plane with a minute to spare only to sit on the tarmac for an hour due to bad weather in Boston. Then we fly the hours flight only to land in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to refuel. Yes, you read it right. There was no logic my brain could wrap itself around. We must have been doing figure eights all the way to Harrisburg, if you look at the map DC and Harrisburg are about a 10 minute walk apart. And refueling? We got fuel and found there was a ground stop in Boston, so there we waited for another hour and a half or so. I cannot tell you how anti-climactic that flight was... being so close to my folks waiting at Boston for us, but not being able to get there. When we finally did arrive, we determined what I suspected: there was not enough time for the Airline to get our luggage to the connection, so we are still without bags. Sigh. No wonder we all feel as if we haven't quite arrived yet.

Regardless of arriving late and my butt feeling like a mammoth rock had grown out of it sometime during the night, handing Pacifique to my mother was worth everything it took to come to that point. Watching her do exactly what I did when I first laid eyes on my son and he was put against my chest was the moment I had been anticipating with tears for three days solid. Upon arriving home in our dooryard at midnight, pulling all the last bags out of the van, I looked at our son asleep in his car seat, infant head cocked to one side. Jesus God (yes, I know I am swearing) did we go to the end of the world to pick up this little man, to bring him all the way back here to our little humble home in Vermont. I have been traveling the world over for two years and have finally found what I was being called to. A person, a human being, an entire life that I knew without a doubt was there, calling us to find him. Many wondered what I was after, why, doubted if I really knew. But I did, I have felt this particular child, this particular soul for nearly two years now, and we finally found him. Amen.

More later...

mama Jaya

Laundry in Addis

2009-06-30T00:40:00.002-04:00

I have become the laundra-matic. Why: because my family brought three of each thing: panties, pants, shirts, and they get dirty here in Africa very readily, from the red soil, the dirty benches upon which we wait for paperwork, in the taxi cabs. Not to mention the fact that if you somehow manage to preserve your clothes for the day, Pacifique is sure to throw up on you at least one good one per hour. So, we wash every day multiple times and try our hardest to make our small box of Tide last three weeks. When in Rwanda, itr was no problem to wash and dry. Time consuming, yes, but no problem logistically. Rwanda was in its dry season and it was bone dry and 100 degrees each day, so our laundry dried almost instantaneously. But here in Addis (we got here Saturday night) we are in the rainy season, which means massive downpours and thunderstorms every day in the afternoon and virtually impossible laundry drying situations. At any given time there are diapers and t shirts and panties draped meticulously all over the room- on the doors, hangers, chairs, even the luggage rack. I spend my days obsessed with turning them just right, so that all parts will be exposed to the hotel air system at some point during the day.

So Addis is fine. We are staying in way too nice of a hotel- one that has me seeing dollar signs in place of everything my cornia, (retina?) registers, but apparently there is no other place to stay that is safe and has good water and no raw sewage. It is a world apart from Rwanda, and the whole family agrees that Rwanda felt more comfortable to us. This lkand is strange to us, more foreign. We were fortunate to get in on the weekend, have Sunday to relax, and then beat feet to the adoption work this morning (Monday). The task at hand here is to get a US visa so Pacifique can come into the States. Kind of a vital point, as leaving him here in Ethiopia would really stink.

We were able to get up, go to the doctor for an exam necessary for the Embassy interview and then proceed right to the Embassy to file our paperwork. The man there in charge of adoptions was quite easy to work with, and let us slide by with our lame translations of the Rwandan documents and also said we did not need an interview, which I had understood was an integral part of the process. So we wait for tomorrow for the medical tests to come back, and then they are sent to the Embassy. After that, they will issue the visa to come home to the States. We checked return flights and there are none Wednesday and Thursday and Friday are full. So, we are booked on a Tuesday pm flight arriving Boston on Wednesday, but that will all depend on the medicals coming back in a timely and perfect fashion tomorrow. And then of course the visa being issued in time to make the flight.

But wait... now mom from home is saying that our travel agent there shows us canceled on the Tuesday flight and booked on Thursday, so I guess what this means is another wait and talk with the Ethiopian office in the morning. Argh. Welcome to the transitory lifestyle of private international adoption.

So, if you do not hear from us again, then it is good news and we are on a plane. If we are stuck, we will certainly find the time to write.

Many blessings and thanks for all the love, prayers and well wishes sent this way. It has meant so much to us all.

We did it!!!!

2009-06-26T09:24:00.004-04:00

I only have a second, and am typing on an iPod, so briefly...

OMG!!!! We flew thru immigration in record time (less than 24 hours) and got the passport, walked to the us embassy and finished our paperwork, then took a hot cab (100 degrees outside) to Ethiopian airlines to buy the baby's ticket. We leave Saturday afternoon for addis and hit the embassy Monday!

Woohoo!!!!

Thursday Update

2009-06-25T09:14:00.003-04:00

A quick entry to update you- not going for writer's perfection here, just the basics.

Monday we turned in our paperwork to the Ministry requesting our fancy letter that would give us permission to travel and would also serve to complete the adoption process and enable us to keep Pacifique with us at all times. Tuesday they woman who needed to write the letter was out of the office all day, but with an email to the Minister herself, we were able to get commitment that the letter would be available for us the next day (wednesday). So on Wednesday morning, the Minister followed thru with her word and after waiting for some time in their office, we received the magical piece of paper. If ever there was a celebratory moment, this was it.

So we traveled to the orphanage one last time to deliver the official papers (I'm leaving out all the steps in between for notaries, banks, lawyer payments, etc)and Pacifique was sprung officially from his previous residence.

Returning home was a blessing, but after about 15 minutes of bliss, Pacifique began screaming in a way that indicated severe pain... altho he was simply ravenous. It only took about one nanosecond for us to determine that we were without the bottle we brought from the states. We must have thrown it aside at the art market, traded it hastily for a diaper to catch the one millionth puke. The kid is a fountain. Anyway, Scott ran through Kigali to the baby store to find a smaller version of our Avent bottle for a mere $20 USD, only to find he has spent all of his francs at the art center. Needless to say, it was a bit of an unfortunate introduction to living with us as parents and guardians for Pacifique.

Today we went at opening to the immigration office to request Pacifiques's Passport. That meant a 5 am rise, and one grumpy Ariah Ray. At the counter we explained our situation, hoping to get some compassion and assistance for a process that usually takes 10 business days. We showed them copies of our Saturday tickets to Addis, and explained that we needed the passport by tomorrow at 11 am or else we would be stuck here until at least next Wednesday due to the fact that the US Embassy closes at noon tomorrow and does not accomodate us again until Tuesday. And we cannot leave until we clear the Embassy.

So right now, we are crossing all our everythings that some miracle will happen and we will be able to get a passport (we were told it was impossible, but I knew to clarify: "is it impossible, meaning it cannot be done, or is it very difficult?" The answer was that it is very difficult which if anyone knows, I know, that those are two very different terms)by 11 tomorrow. If you have any prayers at all, please send em our way. I feel like a guy at a dead show, his finger in the air over his head, with a sign "I need a miracle."

So tonight we are headed to a restauarant for the first time with babe in arms. No idea how to handle that. I am slave to the bottle now, and have new appreciation for what a convenient miracle breastfeeding is! Everywhere we go, we need to strategize how to get a food source for this child. Last night he slept thru dinner which made things very enjoyable, today he has been sleeping the last two hours, so I am in for a different experience.

Anyway, he is cute as a button as my mom would say and we already love him to pieces. We will be glad to finish this leg of the journey and begin our travel to Addis. Our goal is SolarFest!

The Wait

2009-06-23T13:55:00.002-04:00

The Wait

It’s possible that by the time I finish writing this post Jaya and Ariah will have arrived back at the motel with the “To Whom It May Concern Letter” letter in hand. If so, in a matter of a day or three we’re flying to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for the second leg of this three-legged run. It’s also possible that the opposite will be true. We don’t know, and if you haven’t gathered by now that business proceedings in Africa have a vastly different nature than they do in the States, I’ll tell you that they do.

(So it didn’t happen today. The girls just returned. The file hasn’t even reached the desk of the woman who reviews it. Twice today the secretary instructed Jaya to come back, the second time, tomorrow. Ahh, but the Minister won’t be in the office tomorrow, so maybe we’ll have it on Thursday. If only! If only they understood what it has taken us (geez) to get to this point, maybe then they would shout, “Give me that file. Let me sign it! Allow these people to unify the links. Let them return home.” And I also hear the gentle, reassuring voice: this will happen when its natural course rounds the bend and glides over that one rightful stone. Be patient. All in good time.)

The language differences, even between English as a first and second language speakers, present significant communication difficulties, and the bureaucracy here seems to me to be considerably less efficient, organized and streamlined that what I’ve experienced in the States. You know, that good ol’ expeditious bureaucracy. I don’t know if my judgment above is ethnocentric or not, but based on experiences it at least appears true.

Yesterday (Monday) we delivered all of our documents to the Ministry of Family and Gender, including our request for the “To Whom It May Concern” letter/cover page, our ticket out of this country (this one’s for you Paul Morgan) with the “lad.” It was a fortuitous delivery in that everybody involved with generating this most precious letter was crammed into a small, bare bones office, including the Minister herself. They all greeted us warmly, even one whom Jaya found rather challenging last year. The Minister held Pacifique, so did the other woman. We presented them with gifts from our homeland: maple syrup, maple candies and the beautiful ceramic creations of our supportive friends and neighbors, Nick and Diane (Rising Meadow Pottery—hey guys, I really wanted to work in the pitch; it’s the least I can do). But equally as important to us flying out of here soon, this letter permits us to keep Pacifique with us at all times. The more time we spend with Pacifique, the more challenging it is to return him to the orphanage each night no later than 5:30. Logistically, it’s a slight hassle, but emotionally it feels sad; it tugs at my heartstrings. Jaya would likely elaborate with more than just sad, but that’s how it feels to me. Our desire is to care for, hold, and nurture Pacifique 24 hours a day. That will happen soon, and if soon is tonight, we’ll rejoice. (Not tonight)

The sisters at the orphanage are always gracious and smiling, and I have no doubt that their manner is genuine. They follow the mission of Mother Teresa. Same garb! The outside grounds, inside the perimeter walls, are clean. Someone tends a vegetable garden in one portion of the courtyard. The Swiss chard, collards, kale, lettuce, onions, etc. look healthy, damage free and green. I’m not certain if the kids eat from this bounty. I’m a little puzzled by the smell that greets me each time I enter through the gate and toward that garden. My guess is pesticide, maybe to stave off the swarms of mosquito “bugs” inside the orphanage. I seem to recall that smell one 4th of July when the field underneath where the fireworks display was going to erupt was saturated with a chemical agent designed to stifle the unprecedented invasion of the winged suckers who spawned outside the city of Denver one summer. Maybe I’m incorrect in my assumption, but it just has that synthetic odor. What are they to do? There are hundreds are children in there, maybe thousands for all I know. Someone told us last night that the current statistics claim 850,000 orphaned children in this small country alone.

Two mornings ago I walked down to the orphanage to pick up Paci and had to walk around the back of the building. When I rounded the corner I was immediately swarmed by, I don’t know, 15 toddlers. Each one ran up to me with outstretched arms, “Daddy, Daddy,” clung to my pants and shirt, and held on for much of my walk toward the one child I can help right now. Frankly, I was a little concerned about having them all clutch and cling to me. Many of them were dirty. Snot ran down from their noses into their mouths. Their eyes watered. Open sores stood out like a raspberry floating in a boat of chocolate. I felt desensitized, a robot on singular mission. In that back yard fifty other toddlers stood two feet tall and stared at me with either hopeful or vacant eyes. I walked down the dark hallway, opened the door to Pacifique’s room, the baby room, where thirty babies reclined in thirty cribs, some wailing, some staring off into space and others sucking from a bottle. A nurse handed me Pacifique, and I turned around and repeated the same march through humanity that had united me with me son. I could try and describe the conditions, the smells, the lack of light in more detail, but I don’t want to. I know that the sisters run as nurturing, loving and comfortable home as they can given the monumental task set before them. The regular staff and volunteers from around the world, as far as I can tell, do their loving best as well. But regardless of all of the goodness behind those walls, it really does appear to be “a hard knock life.”

We continue to wait. That means poolside mostly. It’s sunny and warm (80’s) here everyday. Rwanda is in its dry season which apparently means no rain—nada—from the beginning of June until the beginning of September. So as we wait, we’re the beneficiaries of sun rays. And we understand that our Vermont family and friends are currently shriveling from so much rain. Might as well make another Annie reference, “that sun will come ooooooout tomorrow…” We’ll do what we can to change the weather patterns with our return.

Over and out. And love, love, love!

Papa Scott

Confluence

2009-06-22T01:21:00.008-04:00

I sleep beneath a constant buzz of swarming mosquito bugs. I actually don't really sleep since they are so loud, like a distant hum of a mower or a cluster of cluster flies in an attic window, dying to escape the summer heat. I would like to say that I have been in Africa enough to realize when they are out of the net or inside it, but it isn't true, not at all. This morning when we woke up Ri to begin what has become a torture scene of taking a shower, we smashed four blood filled bugs inside the net.

The other night when I finally slept I dreamt of Ariah dying, a disturbing dream which fortunately I awoke from. Those of you who have lost your children know the hell I refer to that is so real in a dream, but when it actually becomes your life you awake only to find you are living hell and only your dreams actually serve as an escape at times. Now enough time has elapsed since Trace's death that I no longer have that sinking feeling when my eyes open upon waking and I take stock of the fact that unfortunately I am still alive and my life has become an unbearable nightmare. Now, even before Pacifique, I have found light in the days and gratitude for my life which I very nearly lost. I have circled back into a good life where my waking brings relief from the fears that manifest in my dreams, like Ariah dying. I awoke with her feet in my face (she was sleeping Pippi Longstocking style) but oh, how I didn't care... I just grabbed her red, Africa stained feet and embraced them, grateful to feel the warmth in her body.

The firsrt time our second son was put into my arms, I marveled silently at the warmth eminating from his body. His warm baby head was the frist thing I noticed, it felt so very different than holding Trace cold and stiff from the morgue. I did not expect to be comparing the two in that way, deep in my mother bones, my mother heart and my mother breast and my mother tears recalled the feeling of despair holding my cold son. And with Pacifique's warmth against me, milk breath in my ear, baby inhalations against my chest came a gift I was terrified I would never receive; the blessing of mothering another child.

As I lay under my mosquito net last night, having had to give the son I am loving by day back to the orphanage beds by night, listening to the swarming around me, I feel I am at the confluence of many many losses. Finally arriving to the place I have held steadfast to for two years now, searching the world and the ethers and our hearts over, I can finally rest. It was no easy feat to steer this tattered and weatherworn ship into harbor, but we are here. And now, while I could not afford to stop and look at her hull while the journey was underway, I can get off and take stock of all that happened along the way. I have lost a son, but never the dream of having a son to care for. I have lost my womb, but never the instinct to bring a child into this world, into our home. I have lost my best friend, dear Amy who passed over two years ago to the day that we received Pacifique as our son. But I have not lost her dream of raising children gently and wholly and of adopting herslef one day from a place like Africa. I have lost in many ways, or been estranged from, my cherished friend in my hometown, one who began the process of adoption in Rwanda with me, and did not finish her dream. I have not and will not lose my love and gratitude for her. And so as I lay under my net, I close my eyes and let myself breathe, perhaps really breathe, for the first time since Trace. And with the breath comes an enormous wave of overwhelming emotion. I can feel all these losses fully for the first time, and all at once. My confluence is here and it is where I move from loss to life and celebration. I don't know how long I iwll be in this harbour where I feel the losses of Trace and my womb and my friends so accutely, but soon I will be moving on in a new way toward home.

Blessed be.

Our son, Rukundo Pacifique, was found here on December 5th 2008, by two young boys. His mother dropped him here in the bushes. We haveall gained so much in finding him, and he has also lost a great amount. We feel his story pulsating through us. May his ship be at harbor as well.

Back on the Horse

2009-06-20T15:00:00.005-04:00

This time around I'll save all along the way.

Right now I don't possess the wherewithal to recollect what I lost last night. No, instead I'll reflect on today's events. Swimming has become the most popular activity when we're not conducting business, and today was business free. All Ariah wants to do is play in the pool, which we're so grateful to have available to us since the motel is modest, quite nice, but modest. About all Ariah has going for her, other than heaping love on her new brother when he's with us, is the pool. We have a television, but as Ariah has noted, "It's all grown up television, definitely not kid's stuff." Keeping Ariah happy, not at the complete expense of everything else, including ourselves, has been a priority. No, we didn't drag her along on this transcontinental journey; she wanted to come. That felt good to Jaya and me, having her participate in the acquisition (sounds strange but it's accurate) of a new brother, seeing his homeland, and most importantly feeling connected to this monumental family experience. And we both knew that it wouldn't be all vanilla ice cream cones and bike rides. Ariah has been our only living child for seven and a half years, and we've chosen the attachment parenting route. That means mountains of attention. Suddenly she's out of her element, no friends to lean on for play (support or respite), Rwandans everywhere gawking at her (since the other day I've seen plenty of other white people here, but not one other white child), and a new baby brother who is garnering so much attention, obviously. I was sitting next to Ariah at one point today, Pacifique in my lap, and I’m giving him love: chanting, blowing on his belly, stretching his arms and legs, rapping in baby lexicon, and the whole time I’m also observing Ariah’s reactions to this play. It appears that she’s confused, maybe a little jealous. One moment she’s reprimanding him for touching her with his foot then next moment she’s asking to hold him. Judging by her facial expressions, knit brow, scowl; ear to ear smile and full moon eyes, she’s at the mercy of this grand and grand scale transition. I’m not worried. She’s a grounded little girl, full of love, full of compassion, full of grace and nurturing. No, Pacifique isn’t black baby doll Isaiah; she can’t be the present mother she is with him in a sling on her shoulder, but caring for Isaiah has taught her how to hold and kiss and love her new baby brother, in embracing half of their emergent, paradoxical relationship. Did I mention what a saving grace that pool has been?

One more thing. I asked Happy, a Rwandan man whom Jaya befriended on her last trip over here, what the role of the father is in this culture. “Is the father involved in raising the child?” He said that the father’s responsibility is to provide, not to raise and nurture children. He said that if a Rwandan man walked the streets as I did the other evening with a baby in his arms, people around him would say, “He’s turned American.” I said that I had wondered about that when my walk draw the attention of everyone. Happy chuckled, “Men here, unless maybe they’re highly educated, don’t participate much in raising children. The man tells the child to do something, and the child does it. ‘Go to bed! You go to bed.’ ‘You can’t go out! You don’t go out.’ ‘Do this job! You do that job’ ‘Don’t you cry! You don’t cry!’ No, the men here don’t do the children so much. But they do know about you American men.”

Alright, I’m out of here, but not before acknowledging all the loving messages people out there have been sending. They’re blessing us for sure, helping us to feel supported and connected. And Esther, wow! Thank you for the beautiful bouquet. We love you! All of you.

Papa Scott

Photos you've been asking for

2009-06-20T02:01:00.013-04:00

So it takes about 30 minutes here to upload one photo, and beyond being infuriating, it has also just simply not been do-able due to our hectic schedule. But here goes, I will try to see how far I get for you all.

The road to the orphanage

Outside the orphanage gate before meeting Pacifique for the first time

Ahhhh... finally.....

All together outside the doctor's office

Happy Father's day!!!

More to come later... but for all of you who are wondering, we passed court yesterday! Scott spent three ours writing about it, but it is in the ethers now... needless to say, he is our son, but we cannot leave the country with him until we get the letter from the Minister and the Rwandan visa. No idea how long this will take, but it could be a while. We are on African time... Court was a trip- sitting there with Rwandans in pink gowns (picture hospital gowns) which inicate they are criminals. Adopting a baby all in french with inmates present to witness! Whatever- the point is, it is all moving along and for real this time. Going to pick up Pacifique now, more later.

We have an itouch now and can read all your posts and encouragement and tears immediatley here at the hotel. How wonderful the technology is. Your words and hearts are bring us to tears constantly. It is so meaningful, bless you all!

One from Dad

2009-06-19T06:57:00.005-04:00

Right now I'm feeling extremely frustrated and disappointed. I just spent hours, literally hours, drafting a lengthy, detiled post, and when I went to publish it, poof, it disappeared. Apparently the wireless connection had expired or something. I really can't believe it. Below is what I had saved before we went to dinner tonight, a small sampling. I'll post it to salvage something of the offering I had attempted to make to the blog. I don't have the poop to revise it or add more at this time. Nighty night.

Papa Scott

Truthfully, I haven't the foggiest idea of where to begin, so this might read at times like a stream of consciousness, or maybe not. Like I said, I don't know where to begin.

Pacifique is beautiful. Right now he's sleeping in a basinet on top of a table next to me as I write. Ariah sits next to him playing games on the I Touch her uncle lent us for the trip (hi Toph). The weather here is lovely, sunny and warm, though the pool at our motel is unheated and nearly unbearable to stay in for more than a few minutes.

I had a remarkable experience yesterday evening. We needed to return Pacifique to the orphangage, within walking distance from our motel, by 5:30. We checked into our room at 4:45, and Jaya had promised Ariah she would swim with her that afternoon. The reached an agreement that I would return Pacifique while the two of them swam so that we could honor the return time and then get to dinner. I bundled up the little guy, cradled him in my right arm, slipped his baby bag over my shoulder and set off. It must have been rush hour judging by the car traffic and the mass numbers of pedestrians walking the sidewalks. (This ain't rural Vermont by a long shot!) People, people, people everywhere! Here and there, among thousands, I spot another person with white skin, but I'm a little white buoy on a beautiful black sea. I'm pretty certain that I caught the gaze, no penetrating stare, of about 3,000 Rwandans--maybe more--on that walk. Here I am, a single white man walking the streets of Kigali with a baby in his arms. I have no idea what the role of the father is in this culture; I haven't seen any with babies. Of course that only means that I haven't seen them. Some people in their cars honked at me, grinned tooth baring grins, gave me the thumbs up. Others just stared, expressionless. I tried to say "hello" to everyone. That minimized some of the awkwardness I felt in being stared at. I quickly embraced the fact that these people were curious of me. No one gave even the slightest hint of aggression or disqust, though I did wonder if they felt that way about me. The truth is, according to our lawyer and driver, is that they are overjoyed, grateful and in awe of the fact that an American is taking one of their own into a home in the States. This morning, in front of the court building (I'll talk more about that in a minute), a number of women came up to us, speaking their native tongue, smiling brightly and ooing and awing over Pacifique. Everyone, these women included, who finds the courage or feels the desire to talk with us also mentions Ariah. "Oh, are you the sister? You happy, now you have baby brother." It's nice to hear, though I think it overwhelms Ariah; she just kind of grins and partially averts her eyes. (Remember what I said about stream of consciousness)

Music in My Heart

2009-06-18T15:06:00.003-04:00

So we were on the plane and Ariah was leaning over onto my chest, snuggling up. She is the one who was sure a baby was coming to us from Rwanda . She knew it was a boy. She knew the Minister said yes the day before she informed us of our approval. The girl is in touch. She is leaning on my chest on the airplane, so quiet she could easily be asleep or just barely there, and I hear her say, "You have music playing in your chest."

Course she also told me I had a parade in my belly, which was accurate as well, seeing that I was as bloated and gaseous as could be from the airplane food that they serve every two hours.

Back to the music... turns out, Ariah has been right all along. I do have music in my heart. Pacifique is a blessed boy, he smells good (once you get the orphanage smell off him) and he is ever so soft on the skin, he has beautiful brown skin and eyelashes that go up to his eyebrows. He smiles and coos and, well... spits up incessantly. I'm wishing I brought a lot more clothes for him tahn I did, cause we need to change outfits constantly.

So yesterday was successful going thru the first step with the adoption, the sector. Apparently here we get a fancy Act of Adoption filled out where we were required to show lots of detailed papers for Pacifique. We walk into the halls of the sector which are dark and gloomy, and Pacifique startles and flexes his back. His eyes open wide and he becomes tense. It wasn't until today when I was outside the orphanage with Pacifique and walked into the halls of the orphanage to the baby room that I realized what he was reacting to. He did the exact same thing with his body as we entered the orphange, so I am guessing the dark hallway reminds him of his residence, which while they really do a marvelous job considering the situation taht they face, really isn't where any child should have to grow up. Looking in the baby room this morning, seeing Pacifique's bed and roommates was quite shocking. I do not think I have processed it at all yet- a dark, stuffy room filled with cribs so small side by side by side and filled with very small babies. Pacifique really does not cry with us, and he has had a life of un-attachment parenting so far. He is in his crib all day I suppose, gets fed when he is lucky. So he has learned to roll with it, not cry at all, and be tough.

Our document was ready yesterday, our swell lawyer went to the serious court today and was able to obtain a court date for us tomorrow at 8 am! Holy moly! Then I guess he is officially ours, although we cannot leave the country until a few more important steps are done, which could take a while.

We have checked into a hotel tonight after having stayed with dear friends the last few days... the hotel is very nice and accomodating, has wireless, a swimming pool, a fire at night, breakfast in the morning, and is at a very nice location. Right across from the famous Hotel Rwanda, the Mille Collines. Tonight the front desk man helped with my computer. A young Rwandese man, who when he bent down to type in our internet code revealed a mass amount of deep scarring to his skull. It took everythig I had not to reach out and run my hand along the criss crossing 8 inch scar lines, weeping.

So tomorrow we have court! Cross you fingers, and hope we don't have spit up (which this kid gives new meaning to) on the judge like we did on the passport photo equipment today. Reading all your messages and seeing you all write has been amazing! Truly a highlight of our days. Keep it coming and God Bless!

Arrived Today, Tuesday

2009-06-16T16:02:00.003-04:00

So we are all here safe in Kigali, Rwanda. I certainly have plenty of blogging material due to the hectic and chaotic and mainly disappointing nature of our trip here, but the time is lacking to use the stories and observations usefully. Scott awaits me (well...sorta, he's fast asleep) in bed, and we have to get up early tomorrow to begin the day.

Long story short, we left for Boston on Saturday at noon, stayed at very nice hotel, woke at 3 am to get to airport, flew like clockwork to Dulles for our 10 am trip to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Well, the sign at the gate says 10:30, then we hear at 11 that there is a maintenance problem. Actually, technically speaking we can't make out any words, just a man making fuzz on the loud speaker, but word on the street as we come to know it after 24 hours of waiting, is that there is a significant maintenance problem. Ethiopian Airlines tells us as little as possible, sometimes things like "we are almost thru cleaning" and "we are just now finishing the repair" but hours fly by until at 4:30 they announce (again, just static fuzz over the PA) that we wil be put up in a hotel. Now the logical overdrive kicks in and I am thinking about 300 people all managing to obtain vouchers and get shuttled to the hotel and then back again for the 3 am check-in now required to make the morning flight. I also begin adding up the cost to the airline for this procedure they are about to invent apparently for the first time, and the best I can figure is that we will all get to the rooms in time to sleep about 2-3 hours and then begin the process back to the airport a full 24 hours after we had done this the first time. I would have gladly accepted cash money in order to save the airline the cost of the hotel and the shuttles (they hold TWELVE PEOPLE AT A TIME, and yes I am yelling!) and the buffet dinner they provided and stayed in the gate itself snoozing on the floor... and it likely would have been more resting!

Long story but we did end up leaving Monday at around 8 am... and the flight was as marvelous as one can get a 17 hour flight to be (and that isn't counting the 3 hours to Kigali). So we just about arrive and Ariah gets sick. For the first time in my life I get to use the white lined bags they so thoughtfully place in the seat pockets. I flash to how those darn germs could have possibly spread from my neighbor to us when we have been strictly quarantined for the past 2 weeks at least. And I flash to how on earth we are going to get thru the airports now, and evade the people asking what is wrong while they hand out Swine Flu information sheets, and flash even more forward to how this could impact our plans and progress here in Kigali. It is truly amazing how quick the mind of a worried, distraught mother can work. Thank goodness I brought Scott along to help keep me balanced. I can hardly get him to look up from his Taoist book the entire time, and I can confirm now that not only can the craziest roller coaster on earth not get a rise out of him, but the flight crazies (cancellation and mayhem that ensued) and the Ariah pukes does not get any attention either. That man is truly patient and flowing. He convinced me that Ariah was merely dehydrated, something that was fixed with some serious sleep and hydration.

So we get into Kigali (all our bags arrived!) and dear friend Julie picked us up. I inquire about court first thing, and hear that there was a big problem that held up the court progress. She informs us that it is now fixed, and things are on track. After being given the option of seeing Pacifique immediately today or resting and going in the morning, we quickly resolve to rest considering all the situation, and go fresh in the morrow.

Yeah, well that lasts about 10 minutes until I say, "are we sure....?" and over rehydration, Julie informs us of the problem Sunday. She got a call from the Sister at the orphanage saying that their doctor had been by and examined Pacifique, reporting that it was likely he would never walk. Progress haults. Julie suggests a second opinion, which they received quickly. A good Belgian doc looked him over and disagreed, coming to the conclusion that Pacifique was likely a preemie and now more like 4 months old developmentally. So he is not walking yet. Anyway, this information spurs us to go meet Paci and bring him to yet another doctor for review.

My goodness. I was a nervous wreck. I didn't know what to expect, I didn't even trust myself to know what to do when I got let in the gates to the orphanage. We really hadn't prepared Ariah for this yet, not that I know how to prepare her regardless, but it seemed so sudden and I was unprepared in some ways. How that is possible after years of dreaming of this child, I do not now.

Anyway, we park at the top of the hill to the orphanage and walk down. We come to the blue gates (thanks Megan for getting me here!) and knock. I notice I have placed myself behind the entire group of us and decide I had better suck it up and move forward. The sisters welcome us and they are so disarming and pleasant and happy. Pacifique has a fever they say, so they want us to get him checked. Eventually a sister walks toward us with a bundle in her arms, She holds him so we can see him, and I greet him for a while with her holding him. Then suddenly he is put in my arms nd it takes just a minute for me to feel comfortable accepting him, actually the minute is more liek the time it takes for me to let myself love him. And when I do, I hold him over my shoulder and feel his warm head against my face, cheek. And I cry. I just cry just as my friend did when she finally succeeded in pushing out her baby into her arms in the tub. She held him and cried, as did I. As I cry, I feel the people move in around me , and sisters are coming from many directions toward us, and i feel I may actually be in a real live Hallmark advertisement.

And Pacifique leaves with us for the rest of the day... Ariah is a natual big sister, holding him so nicely and consciously, loving him, caressing him. It was so good to see her happy again. She says she loves him already just like she loved Trace.

Dad seems happy too, immediately holding him and making him smile. Pacifique reaches out to grab him, his earring and his nose. What a happy day. The doctor is wonderful, sees nothing wrong with the child, and yes, he has a fever which is unexplained to date. Tomorrow we get to go to court and see if we can proceed on to our next court date that will make Pacifique legally our son. But in our hearts, he has been for a long time now.

We're Headed to Rwanda!

2009-06-12T13:52:00.003-04:00

So... I know it has been nearly a year since I have posted, but it looks like it is a good thing I didn't erase this whole blog out of despair and frustration in the interim. We are going to need it again to keep you all updated on our progress with adopting our son in Rwanda!

There were times over the last year (and a year before that) when I thought I would literally die from the agony of never being able to become a mother again... and now after a complete miracle, we have been approved in Rwanda by the Minister in charge of adoptions. We have, through the Grace of God found a son who is waiting for us in the Home of Hope orphanage. Bless the Sisters who prayed on this choice they faced of which of the orphans was to be united with our family. While they first told us there were "no" babies who were young... that they were all 1 year or more... they apparently had something shift, because when my Kigali friend Julie went to meet the Mother Superior, she introduced a boy of 5 months, found in the bush, and named Pacifique, meaning "peace". I knew it was him, immediately.

And so we have a new lawyer who is an angel earthside... she is efficient and professional and extremely timely and communicative. What more could you ask for? She is finishing up all the details and readying for our arrival in Kigali on Monday.

So soon we will be meeting our new son, a boy who gets a second chance at love and safety and family and who gives a family orphaned somehow by the loss of their own son a second chance at life and love and family.

Stay tuned... we will try to update daily!

CHANGE GEARS

2008-07-28T07:36:00.002-04:00

Yes, there has been deafening silence. I feel horrible, guilty, shameful, etc. But there is reason behind it all. For those of you following our journey, you know we had been told we were approved. Well, we kept waiting and waiting for the papers to be signed, and then out of the blue we got a....

DENIAL NOTICE!

Yes indeedy, can you %#$##* believe that? "Our documentation does not quite meet the requirements" in Rwanda. We have no idea what that means other than no. So. back to the drawing board.

It came as quite a shock, and we weren't/aren't updating with all the details on this public forum for a variety of reasons, mostly legal. Some would suggest an appeal in Rwanda, but that is a futile effort we believe, and as of now we are not ready to pursue international adoption in another place like Ethiopia. We are brokenhearted and exhausted.

I packed all the baby stuff away again, and it was hard altho I have to say it is nothing like the feelings I had when Trace died. It did bring up all sorts of the emotions from when Trace died and I am still really struggling over here in my little microcosm of a world. How can it possibly be that a woman who wants to be a mother so badly to a child who needs a mother can't seem to have the cards line up in her favor? It is easy to go to a place of feeling like the Universe is trying to tell me that I am not worthy. I am not sure that God is that personal, though...

Anyway, if you would like to know more, you will need to have contact with me off this public forum. Leave me your email and I will be in touch when I can. You have all been amazingly supportive and kind, and have held me up at some pretty weak times. I only wish I could have some feel-good news, but this journey is not yet at that chapter, I guess.

Along other lines, we were able to completely change the lives of 6 people in Rwanda. The family I wrote about before... the mother was trained to make jewelry by my dear friend Tina, and she has already made so much money that she opened a bank account! Days after we moved her out her old house collapsed to a three foot pile of rubble. I try to keep focused on this... we did not travel to Rwanda for not and I am sure I will be continuing work there in some way in the future. This woman and family are so grateful and they literally have a new life and joy.

Many blessings,
jaya

Downer post

2008-05-14T06:40:00.003-04:00

The adoption is still stuck, stagnant. The explanation we are being given is that the person who needs to sign the document (the Minister by my understanding) is still not in. But I did some fancy calendar referencing and it seems very suspicious to me that the Minister would be out of the office for three weeks straight. Now who am I to pass judgment, but she is head hauncho there and I can only think of three possibilities. Either the adoption agency misinterpreted and she really is there, but just hasn't signed it yet (cause we all know how hard it is to get time to write your name in cursive at the bottom of a page stuck under your nose), or she Minister who was new when I traveled just couldn't hack the job and she hasn't been replaced yet, or they have no intention of signing the letter or just the same, there is no letter to sign. Regardless, it is all out of my control obviously and is discouraging me to no end.

Honestly, I want to quit. Kinda. Let's be honest: if a baby was dropped from the sky and landed at my feet, I would be happy beyond belief. But enduring what seems like an impossible journey at this point puts me over the top. I just don't want to expend energy on it. And you might say, "So don't. Don't think about it." But that is just not possible. If we quit I'll think about it and if we keep going, I will also.

The only thing new here is another wave of nearly paralyzing grief. I can't determine why it is surging now... perhaps this longing for a baby left unsatiated... perhaps the arrival of Mother's day. Perhaps the anniversary of my dear friend's death. Regardless, the nightmarish dreams that I had in the beginning are back. If you have lost a child, you know the ones: where you dream some hell, perhaps your child dies in the dream, and when you awake you realize there is no escape of the hell. You get to live it in real life. It is the exact opposite response from usually bad dreams where you startle yourself awake only to say "Phew... it was just a dream." Someone made a joke to me the other day when I was with Ariah. They joked about leaving our children behind with the facilitator of the group. "And never come back" the joker said, referring to the children. Oh, how he didn't know how that sounded to a mother whose child is dead. On Mother's day we attended a choral performance, some of the singers sang a tribute to mothers to the tune of Amazing Grace. All I heard of it was something about watching your child learn to walk, and holding his hand through this or that... I bolted for the door, needing fresh air and trying desperately to escape the pain of never being that kind of mother to my child.

So life goes on, but there is a painful emptiness here... a suspension between the loss and the longing, an inertia that penetrates me.

Just the other night I watched the most fantastic movie on the genocide to date: "Sometimes in April." It renewed my commitment to Rwanda and the people there. What a heartbreaking story they live every day, a journey that seems utterly impossible and yet it is taken, has been taken, one step at a time for 14 years. What a testament they are to the power of humans to endure.

small post

2008-05-08T10:57:00.002-04:00

Well, to answer everyone's question... no there is no update. I am beginning to really believe that this was all a joke. A nice expensive vacation in Rwanda... the hope we needed to get us through the hell of losing so much. Now though, still nothing and I just can't believe that it will ever happen. I am grateful to be with my family and that feels like enough right now.

Spring is upon us and gardens need to be planted, summer camp needs to be planned for and fuel needs to be saved for. Life happens. So I have let go of the process of this adoption.

I am still feeling very connected to my Rwandan friends, though. Happy has lost his job and all his friends have left for the US. I feel awful for him and wish there was something I could do. Richard has come to the US only to find out how cost prohibitive the college he was hoping to attend is... and now I hear that the baby of the family I am helping is very sick. That is where my mind is, not so much on the adoption.

Mother's day approaches and feels different this year than it did last year. I think then I stayed in bed all day long feeling awful... how could it be mother's day when I had failed as a mother and only managed to "kill" my baby, or so I chose to view it... this year I know I am a mother of all my babies regardless of what world they are in. I am grateful for that healing.

I'm off to dig in the dirt,
Jaya

What A Few People Can Do

2008-04-28T19:25:00.007-04:00

I am at a complete loss for words and hence my silence.. that and I keep waiting for good news (or just plain news for that matter) to share with you all. So the news to report on the adoption front is only that supposedly the Ministry has "approved" our case, but now the Minister needs to sign the letter and she has been out of the office. The lawyer is going back tomorrow to check, but with the way things work there, it very well may require her to go back again and again. Nothing can happen until that letter is signed. Sigh. For a week we have been in limbo over whether or not to celebrate the "approval" but I think we will hold out until it has been signed and is official.

I think I will tell you all of the family we are trying to help...

So on one of my last days in Rwanda, I asked my dear friend Happy to show me the slums. He asked, "Are you sure?... You will cry." "I'm sure. I have been living in a very ritzy American household, I want to see another reality." So Happy took me to his neighbor's house. This is a family of six, he told me, a widow and her children that he has been trying to help for months now. Their church group has gone to clean the house and Happy has donated food and clothes. We bounce up and down through the ruts along the red mud road, Happy stopping along the way to ask through his window to the kids below where the mum of this family is. We come to a stop in front of a dirty house front and out come the kids, followed by their mum holding the five month old girl. "Muzungu" is all I can make out, the rest is Kinyarwanda that I can't understand. We go in to look around at the living conditions.

The roof has blown off, the mud walls crumbling beneath it, and the dirt floor has turned to mud with the April rains. The house is made of two rooms, one for sleeping and one for cooking. In the sleeping room is one mat where the six of them sleep together and the children are covered in bites from the bugs that sleep with them also. Above their mattress is a leaning mud wall, cracked vertically in two places. Happy and I inspect it for a while determining that it is only a matter of time before the family is buried alive while they are sleeping. The other room houses a cooking pot and branches used for fuel. The kids themselves (ages 5 months, 4, 6, 8 and 13) are gorgeous, but filthy. When we ask, we find that the woman feels it is impossible to clean since the mud comes in constantly with the rain and dust from the road. Their source of water is very far away and they can scarcely afford to buy it.

Cleaning this mess up seems impossible, futile. Looking at the wall, Happy and I are thinking the same thing at the same moment. We need to move this family. And so we do...

In a day's time we have met with the mum, received assurance that she will keep a new place clean and safe, heard her ideas for sustaining her own life, found a new house with power and cement floors, paid five months rent, purchased 3 brand new mattresses, collected new sheets and clean clothes, sent the family for haircuts, cleaned them up and moved them in!

Moving them was amazing, the mum was so excited.. can you imagine? In the morning you wake up not sure how you will survive and by nightfall you have a new home, clean clothes and beds, and hope for tomorrow! A crowd grew that day, watching us work and word spread around the neighborhood that a Muzungu and her friend Happy had helped this family. The next day Happy had five more families banging on his gate for help... you can't help everyone, but you can help where you feel called to do so.

Now here in Vermont, some homeschoolers are learning about this family and working hard to sponsor them. One family has sold brownies on a college campus, earning 27 dollars so far- enough to nearly pay for one months rent! On Memorial day Ariah will be selling her famous chocolate chip cookies to raise money for the family. In addition to helping the mum to keep her home and buy food and water, we are also researching sending her to tailoring school so she can learn a skill that will allow her to make money in the future, supporting her own family herself. Next year the kids will need $210 dollars total for all their school fees.

I will forever remember looking into the woman's eyes as we stood in her new house deciding to buy it. I couldn't speak to her with words, but I stood in front of her facing her for a moment, then we hugged and began the move.

2008-04-19T11:12:00.002-04:00

Ha! And I had the nerve to ask you to still read the blog! I haven't been too on the ball lately...

I'm on the ground in Vermont, or so they tell me, but I think I left parts of me in Rwanda... or maybe I took so much home with me, I really can't tell the difference. How amazing to see my family walk into the airport to fetch me! I swooped down and grabbed up Ariah smothering her with enormous hugs. How wonderful to lay eyes on my husband too! But other than my family, arriving home feels utterly anti-climactic. Vermont is, truth be told, more drab and dull than I have ever known it to be. I don't think it has changed, but I have.

I wish I had words to explain what it feels like to be walking in a sea of Rwandan people, smelling their body odor, hearing their numerous voices singing out sentences in Kinyarwanda. I wish I could explain the thing that comes alive inside when a procession develops around you when walking down the road. "Muzungu! Muzungu!" you hear from the houses and suddenly there are kids surrounding you holding your hand, or at least scrambling to find themselves at the least a digit to grab hold of. I miss that, I miss the music, the motorbus fumes, the polite honking , the kid's big white grins, the warm air, the lush landscape, the busy streets, the night fires.

The jet lag has been impossible returning... I had a few nights of complete delerium. Ri's only upset has been when I can't stay up at night with her, which has been true every night since my return. Truly I expected some behavioral fallout from her, but so far the only thing she has exhibited is trust, love, and joy!

Still nothing from the Ministry. Maybe tomorrow... I figure there will be three choices for tomorrow: either I will know nothing, we will hear that we were approved, or we will hear that they are denying us. I am a bit nervy to say the least.

It is hard to be home without a baby in some ways. I do feel let down to a degree, but I also feel happy with my decision to return during the waiting. It has been a glorious week, and the garden has received attention, our family has holed up and enjoyed each other. Yesterday we celebrated my grandfather's 90th birthday, which I never wanted to miss... so considering the situation, we all feel like things are as good as they could be.

Thank you all for keeping the circle of support and love... what a journey this has become!

Words No One Wants to Read

2008-04-12T03:32:00.004-04:00

I'm coming home. Without a baby.

I finally had a discussion with my lawyer that helped me to precisely understand the possible time frame for all the steps involved. Communication here is difficult and for many reasons, we had not been given an accurate description of everything involved. Part of this was on the agency's end, partly from the lawyer, and also due to the fact that this is a pilot program. We are the pioneers.

Pretending that we had the authorization in hand from the ministry, the steps that need to be taken to match the child, go to the doctor, test everything, file the paperwork with the courts, have the hearing should take 3 to 5 weeks if everything is smooth. Then it is required to go back to the Ministry to finalize and then begin the Visa process with the embassy. Those two steps average another 2 weeks. AND I DON'T HAVE THE LETTER YET which adds more time. I decided it was impossible for me to stay here that long, to be away from my beloveds in Vermont for potentially another 8 weeks on top of the 3 I have already spent.

So, back I come. To be honest, it is a little hard returning to an expectant community without a baby once again. I guess the feeling would be one of embarrassment. It also is tough looking at all those tiny clothes and leaving them behind in Rwanda, when I really want to use them once and for all. But on the whole, my spirits have been lifted with the clarity of what I need to do.

I am not giving up hope. I do not regret traveling. The adoption IS moving. The Ministry has given urgent (for them) attention to this case. Apparently everyone (now 4 people) have read the file and are meeting on Monday to decide our fate (which is enormously disconcerting truth be told, but that is another post.) So it has moved fast for Rwanda. I hear that some Dossiers have taken a year to get through the Ministry, but the average fast one takes 8 weeks. We are at 3 next week. Me being here on the ground has moved the process along, so I don't think it was a mistake in that regard.

What it looks like now is that the lawyer will continue to press on while our family s together in VT. She will call when everything is thru the court and it is time for me to come back. I have to be here to go back to the Ministry and do the Visa. Another 2 weeks away from my family.

I cannot wait to be reunited with Ri and Scott. I am a weary traveler, for sure, and I already have it planned how tightly I am going to embrace them and sit in the back seat with Ri and maybe even put all the mattresses on the floor for one big sleepover the first night... it feels good to be coming back for a spell and with hope in our hearts.

Please don't stop reading, there is more to come. Many things which I have not yet written about a family that needs immediate help, about my visit to the orphanage. And we still need every ounce of energy and support and prayers possible.

Many Blessings, I will see many of you soon!

Better than Oprah, this web log of mine!

2008-04-09T09:45:00.003-04:00

I am in utter awe of the community that has been created on a simple blog page. This web log has become an altar of sorts... a place where prayers are connected, and goodness and love have woven together a tapestry that spreads it fibers over each one of us.

It is a monsoon here in Kigali, this old red earth reddened more with the blood of millions of hopeful and joyous people. The rain came down so hard last night it woke the whole house. I wonder from my bed of 700 thread count sheets how dry the village slums are right now... what about all those babies crying, hanging on their mothers legs, hungry and fending off the mosquitos? For here a mosquito can be as deadly as a lion. I toss and turn, feeling the bones beneath me, they must be here where I sleep, for they were everywhere in Rwanda. If you came you would feel it too... the history is in everything. It breathes just like us, constantly keeping itself alive without effort.

Somehow people from all corners of the world have gathered here on the internet to witness and be part of this mysterious journey of ours... and what I know is this: this is not just our journey. This journey, the one since Trace really, has reached and touched many more lives than I can even count. For sure, this blogspot and the hopes and fears and prayers shared here are growing daily. People seemed moved to take time from their own challenging and hectic lives to be part of the love and sometimes pain that is offered up. Not to say that the journey is becoming anyone else's story, it doesn't feel like dramatic like a reality series...just to say that we are making ripples and affecting people, using love to raise consciousness and awareness. This comment board has been a classroom of sorts... for me to be sure, but also I suppose for all of us here. What is written for me is applicable to anyone of us and blesses all. Go back and read the comments... we have wise people here speaking up even when I have never seen their own faces. And maybe, just maybe, this love that is being witnessed here can extend to the dear people and soil of Rwanda. God knows they still need boistering up. Or maybe just to your own very precious beings within.

I talked to the agency today in the states. "Go to the orphanages," they directed me. "I was going to go today," I say, "but it is raining." When I return I will be a shadow of myself. I will have this place in my own bones... for I have taken in everything that is Rwanda. Perhaps not really a shadow, but perhaps only that I will have stripped more of my ego self away and remembered a little bit of who I really am. I am now slowed by the rain. A time to stop and just be.

The family I stay with has a dinner ritual called "What was the best part of today?" The kids seem to like this at ages 4 and 7. Last night I was asked. After thinking I said, "Well... the best part of my day. You know the roundabout? The big traffic circle? Well... in the middle of the roundabout were a group of about twelve Rwandese. They sat on the ground in the hot sun among two heaps of what looked like grass, giant piles of long, lined up grass. They were sorting thru it or something. I wanted a photo, but it is a very busy traffic circle with no place to pull off. So, Happy and I drove around and around the traffic circle fr a good twenty minutes until I had successfully captured the photo of the group sitting sorting grasses. It was a very hard task in a moving car with windshields and traffic in the way. But it was so fun and silly to be spending our time driving round and round!"

I showed the girls my picture and then the parents explained what was happening with those workers and that grass. The roundabout is a very high visibility place and it happens to be where government officials like Bush come when they visit here... (unless you are have the sad fortune of being Kofi Anan who was driven away by hissing and rock throwing when he came.) So what does that have to do with grass? Well apparently while the grass (mostly crab grass here) looked fine to the average passer-by, it was not good enough for someone. Those people have dug up the old grass and now have the very tedious task of taking the ordered-from-somewhere-else grass-complete-with-root systems one plant at a time and nestling it in the soil. A grass transplant if you will. This takes months as you can imagine, but the end product is as neat as a head of glamorous African braids.

I look out the window through the monsoon to the slums on the hillside and wonder what any one of us can ever do to touch others who need it most. I guess the answer is, we do what we can, exactly what is being done here on this web log. I am in awe. Bless you all.

Down and out

2008-04-08T11:36:00.002-04:00

well, they still don't have it. the woman who needed to read it hasn't yet and she also happened to be gone for the day. i am told she will be in in the am, but honestly i am breaking down. completely. the only thing i want right now is my family, ariah and scott, and i want to bail on this endeavor. i could be close, or i could be far away. i can't tell from this perspective. but i want out. now.

You Raise Me Up

2008-04-07T16:07:00.002-04:00

Just want to tell you all that you rock. The only thing helping me to keep moving besides Ariah wishing for me to come back with a baby (which I have to admit is a pretty strong motivator especially given last time) are your comments, your insights, your words of support, but truly the net you have woven of love and wishes and compassion. Thank you all and please, please, keep it up. Naiomi, the Merrells! Wow. It is so good to hear your voices. I need it.

I am too tired to explain with any redemptive quality how tough this is. See, even that is the understatement of the year. It is just hard... every moment of every day it is hard. A fight of sorts in my psyche, even I dare say in my Spirit. I want to fold and hop on a plane with everything that I have and yet I want this child with the same everything that I have. And I wish I could say that I was god with positive visualization, with the ways of Jerry and Esther Hicks or the Secret. But if what I feel is going to be what I get then I am doomed because my mind has not been producing much good lately. I am riddled with fear and terror, worst case scenarios and sometimes still despair.

But then, I stay anyway due to hope. So many people rooting for us, for me here in Kigali and across the world. I will let everyone down if I fold now. Myself included.

Tomorrow I go back to the Ministry to see if progress has been made. And I am terrified.

Kmom, you talk about labor, going thru your past issues, births...I can tell you that "last time" is up for me big time. I am terrified mostly now cause last time I was safe up until last minute. Everything was fine but plummeted the closer I got. Same thing now... I fear that the closer I get the more doomed I become. What a lovely thing the psyche is. What I need is a good thorough watching of Borat. Yes, indeed it is true. I love the film Borat. Makes me laugh so much that I have no room for any emotion other than complete joy. Kinda like Charlie the Unicorn did for Amy.

Anyway. I have to go to sleep. I had a big day which involved quite the traumatizing walk with the dog where I am staying. Apparently people are scared of dogs here, particularly after the history (which everyone very sensitive to right now since today is the anniversary of the beginning of the killings) and when I left the gate for the street, kids started throwing things at us and hollering, screaming and running away but also running toward us egging on the poor girl till finally she chased a child and bit him.

Please pray that this is it and our family can move ahead after tomorrow.

Hope and hope again

2008-04-04T09:15:00.003-04:00

Here I am still in Rwanda, which can either be indescribably beautiful or burdensome depending on the frame of mind. The last two days I struggled with burden, and hence my absence from the computer. I went to check my Dossier at the Ministry and who I needed was out in the field again. Till today it turned out, but all the while I knew it could be till Tuesday next week. And man did I get slammed with grief and fear and "what the fuck am I doing here"'s. Suddenly the idea of being in the foreign land seemed like the most random and asinine (no idea how to spell that word and I refuse to look in the English-French dictionary on the shelf behind me) idea. No not idea. Reality. What was I thinking to come here to this place. I could come home and call it a luxary vacation. A failed mission, but a trip of a lifetime.

So, I despaired. I read before I left that to despair is to turn your back on God. I even wrote it in my journal so as to remember it. But that didn't keep me from doing it. Each time I called Scott in hysterical tears he told me to pray. But how do you pray while your back is turned?

In my mind this was taking too long. I have become homesick and the idea of being away from my beautiful beaming daughter is eating the flesh from my bones. Literally. I stopped eating for two days and I am back down to my waif-like self in stature. All that weight I packed on for months prior to travel has melted away. So, the urge pulsated through me, even moving my feet to walk to the airport and book the next flight home. I yelled at them and they stopped. I am stuck in some thick used motor oil between my baby at home and the promise of a baby here. I can barely move and if I do, I don't know which way to go.

On the day that I am told I cannot volunteer in the orphanage until the Minister has signed my documents, I go walk the street. My eyes are puffy and red where they are not dark with circles and my contacts have turned to foggy lenses like the ones you wore as goggles when you swam as a child. I have been crying all night long. And the day before.

A little boy follows me. "Bonjour" he says. I get ready to say no to him, as is my policy here. I know when a child politely says Bonjour, he is poising himself to follow while keeping his eye on the zipper of my new Vera Bradley handbag. His way of begging. I could ignore him, but my other policy is that when I refuse, I always look into the being of the child and see him first. I always lock eyes so that I can feel what it is I am refusing him and who it is that I refuse. He is small. Dirty. A network of stitches adorn his left brow and I contemplate where he has obtained medical care. "No" I say in French.

But he follows me still. He does not lay eyes on my purse. Instead, he keeps my gaze despite my effort to keep looking ahead to the sidewalk as I walk. "Je fait". He's hungry. "Je mange". If I had food, I would surely give it to him but I have nothing other than a thick stack of rwandenese francs and tears gallore. I ask "you want to eat? Come with me." I have a plan. A plan that will at least help him with his hunger and me with my stuckness.

He follows me to my hotel. I motion to him to stay at the door, and I go inside to the bar turned breakfast buffet. "Can I buy breakfast for my friend, please?" motioning to the door where he is obediently standing. Of course I can. So I sit him down and proceed to get him food which proves to be difficult since I can't communicate with him. A beautiful young woman named Hope of all things comes over, her heart three steps ahead of her body. She flows like cinderella's fairy godmother around this child, sweeping him up to wash his hands, patting him on the head and unfurling a napkin in his lap. She brings plate after plate of food to him, opening up fruit and peeling eggs, clearing away the wrapping as he eats, keeping the tea flowing. She looks natural. Beautiful . Angelic.

She can see my awe of her and in her minimal english she tells me she loves orphans. "Mmmm," I sound. That is the correct rwandan response. "Me, I was orphan." Hope says, and I see the tears in her eyes.

This is a perfect moment, one I have managed to snap a photo of. Three of us, all wanderers of some sort, coming to the table with our burdens and feeling the goodness of life still.

Still Waiting

2008-04-01T05:36:00.002-04:00

What is it about my pregnancies that I am required to go beyond what seems reasonable to wait? 44 weeks with both of my babies. And that amount of waiting, when you know that all that has to happen is the switch to be thrown suddenly, is painstaking. Believe me, it just is. And now here I am doing much the same thing. Waiting. For some supernatural force to come in and throw the switch so it can commence.

Veronique was there (which was unusual since it was raining. Raining? You say? What in God's name dies that have to do with staffing an office? well, in Rwanda, it is common for nothing to happen, people to not even come into work if it is raining. And boy was it ever. Monsoon. Paved roads turned to huge rapid red rivers.) It is hard to tell the reaction of Rwandenese. They are stoic, poker faced always until suddenly they laugh or give eachother five. So Veronique to me seemed unmoved, but according to the lawyer it was just the opposite and she said she needed to first scrutinize my document. She will do this "As soon as possible" which really means she has given me her word, but as to the when, which is what Americans want to know, that is left a mystery. Soon means maybe this week, maybe next. Maybe today. Who knows.

So, I wait.

And wait. Gods help me.

What is it that every Rwandenese looks at when I walk by them? Always they look at my feet. IS it that they are noticing my stylish Teva Mush flipflops that Nola has perforated as a puppy? Or are they taken with the sheer brightness of my pasty white skin? I think the later. I cannot make it down the street without gangs of kids saying, "Bonjour Donnez=Mois Cent Francs muzungu?" Or simply saying "Muzungu, Muzungu." The adults know better. They do comment though on how rich Muzungu are. The average income here is $250 a year. Namaharo at the front desk lives in a house with no running water and no power. He takes care of his small sister and small brother and has to pay for their food, clothes, schooling housing and his own all by himself. Namaharo would like to go to school so that he can get a good job (he would like to be a lawyer) but he cannot afford to since his little siblings depend on him. What namaharo needs to go to school himself is 2,000 dollars a year, US. I wonder if our community could sponsor him. We would be sponsoring three people in Rwanda for less than $200 a month. Is that doable?

I gave money to a woman yesterday. I vowed not to, because once I do, then they follow me around asking for it. But this woman had a brand new baby. And she showed her to me and asked for money. How could I not? So I did. The trouble I got into then was that everyone in my proximity had something to say along the lines of what a good person I was to help, asking for my phone number "Because I love you so much." said in a thick African accent. It took me 40 minutes to traverse a 15 minute distance. Everyone talking to me and asking for my contact info and tellig me I am a child of God.

There are lizards on the roof where I stay, and the same creatures run under the concrete that serves as a bridge everytime I step on it on my way across the ditch to the sidewalk. I live in a hotel in th ebusiness district, which affords a nicely paved road and a fancy hotel with wonderful African tea I have discovered, a patissarie and a swimming pool. So, I live in luxary compared to my friend Namaharo. His name means peace.

Namaharo was only ten when the genocide occurred. He has lived in Rwanda his whole life and will likely never have anything other than a meanial job if that. He is thin. Very thin for lack of food, and yet he makes a very good salary of $150 a month US. For three people.

Today I will go with a gentle Rwandenese Happy to the Genocide Memorial. I am a ee bit uncomfortable going with him, only because he says he reacts strongly since he was here at the end of the war and saw and smelled it all. I don't want to make it hard for him, but he seems to want to go.

So I wait. In the waiting is space, Scott wisely telle me. Space to become scared. Space to rethink things. Doubt.

Space to fight the doubt.

Blessings,
Jaya

Group Visualization

2008-03-30T09:45:00.002-04:00

Okay, I have sooo much to write about, but first I have a tremendous request. You know the spoon benders? The idea that if enough people sit around and focus all their energy on something happening, anything can? Even bending a spoon? Well. Right now I need ya'll to focus on tomorrow. I am going to the Ministry to find Veronique. (See I want to say hopefully find Veronique, cause what if she still isn't in?) I need Veronique to review the Dossier and write the letter immediately, tomorrow. Then I need the Minister to be available to sign it so that I can go to the orphanage and be assigned a child. So, can everyone send some very very focused energy seeing this happen like clockwork tomorrow, that Veronique is in and that the Dossier is there and complete and that the letter is written immediately for the Minister to sign. Perhaps I have to wait in the office while they complete this, but it is done tomorrow easily and smoothly.

Now. The rest of the update.

Matthew, it is good to hear your voice. (Everyone elses too. I am literally in tears reading all your words, feeling all your hearts.) But Matthew, I have been feeling Amy all around me. Constantly. She is so happy about what I am doing, you know how happy she would have been for us if she were still alive and now well, she is just that happy. I can feel it. And she roots me on, she is completely sure that I can see this process thru. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if she already knows which child will be ours and has been watching him/her the entire time. Trace and her have been quite the team and I talk to and listen to them at every step.

How surreal it is to awake to sunlight and music that sounds like an entire congregation of Rwandenese singing like Ladysmith Black Mambazo streaming thru the window panes, the windo ajar and onto my bed. I immediately arose and went outside onto the patio to listen, to try to read my Brain Child magazine. But I couldn't read. All I could do was lift my face to the intense equatorial sun and let the voices and tones fill by core. Ahhhh.. Africa. I spent hours upon hours loading my iPod so as not to become bored during my waiting. But I literally cannot do anything. 5 days I have had of waiting for this Veronique and it is impossible to fill the space. Here the space wants to stand alone and asks only that I stand in it, open. I really can't explain it. But I have tried to keep occupied in many varied situations and it is simply futile. I just keep coming back to the breath of my body and the meditation that is Africa.

Now here this: request number two for one day. Please. Please. Please read or watch something about the genocide in Rwanda. Start with Imaculee's book "Left to Tell" and her story of finding God while hiding in a 3 by 5 bathroom with 7 other women for something like 90 days. She was hunted, but they never discovered her. Or watch Hotel Rwanda even if the idea makes you cringe and you think to yourself "I don't need to see that. Why ruin a perfectly good mood with watching such horrible atrocity?" Or get "Ghosts of Rwanda" from netflix (actually we have a copy you can borrow) which is a Frontline documentary on the genocide and explains the UN's position (standing by unarmed and watching one million Tutsi's be hacked to death in the streets and churches) and gives the story of General Dellaire, an honorable man who's life has become a struggle to survive since his hands were tied in Rwanda.

Last night I had the priviledge (there are very very few cultural events here in Rwanda) of attending a film festival at a fancy restaurant. (See, Diane, I am eating!). We watched "Shake Hands With The Devil" a movie based on the book by the same title written by General Dellaire. Now. Unless you have really studied the genocide and the history leading up to it, you may have a hard time comprehending how moving it is to sit in an open air restaurant overlooking the Kigali city lights with Rwandenese sitting at your sides watching an intense film about evil that destroyed an entire country, one million mothers, babies, fetuses, men, children, grandmothers in one hundred days. The people sitting around me are survivors. They either have to carry guilt or they carry grief. Or both. This land survives too. A land that was quite literally in apocolyptic state in July of 1994, bodies everywhere, buildings bombed and hacked and looted and burned. And now it thrives. Looks just like Vermont but with different trees. Beauty grows from absolute impossible despair. New life blossoms from the cracks where hope still somehow survived.

I think I can relate.

Oh, this baby. I feel it is really close now. Perhaps this week I will meet him. Or her. I am dreaming of it, suckling it. I am feeling my mama instincts kick in. Someday soon I will kick into gear from prodromal to contractions that come closer and closer culminating in birth. At least I won't have to get cut apart this time. One definite benefit of adoption. C-section rate is a lot lower.

I have been very blessed here to have been taken in by a family who lives here working for USAID. They live just around the corner from the hotel and have played hosts to me daily, setting me up with clean water, computer use, skype, food, directions, contacts and family time (they have two adorable girls age 4 and 6). They have invited me to stay starting Friday at the end of this week, and will be good company for me when I have the baby. Their home is luxurious, secure and equipped with groundsmen, cooks and nanny's. That is normal here as the dollar goes very far for and American in Rwanda. And it provides work for some locals who may make 150 a month when the average annual income is 250. For sure it is a different experience of Africa than if I were living in a hut, but considering the circumstances, I think it is keeping me sane.

The orpahange... well, the lawyer (called an associate here) advised me to go through all the necessary steps prior to volunteering at the orphanage. So, I iwll look forward to going and helping after the baby has been assigned.

Okay, over and out. I need to walk home before the monsoon hits. Boy can it rain here.

Love to you all, and thanks for your visualizations!
jaya

So much to say

2008-03-28T04:41:00.002-04:00

Okay, I have a good connection now in which to write you. Communication here was extremely frustrating for the first three days, and all my attempts to use either the cell phone, the internet, my vonage phone, all failed. It was due to a combination of obstacles, mainly that I had no money on my cel phone (duh!) and also the fact that constantly the networks are busy here.

I have so many stories already to tell if I had the time, I think when I return to Vermont I shall host a story circle in which we can sit and I can show photos and tell of my travels. You who are far away, maybe we can set up a skype session, lol. (I'm an Oprah wannabe truth be told, and she is doing a classroom every Monday thru skype. It is very cool. )

But first, let me say that reading all your words is enormous. Mom, I cried reading the hymn. Thank you for those words. Only thing better would have been hearing you sing them to me like when I was little. Kmom, you are absolutely right, this is prodromal. And part f me wants to jump ship, abandon myself and the process and fly home. Give in feeling I have not the strength to do this for days and days, and yet here I am with no pitocin and being asked to trust the process. Your words of strength and support, your hands across the water will be what carries me thru. For this, while exciting, is not easy.

Ah, Rwanda. Really, if you ever get the urge to travel this place is it. Not that I should know since all I have to compare it to is Montreal and Disney World's Animal Kingdom, lol. But truly this land is amazing. Rolling green hills, just like Vermont. People with big hearts and smiles. But also, with so much history and heaviness that can be sensed also. The thing I was not prepared for was how young everyone is. I am older than most everyone here, and I think I have only seen about 5 people from the generation ahead of me. I guess it makes sense given that everyone who was here either fled in 1969 or in 1994. Either they fled or they were killed. My lawyer was born in Uganda and moved here later on. The waiter was born here, fled to Congo in 1994 somehow (a very fortunate escape from what I gather) and then came back four months later. The two men I dined with yesterday both came here in 1994 after the war. One was a soldier at age 16 and came back in at the tail end of the genocide from Uganda.

Most happy moments: this morning walking here to use the computer in an American residence I saw a mother and I'd say 2 year old waiting for the bus. She was beautiful and the child well... they are all beautiful to me. As I approached I saw the baby was fishing around down her shirt feeling her breasts. She seemed used to it. Next was the crowd of little kids all dressed alike in blue skirts and blue checked tops who crowded around me on the sidewalk, "Muzungu, muzungo" and they wanted to touch me. I touched them all, the soft almost lamb=like hair on their heads.

Scariest turned funniest moment: Okay, so the American I have had the fortune of using as what she calls my "personal assistant" invited me to a book club. I decided to go. Give it a try. "Can I bring my crocheting?" I ask? Sure she says, no problem. I ask her to elaborate a wee bit on what exactly I could expect and if I would be comfortable there. "It is just a time to go around the circle and each person share what they are reading You don't have to speak if you don't want to." Okay, I think I can handle this. So. We set out after a very funny incident of overpaying the hotel by thousands of rwandanese francs. We are late due to this and anyhow we pull over into the dark by the side of a road. This must be the place I am figuring when something raps on the door. I look out into the darkness but I can't see anyone. Still, Julie opens the door to the knock and me, with my PTSD, am definitely thinking "Oh Shit." I can't see anyone. No one is there. Wait. I do see something. The shiny-ness of a machine gun barrel. Hmmmm. My eyes finally focus probably due to my ears hearing the french coming from is mouth. It is so dark and he is so dark that he was really hard to see. So Julie gets out despite the Machine-gun guy and I follow and he is shouting at her as she walks away. I am a wee bit reluctant to follow her as it is just not instinctual for me to turn my back and walk away from a machine gun guy yelling at me. Still, the guard at the gate says it is okay (I guess he didn't want us leaving the car on the street) and he lets us through. The house looks very official suddenly now that I can focus on something other than my complete panic with the armed men. I ask while we are approaching the house "Um. Where exactly are we?" "Oh, this is the Ambassador's home." Just as she says this I see many people mingling inside the glass wall. "No. No. No." I say, shrinking away. turning back toward the armed men from where I had come. "What do you mean, no?" asks Julie of me just as the ambassador's wife comes to let us in. "I don't mingle," I say as the door opens. Julie hands the dish she has brought throug the door to her and tells her that she has forgotten something at home and will be right back. The woman asks me if I would like to come in. "No. NO NO!!!". Yikes. I run away down the street, past the militia men (not really, but they may as well have been to me) and to the security of Julies home and computer while she mingles and discusses books.

Anyway. There are a few little stories. You may be wondering what the heck is going on with the whole reason I am here: the adoption. Well. We filed the Dossier with the Ministry on Tuesday. Wednesday we were able to get an audience with the Minister herself to explain my case and explain to her the urgency of it all. She was very nice and said she would sign right away for us. However, the woman that needs to prepare the document for her to sign, Veronique, is out "in the field" until Monday. So, I have been killing time until then. Today I think I shall go back again and ask for her. I was told by some locals that the thing to do is spend some time sitting in her office. That way they get to know me as the muzungu who keeps waiting for Veronique. They know i need to see her and I have put in my time. Still, if she is not there today, my plan is to go monday and tell her the Minister is waiting to sign and tell her that I will wait until she has reveiwed the document and prepared the letter. Hopefully that will give me what I need to make the assignment of the child with the orphanage.

So. That is that. I will try to update again soon, but until then, please keep leaving messages. I need all of your voices of reassurance.

Blessings,
Jaya

Here in Kigali

2008-03-25T14:24:00.002-04:00

well, i made it. to rwanda that is, but not nearly as far as i need to go with this process. the flights were uneventful- easy really but long and well... just long. i went thru 2 sun ups in less than a day, once in dulles and once over africa. both were amazing and looked exactly the same, but the one over africa was ore brilliant and moving of course just by the nature of it welcoming me to africa. flying over the country was moving beyond words... looking down and seeing desert... red earth with river running thru it at times, populated only by a few sparse villages here and there.

i am finding everything friendly and good. i am lonely and weepy, missing my family so much already.

i will try to update soon. hoping to meet with the minister tomorrow.

xoxoxox
jaya

I'm going in!

2008-03-21T19:34:00.002-04:00

Here goes... I'll believe it for real when I see it, but as of right now I have purchased a ticket for Sunday arriving Kigali Monday. I have no time to post any details or feelings right now (gotta go scramble to pack) but I will try to update from overseas.

I'm not sure how internet access is. I'm sure to find a 'puter somewhere though...

Wish me godspeed.

Bodyguard

2008-03-16T21:15:00.005-04:00

Well, still no word from the lawyer which has me a wee bit concerned. Anyway. The document looks really good and altho I have no idea what that means for our family in actuality, I feel good about the recommendation from the Embassy. Our aim is to have me leave immediately after Easter. I am calling tomorrow for flights, and it is probable that the wonderful woman who has been leading us thru this whole thing will be going with me.

Someone inquired today whether or not I have a body guard, and while I went laughing my head off in response, the deafening silence clued me into the serious nature of the suggestion. Hmmm... a body guard? I hadn't thought of that.

Well, no I'm not gonna have a body guard. Truth be told I am going to risk it all for this venture. There are times I lie awake in bed wondering if I am walking into my sure demise... searching to my death for a child, forever searching and willing to risk everything for the longing left after Trace died and took with him my womb. Maybe I am crazy, I think. What ever am I doing? Putting everything I already have in harms way in order to get the one thing I cannot have on my own. And maybe it is written that I shall not have anymore children, after all a mother could surely come to that conclusion after a miscarriage, a still birth and the catastrophic rupture of her womb. God is trying to tell me something, I can convince myself... and I am not listening. Maybe I barely escaped death last time and this time "they" will finally get me. Really? Is that the view of God/Goddess/Universe that I have? Some all powerful entity waiting to finally "get" me?

I don't know, that could be true, but I prefer to rest easy in feeling like Trace is at the helm with Spirit... that his coming and going brought everything they needed to into this life, that it was a perfect whole experience for him and me, and that while painful, it set the stage for us to open our home, hearts and beings to this baby with its own very real story.

For this is just the beginning, right? Or the continuation. I often wonder what it will be like for this baby... what its own story is... I dream of his brave mother who will have birthed him, and will have left him- either by the force of death, or by the force of something greater than I can understand- a mother who out of love, or grief, or knowing or fear, will have turned her back to this young being and walk away, a mother who will have given our family the very gift of new life. How was he conceived? How was he nurtured? How was his birth? How many hours, days did he lie still before he was found? How is the pain of this in his heart? Does his mother now drop to her knees in grief scream feeling her now flaccid and empty womb beneath her hand? Did she make a mistake? What will she carry for the rest of her life? And this baby... how did his ancestors survive 14 years ago when one million beautiful babies, children, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers were hacked to bits and left for the dogs in less than eighty days? This baby is only here because his people survived. And if this baby survived because it was his own parents who did the hacking, than they too are survivors of great grief and guilt and evil.

Maybe we will know the story and maybe we won't. Perhaps we will imagine it, or piece it into being like a quilt sewn square by square, sometimes disjunctive and sparse. Or maybe our child will always wonder where he came from and who let him go and he himself will carry the burden of his story, of his people.

And maybe, just maybe, that is why we go now to Rwanda... after our own losses (which I am not comparing to what happened in the genocide)and traversing the great expansive and barren territory of hell-grief, our own lives becoming post apocalyptic in a way, we can understand a little of the grief carried in the hearts and beings of these people who now have built hope on top of their own pile of bones. They are a people that have bloomed life from a truly apocalyptic state. In just a few days/weeks I will be blessed to set foot on those bones and feel the hope and reconciliation that exists today. There are people who killed building houses for the families of the dead. There are victims visiting the jails and verbally forgiving the killers of their families. This is the place we will be united with our child. This is illustration of hope and healing and the great heart of humanity.

No, no bodyguard. I go in vulnerable and humble, open to feel it all, ready to step into the church where piles of bodies still remain and try to imagine the 100 days of genocide, the stench, the cries, the machetes swinging. Ready to love a hundred babies with everything that I have knowing that soon I will have to walk away while they clutch to my legs, knowing that many of them will never have a family, that many will die of disease. Ready to hear the sounds, smell the smells, see the hearts of a different place on this earth. Ready to see the scars, hear the longing, listen for the joy. Ready to look into the faces and stories of a people that look different than but the same as my own white face. I am ready. I am open. I am un guarded.

Let me meet this child.

One Step Forward Eighty-two Steps Back

2008-03-13T08:24:00.002-04:00

As promised, the Embassy delivered and I had the Dossier in hand Tuesday at noon. It looks great and there is the needed letter attached stating the specifics of our case. So, of course, I went and reserved a ticket for Saturday the 15th, arriving the 17th in Kigali.

NOPE! Can't do it. I won't be on the plane... now WE CAN'T FIND THE LAWYER! She is MIA. I need her to pick me up from the airport and take me from there to the Ministry to deliver the paperwork, and without her go-ahead I can't do anything worthwhile other than sight-see. So, I am still grounded. I have no idea where she is or when she will return and now I am facing a holiday (Easter) so travel will most likely be delayed due to that.

I am fugly. Dh asked me what I needed last night (I think he is hoping that something would make it easier to live with me at the moment) and honestly the only thing I need is to get on a plane. No bubble bath is gonna fix this. At least I have an iPod to listen to while I pump every two hours....

UH-huh!

2008-03-08T20:27:00.002-05:00

Yup. Got the Dossier, no letter on it. Got in touch with the woman at the Embassy, she was completely embarrassed and promised to send the letter out FedEx this weekend so that I would have it Monday a.m. and suggested that I make travel arrangements.

So, I called the agency and we started the details of travel- how much money to bring, who to tip, how to not get scammed, and blah blah. I was gonna plan travel for Wednesday, get in Thursday and have the lawyer take me to the Ministry to deliver the Dossier Thursday or Friday. The woman from the agency will accompany me if I feel I need her...

So I'm on the phone blathering about the arrangements, doing all last minute details, and flipping thru my paperwork.

Wait a minute. Wait. WAIT. These papers don't look right.

The Dossier in my hands just seems off. There are two documents: One is the original. One is a copy. What distinguishes them apart is that the original is fastened together with a very official (and costly to place) rivet, fastened also with an off-white satin bow. The cover page is on heavy cardstock, US seal and Condoleezza Rice's signature. The rest of the document that follows is mostly on similarly important looking papers all with embossed seals of some sort or another. The copy is just that: A uniformly stark white flimsy paper series paper clipped together complete with yellow post-it titled "copy" in plain blue printing.

Only the copy has Embassy seals on every page (at 30 bucks a pop) with painstaking text hand written next to each one authenticating the copy.

HUH?!?!?! I needed the original official copy to be authenticated. The seals need to be on the original!

So. Off to the Rutland airport I went today. Drove there (well kinda, it took me an hour of circling the surrounding towns to actually find the airport and then when I finally arrived there the kind policeman told me that fedex was actually not there, but on the other side of things...) and got there at 12:03 to find they close at noon. But alas, the lady felt bad for me and let me in and rescued the day. Can you believe that I had to repackage up the Dossier, stick it in a self sealing envelope and send it BACK to the Embassy?

I felt so badly for myself that I went directly to Staples and spent half of what a good Rwandan makes annually on an iPod. Came home and proceeded to download podcasts so that I have something to listen to in Rwanda (if I ever ever ever get there). Put a bunch of my favorite mixes on there too which didn't work out so great as they pop up "Untitled Artist" and "Untitled 1" and so on. So now my iPod looks like this:

Untitled 1
Untitled 1
Untitled 1
Untitled 2
Untitled 2
Untitled 3
Untitled 3
Untitled 3

You get the idea. Which also means that I get a totally different mix when I hit play since all the songs line up as tracks under the artist "Untitled". Sucks. Any pointers? Grr.

One step forward 4 steps back.

Oh, and if you are feeling grumpy that you donated and I bought something as frivolous as a made-in-someplace-else hunk of natural resources, I am too. Only I am really really enjoying it already and the distraction from my self-inflicted waiting-for-our-child misery. Plus I didn't use that money, I used back pay Scott finally got for the last two years of working without a contract! Woo-hoo!

Going nutty,
Jaya

Stringing you along...

2008-03-07T13:53:00.003-05:00

The title to this post is written to the tune of That Muppet Movie song, "Movin' Right Along." Please go back and read it with the tune in mind.

I purposely haven't written here in attempt to let you all feel like I feel. In the void of not knowing. Did it work? LOL.

So. I found the Dossier. I finally (after being told "anyday" for 3 or 4 weeks) decided to call the Embassy myself and see where the Dossier was, and lo and behold... drum roll please... it was sitting on a desk there. Complete, mind you, but still sitting on a desk there.

Apparently they understood that they were NOT SUPPOSED to mail it out, and rather that whoever dropped it off (a currier service) would return to pick it up. Anyway, when I found this out I immediately had them fedex it overnight to me. Avoid the middle man, I have decided in all of this.

So yesterday was the day it was really once and for all supposed to arrive. We have decided that once it is in our hands, I will go myself and deliver it to the Ministry in Rwanda rather than having it sent there. So, this was my ticket to go. I thought perhaps I'd leave Sunday or Monday at the latest...

I waited all morning, and it finally arrived around noon on my doorstep. I opened it to find the document all stamped by the embassy and signed by Condaleza Rice (no idea how to spell her name and no desire to google it, sorry). HOWEVER... No letter!

I guess typically it has a cover letter stating that everything is deemed in order and that the family is recommended for adoption. In my case, the woman at the Embassy had supposedly heard the details of our case and was going to write a letter stating those details- that I am lactating and therefore should be matched immediately with the youngest infant possible. No letter!

ARGH!

Yes, I am yelling. I'm pumping as I sit here and type. I am tired of wondering, of waiting, of pumping, of longing, of hoping, of worrying. I just want to go! Anyway. I did call the Embassy back and apparently the woman I need to write the letter is gone from the office until Monday.

Still, I spoke at length with her secretary and she is very patient and sweet. She is supposed to be calling the woman I need the letter from on her cell, asking about it and calling me back by the end of the day. She assured me that the letter was something that would only take moments to write and that it could be here promptly. Who knows in reality what exactly promptly means though.

So you are wondering about me taking this dossier to Rwanda myself, eh? Well, the theory at work is that the squeaky wheel gets oiled. Maybe by me being there I can get things going with my presence alone. HA! Do you think this white woman will get noticed there?

Cross your fingers for me and visualize two weeks. I am in and out. Back to Vermont with a new baby.

If doubt crosses your mind screen, let it out. I need everyone's positive thinking. This can happen! Yes it can. (you can tell I am definitely talking to myself here).

Signing off,
Jaya

Still nothin

2008-02-28T19:15:00.002-05:00

Thanks to all of you who are keeping us in your hearts... I still have not heard anything, suffice it to say that as far as I know the Dossier is not lost, just still sitting in the Embassy's office for some reason. Hmmm?!?!?!?

I am going crazy. There is so much swirling around in my mind and heart. The fearful place is that this will never happen. Gods how I just want to be home with a baby! What if it doesn't work this time? I don't think that would be survivable... anyway, I am really going thru the mill as they say. I even lost my milk supply! Down from 16 ounces to 4! See what stress does to the body?

I did have two good dreams last night- for my whole adult life I have had a repeating dream of my first true love. In the dream I always want him and he doesn't give me the time of day... I awake in tears, all my high school feeling of love come rushing back in and I feel like I miss him desperately and made the wrong choice to marry my dear husband, lol. (I have no idea why.. I have no contact with the old boyfriend). Anyway, I dreamt that I was with him and this time we were together (as together as two can get, lol) and guess what? I decided to leave him! Told him it would never work between us, and literally turned my back and walked away as he called after me... I kept walkin'.

I'm healed!!!! LOL.

And then one of my dear friend Amy Donaldson who passed away 8 months ago... she was there and I was so happy she hadn't left us.. she told me this adoption would happen, but it would be harder than I thought.

Amy would be so supportive of this, she always wanted to adopt. I know she is smiling down on us, cheering us on in our endeavor. I love that she visited last night. Thanks, Amy. It was so good to see your face again.

An Ugh and a Sigh

2008-02-25T07:56:00.002-05:00

Alright, they lost our Dossier! This is what they mean when they say adoption is a roller coaster, huh?

It supposedly went to the Embassy, but never got back to the agency in the pile of others that did get returned over the weekend. Or maybe it just didn't get approved and it is at the embassy still. So time will tell. Stay tuned, I got wind yesterday that I may be on the brink of leaving. I should know more today, even if that more is that I know nothing at all, lol.

I'll keep ya'll posted...

2008-02-20T22:35:00.003-05:00

I had great plans for tonight... Install my Vonage phone, file an amended tax return (forgot I had a job when I filed the first time, lol!), take a bath, do a herbal face steam, read my new Paulo Coelho book, maybe watch an Angelina Jolie movie I've had my eye on for two weeks...

Yup. I did none of those. I sat my ass in front of this screen and worked on my blog.

So, I may as well do what I was planning to do all week, and that is update you all. Right after I told J of my aches and pains with the waiting for this adoption while pumping milk she called me and was tremendously reassuring and patient. She was kind and generous with her time and sensitivity, which really made me feel like I had climbed into a warm lap, secure and content.

J thinks this will go quickly still, she recommended I keep up the pumping and pack my bags! Supposedly we should have an approval from the Embassy today or tomorrow, and then they send it to Rwanda. It takes a few days to get there, but once it does that is the last place it needs to go before it goes to the courts! The approval there could be instantaneous since it already has the Embassy's approval. Time will tell. Cross your fingers.

I'm scared shitless (can't think of a better word to use at the moment). When "nothing" seems to be happening, I freak out that it never will happen. When it speeds up and there is evidence of progress, I freak out that it is happening. Either way, it is just plain scary. Whatever. At the end of the day it is just fear and never did hold me down much. I can move despite it.

But can you imagine? We may have our child soon!

What It Is To Wait After A Term Infant Loss and While Lactating

2008-02-15T15:13:00.001-05:00

What It Is To Wait After A Term Infant Loss and While Lactating:
An open letter to those working with us in this adoption…

My husband and I have been longing to enlarge our family since 2004. In that year I did get pregnant easily, just as I had with my daughter, but I miscarried that already loved child early on in the pregnancy. It was a great loss, and we were happy when we felt ready to conceive again. At the turn of 2006 we conceived our son, who after 10 months of a very healthy pregnancy was killed during birth from a uterine rupture. Just after the cesarean surgery that attempted to save him, I began to bleed to death. I bled for nearly two hours before I implored the doctors to take my womb... and they did. So not only now did I have to drop to my knees with grief over my son, I also had to integrate somewhere into my being the fact that I would never be woman again in the manner of being able to hold life within. Very literally the only thing that kept me afloat during those times (aside from our living daughter) was hope.

We hoped and prayed that there was some way a child would still come into our lives, either by surrogacy or adoption. I threw all my baby supplies out the window (I really did; right onto the grass below), emptied my boy’s room, and waffled between despair and resolution that I would be doomed to a lifetime of unmet dreams (never having another baby) and a feeling of peace when the image of mothering a new child despite all this tragedy moved in.

And then along came J who introduced to us an opportunity to build our family and our love for another culture in a far away place that to us now seems not-so-far away, Rwanda. This child is already loved in so many mysterious ways stirring within me. I sit at night and chant his name (despite the fact that it could very well be a girl). I light a candle below Trace’s photo and ask for guidance on this journey to this baby and this country. Trace assures me everything is as it should be. Every two hours when I hook my sore, dripping breasts up to a hospital-grade pump and begin my 15 minutes of milk expression I visualize the baby suckling at the breast.

And none of this is easy. It sounds graceful, but really it is filled with faltering stumbling efforts to keep my chin up, my heart open and my resolve and courage high. A million times a day I sink. When I pump and picture a baby, I remember expecting Trace and picturing him… images of changing a diaper, giving him a massage, letting Ariah snuggle him to sleep, suckling at the breast, slinging him close to my body, his round curved, hunched over body conforming to my torso, swaying as I walk. Anyone who has slung a newborn knows this feeling in their cells. And then immediately my mind does a “Well, you visualized all of this with Trace and he died. This baby will not manifest either. You are doomed.”

Ugh. Dead in the water with fear.

And so it goes. Up and down, up and down… Terrified that it will never work or is all a joke, just like last time when everyone was excited and I had to come home from the hospital with my baby in a box. I could get to Rwanda and they could say no, and I could come home to all the excited people and have to say, “Just kidding. There’s no baby.” I know from my friends who have experienced infant loss that these feelings are totally normal. I know it from reading all the books pertaining to the subject. It is just very difficult to navigate a pregnancy or expectancy after the loss of a child; hard to have any faith in all the hope and faith. After all, we had that last time and it didn’t ensure anything.

And so now I walk this journey even differently from the woman who goes thru a subsequent pregnancy, because this is an international adoption and heck I haven’t ever even seen the faces of the people that are supposedly working on this other than J. The agency is in a different state, I have never seen the building, I have only ever talked to someone from there once, and it is impossible so far to get an answer to a call, difficult if possible to get a return call or email. I don’t really want to say it, but it can make me feel as if there may not really be an agency…. Maybe they are not legit? How would I know? I want to believe they are, believe me. What I would do for some hand holding—for someone at the agency to communicate with me on where things are, check in to see how everything is going with the process, with the waiting. Just a kind voice on the other end that reaches out, touches base, gives us an update and asks how we are. That would help to make things real for me. It would help to feel connected to the process and to trust that everything is legit and that the people we are working with and paying money to are indeed real humans.

I look at the diapers I got out when I thought that travel would be within a few weeks (we do cloth). There are diapers around the house, Ariah is using them for her baby dolls, and I am grumpier and grumpier by the minute. I got these out with Trace. He didn’t need them. I have one dead baby (not counting the miscarried one, and why shouldn’t I?) and an incinerated womb and maybe I really am doomed to a life with no future children. Maybe I will have to throw the diapers out the window again. I know this sounds dramatic, but it really is where my mind goes.

The pumping routine: Most women can get pregnant, carry a pregnancy to term, push the baby out and milk comes in. But I am not most women. I have to induce lactation since I cannot go thru the hormonal changes of a pregnancy, and so in November I began the process of doing this. I went on birth control and began a prescription medication to cause lactation. Then in January I began pumping with a double-sided hospital grade pump. Every. Two. Hours. In case you can’t quite understand what every two hours means, it means this: pump 6:45-7:00 am. Brush teeth, get dressed, let dog out, get medications ready, daughter wakes up. 8:45 am pump again. Get daughter breakfast, eat with her, clean up, wash all bottles for pump, store milk, pump again 10:45. 12: 45. 2:45. 4:45. 6:45 when your family has just sat down for dinner. 8:45 while I read a bedtime story to my daughter. Up in the night to pump too. In between those times of expressing milk to the rhythmic whir of the pump, I get to boil milk, store milk, take herbs to produce milk, wash bottles and pump parts. EVERY. TWO. HOURS. EVERY. DAY. for six weeks now. I do not know how much longer I can do this. In fact, if this is going to be more than a month of waiting (which if someone would talk to me I may very well find out that it will be) then I need to stop and start up again later. I just want the people working with me to take this into strong consideration. I know there is no way to know how long a thing will take, but communicating with me and having a dialogue would help immensely at this time. Right now I have to gather information that is our best guess in order to make a decision on what to do about pumping, about whether to stop and resume at another time. I cannot do this without communication.

The bottom line is that I am a mother who is ready to parent a child. There is a child in need of a mother and a family. I have lots of nutritious milk waiting to feed this baby. I need him/her at my breast just as (s)he need me to hold him gently and sing him his story.

Please take these things into consideration when working with me. I write this not as a criticism, but in hopes of helping you to do your jobs in a way that is gentle to families like ours. This is no easy place to be.

I am off to go pump.

Sincerely,

Jessica Holliman
Lactating mama to an angel baby

Hitting the "Wall"

2008-02-06T20:10:00.000-05:00

Alright, I'll admit it. The waiting is slowly eating away at me.

Eating away? How is that you might say? Well, I can no longer sleep. Just like pregnancy insomnia when the dark hits and my emotions hit the wall... suddenly I am sure of only one thing: that I cannot do this anymore, that this is never happening and really it is all just a joke. Harumph. And then there are the days when I awake and open one eye just a tiny reluctant slit, only enough to verify that there is light and that the light is actually real and not just a twist of my constantly morphing dreams. "Yup, I really am here," I think. "And it is another day so find one thing to be grateful for before you even move. Just think, you'll have your baby soon!" And then the day spirals downward from there, a constant fight to stay upbeat and happy in the moment and not slip into complete despair and assurance that this is never going to happen. I struggle all day, the ratio of positive vibes to resignation that this is all a cruel joke follows a definite downward decline. By the time night falls, I have given up completely and the insomnia of wretched feelings begin anew.

Fun. Fun.

So it is night and I give up. I found out that our paperwork is not even thru to the Embassy yet and I have no idea when it will be going... I feel as if all our longing and hopes and dreams are in the hands of some entity much like the Wizard of OZ himself (of course before we found out he was just a regular person). Last night I failed to sleep since I was worried sick about going into Kenya the whole night. The night before that I did fall asleep, but a clap of random wintertime thunder startled me awake. I nearly lept out of the bed gasping for breath as I thought I was being bombed in Africa. Hard to know where I am these days... my heart and body seem to already be stretched somewhere between Middletown Springs, Vermont and Kigali, Rwanda. Stretched between Trace and this new baby, both of whom I never really met. So if I seem distracted or not here completely these days, I would say it stands to reason.

So please send out all the vibes and prayers you have. Please pray for strength and lightheartedness and trust and guidance. Please pray for a safe journey, divine timing and patience. Gods know I need everything I can get right now.

All blessings,
Jaya

Sunday Morning Ramble (Its All Blessed)

2008-01-27T06:43:00.000-05:00

Somehow change seems to render me silent. I never write in journals during times like these... it only becomes inviting to me to record my thoughts after everything is worked out and still, which I realize leads to one empty journal sitting near your bed. Life is change, right?

The characteristic of mine is carrying itself over into the blog world and I find myself mum in these days of waiting. The truth however, is that so very much is going on internally and I just feel reluctant to start blabbing all of it in this public forum. I don't talk about much of it to anyone, really. Not even DH. I really try to keep my focus on the positive, on the gratitude of what is already, of all the blessing in our life. After all everything is blessed right? Even the sticky hairy parts of life, the ones we come up against with fear or reaction or that are off-putting.

Let's face it.. humanly it is tempting to not like the story of why I am where I am. I could choose to think, "Wow. This sucks. My perfect beautiful boy was ripped from my womb literally moments before birth. Nothing was wrong with him other than the fact that my body killed him. I traded my womb for my life. I have no uterus, a tied up vagina, no menses at 33. My abdomen is scarred and jagged and my heart weak. Not only is that not bad enough, I have to secure a child monetarily from another country, hope it doesn't have HIV or a future of detachment disorder, travel to dangerous scary places and risk my own life again, try to transition my one living sweet daughter to her new sibling and be ready to be asked questions the rest of my life like 'Is he yours?' And who does this hell happen to? Do you know the odds of a spontaneous rupture when not induced? And supposedly it wasn't even near my incision? And even when rupture does happen, I was on my way to the OR for crying out loud... usually babies are saved."

I have reason enough to piss and moan and feel like a victim. But I don't.

Instead I feel into Trace and I feel his blessing. He was here for ten whole months in body. Ten moths of complete and utter bliss for both of us. Sure pregnancy was challenging, but it was an altered state of reality, one where The Divine entered me and kissed my swelling belly each moment. of. the. day. Never did I falter from prayer and guidance. Never did I give power to anyone else. I caressed Trace and sang to him and him to me for our entire time together. Trace knew no pain in this existence. He knew no suffering emotional or physical. He only was cared for and loved and listened to and honored. Is there any existence, any relationship or experience more blessed than that?

And my life. I chose to live. Literally lied on the table bleeding out and spoke the words, "I will not die. I will not leave my daughter." And so it was. My life was saved when I offered willingly my womb. Blessed, truly.

And now my heart knows deep grief, the deepest ever to be experienced, which also means it knows deep love. They are two sides of the same coin. My heart is like the polished piece of seaglass. It has been beaten and torn across the bottom relentlessly, crashed over rocks and washed over and over the waves, never given a moment to catch a breath. And now it has turned from virgin state to worn smooth beauty. Only something so beaten can become so valuable and special. Reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit.

How many people get to go to Rwanda to find their child? How many people does this happen to? It is a blessed event, there is one child somewhere in this world... in one place at this very moment... working its way toward us as we work our way slowly and mysteriously toward it. What greater power could exist than that of great love that moves mountains, moves layers of resistance and fear and pity to bring two (or three or four or five) people together into family. How could we possibly be here, in this moment without being blessed the way we have in our lives? With *all* that is in our lives- what looks and feels good, and what feels bad too.

In the days before we discovered the opportunity to adopt from Rwanda, our family was planning to move forward with a gestational surrogacy. And this was special... it seemed God-given. A woman very dear to us, a woman whose life had been greatly affected by us and us by her offered to carry a baby for us. We shed tears of gratitude and sheer wonder at how things unfold and come together. All of us did. We had preliminary talks on when we would start, how it would look, etc. But then we never heard from her again. Now this was after a year of looking for surrogates and having them fall thru. I could have reacted in a variety of ways, one of which could be with anger and resentment. I could certainly have felt like "Poor me." I made a choice though to be grateful for the situation. I decided that if I was looking for open doors and being grateful for them, then I should likewise be grateful when I was shown a closed door. I sat still and allowed myself to feel surrounded with gratitude for the path that was being shown to me, and for what was being said no to. It was a different approach than I had had previously. I usually would be irate, feel rejected, inner turmoil would have set in. But this gratitude thing was amazing and left me feeling open to what was ahead, whatever that may have been. I just kept saying, "Thank You for all You are showing me. I am open to the path You set before me. And I am grateful You are showing me where not to go."

What blesses one blesses all my mother used to tell me. I got mad at that sentiment when I was five and wanted a popsicle that was prohibited. But now at 33 and after so much has gone "wrong" I can see what she meant. Sometimes in the moment we cannot see the plan thousands of miles ahead of us. But there is one and it takes gratitude and trust that we will get there.

So ya, I have fear-driven thoughts at times. I have edgy "Trace Days" where I worry I will forget him, or where I remember the loss of him and the pain flows in. I have days where I wonder what in the world I am doing... but I try not to dwell on those thoughts. They only derail me from gratitude. So I sit instead and pull light around me, a light of sheer gratitude for everything that has unfolded and and is to come. Trace was blessed and so am I. We all are. We just need to see it that way.

It's Official!

2008-01-17T19:14:00.000-05:00

Well, we are done with all we can do... besides cross our fingers and visualize this happening easily and quickly!

We sent our dossier off this morning... it goes to all sorts of crazy places in Washington, and then next Thursday it will be hand delivered to the Rwandan Embassy. From there it goes to Rwanda and then we wait till everything is approved and deemed in order, and we get a match for a child.

I am soooo ready for this to be done! I just want to start being a family.

Mizero Fundraiser was Successful!

2008-01-08T07:25:00.001-05:00

Two weeks prior to the holidays a small group of Middletown folks met to discuss and begin planning what was to be a phenomenal party for our adoption... of course one where we would make some of the money needed to fund this adoption. We decided on a date right after New Year's, the 6th of January and intended to have food, desserts, live music and silent auction. You can imagine trying to plan this while the holidays were rolling.

Betsy sent out press releases, and two local papers picked up the story. Read the one from the front page of the Herald here. Unfortunately, Scott was misquoted (he didn't ever say "unwanted children", he referred to children that didn't have their own families and needed homes.) Otherwise, it is a good article and we are happy it circulated to so many readers.

So the 6th approached and so many people were busy tying up all the necessary ends for the event. Betsy organized everything... from soup spoons to press releases, table cloths and crock pots, donations to drinking water. Janet (with the help of others) gathered up 50 or 60 silent auction and raffle items.. tons of great services like massage and acupuncture, carpentry and day sails, and beautiful hand-crafted items... even a gorgeous wood sculpture of a nude woman! Leslie and Diane gathered 30 or so exquisite food dishes, with many African entrees and a desert table I could have called "Death by Chocolate." Nick organized decorations, a crew of his made a gorgeous mural for the stage, hundred of flowers were carefully arranged and donated and individuals lent their African artifacts for display. Ri and I spent all week making granola for sale, but mostly we sat back and the party was planned for us!

So Sunday arrived and despite some minor jitters and snafu's (Ri was too sick to attend and the African dancer was too) 1:00 came. People rolled in, and by all reports everything went off smashingly and it was fun to boot! Maybe some readers who attended will comment here so we can hear what they thought (hint, hint).The food was great, the music varied, the people amazing. What a thing to be sitting amongst hundreds of people, speaking of our journey to this point and the one ahead. What a thing to open to the love present and receive all the blessings and prayers and gifts.

We did well. We estimate our expenses to be $15,000 for the adoption and necessary travels, and so far we have raised more than half of it! The silent auction alone brought in $4,200!

So this idea of "It takes a village" really is true... we absolutely would not be where we are without all of your prayers, good wishes, contributions and time. When this child comes home s/he will have flown here on all of our wings. Bless you all!

Not For the Faint of Heart

2008-01-02T04:55:00.001-05:00

Just like any good runner (or at least one that can run more than the one-twentieth of a mile that I can), I have hit "The Wall".

Yesterday I declared through part scream, part tears, "I can't do this anymore. Forget it. I'm done." I'm not sure what my beloved husband thought... the dear man is having to put up with so much right now, and fortunately he knows me enough to be able to harbor my storms quite gracefully after 15 years.

What you all can't see from the outside of this process is that for those of us on the inside, creating this thing is a full time job. I have determined that this beast grows exponentially. So if on Monday my to do list has two items on it, when I pick up the phone to complete item #1, it immediately turns into a 10 tiered project. Then each of those turns into the same. A whole day can explode in mere moments, and there in the background is Ariah and the dog both either pulling on my leg, pulling on each other or pulling everything down from the shelves and spreading it around the house as thoroughly and evenly as possible. At the end of a day the explosion is evident,the house looks like a land mine went off, it feels like a land mine went off, and the to-do list has turned into 20 items long for the next day (which will turn into another beastly number the following day when it all begins again). You can only imagine the shape I am in by then.

So, I threw in the towel. I'm done. I faced up to the fact that I am not superhuman, and can't possibly tow this line any longer. Ya... today I'm back at it. Up this morning by 2:45 getting going on what yesterday seemed impossible.

When Trace died, I had the feeling that every other bereaved mother or father has likely experienced... the desire to scour the earth for your child, to quite literally move land and mountains, traverse vast distances of ocean, turn over every stone, in search of your child. What hurts so darn much is sitting still, unable to do anything with the loss while your body is screaming to pour all its energy into finding your baby.

I remember during those months having discussions with Scott about our physical infertility and the choices we faced. It seemed hard, really hard to pursue another child. Not emotionally- we knew that could we conceive in a moment of lovemaking that we would do so without reservation. But physically and financially... how would we ever do it? It seemed we would have to move mountains.

We talked about just that, how if your child were lost you would indeed dedicate your life to finding him. I wanted to know if there was a difference between a child living in body and a child living in Spirit. If this child that is to come to us is our child already, even when not in human form, then would we not run to the corners of the Earth to find him?

A friend of mine, upon telling her I had decided to quit, responded with such grace. She said, "I can understand the feeling of needing to stop. It is really important sometimes to know you can say no. To try on the 'no' for a while, and then to spring up from that place into the yes, knowing you chose the path."

My mom said to me that even if I was sitting on a rock through this whole thing, it would feel overwhelming. Going through a gestation of any kind after an infant loss is tremendously emotional and stressful. I can't even manage to get out the diapers to see what I need. I did that last time, and it was futile. This time I'll believe it when I see it. Until then, I am willing to search the earth over.

So, the paperwork is filed with the INS. Now we wait. Our dossier will soon be hand delivered to the Rwandan Consulate in Washington, DC. Today's job (among twenty more, including 'vacuum dog hair out of car') is to get Leahy's attention. I want them to make concessions to keep me in Rwanda, issuing the child's visa at the US Embassy there. If you asked me if I actually wanted to visit Nairobi right now, the answer would be, "No Not so much."

Wish me luck.

Nuts and Bolts

2007-12-27T21:41:00.000-05:00

Alright, so the calls for more information have begun to roll in. So I will attempt to let you all know what is going on in one on-topic, stick-to-the-subject, sure-to-be-dry post.

You already read that I got up one night and made a totally random phone call to a woman whose number I received soon after Trace passed, but threw into a hand made solid maple file (that is so full it actually tips over when you open the drawer). The woman answered and told us that there was a pilot program "just beginning" with Rwanda and we would be one of the first families through. They were only taking something like 8 families into the program. So, I met her the following day, she was very informative and kind and happened to have a similar steam-roll-through-it personality as mine. This woman has since been described to me as a cross between Mother Theresa and a loose cannon. I liked her even more with that.

Immediately (read: next day) we were on the road to getting a homestudy (a requirement for any US adoption) completed. I was warned that this process can take on average 6 to 8 months, but we plowed through it in 3 weeks. The social worker was great and responsive, completing everything in record time.

Tomorrow we get to hand deliver (avoids all those "Woops, we never actually received that" kind of responses that tend to slow things down) our I600A along with our completed homestudy and all sorts of other official looking forms all the way to St. Albans, VT. This is the home of what used to be called the INS, now renamed the USCIS, although no one calls it that.

There we get fingerprinted for a criminal check or something... and then another wait begins. Since the Immigration load isn't really too hefty in Vermont, we are told the turn around time is actually quite fast and everything should be all set in 2 weeks to send on to the Rwandan Consulate.

Once that happens and they approve our Dossier for adoption then we will be matched with a child. After a thorough medical examination, we will be able to approve the child. Then I can travel whenever to Rwanda and meet this child...

Next everything is going to the Rwandan court system for approval and finalization. We are told that at this point it really has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with their system being sure that the child is orphaned with no known relatives, etc. I will be in Kigali at this point, hoping that paperwork is going thru quickly and smoothly so I can get home to Scott and Ri and begin life as a family. We are warned though that many Africans don't really regard time as Americans do (good luck getting me to pay attention to the calendar when I get back!), so who knows how long it could take. I see 4 weeks start to finish. Just a prayer I am putting out... Anyone who wants to join me, please do.

In order for us to get home to the States, we need to travel to Nairobi, Kenya and apply for a visa with the US Embassy. Unless things for this are up and running in Rwanda by the time i get there- which could happen, apparently and would admittedly make things a wee bit simpler.

What? Oh... where am I staying? Hmmm... I don't know yet. But I will. Soon. I am blessed to have met numbers of very warm, kind people willing to help me in Rwanda. I have no doubt that everything is as it should be and that I will be cared for well.

Oh, you want to know about the child? Boy? girl? Age? Well, in typical form, we do not know gender. We are asking for a newly born child.

As for diseases, well... yes, I have anti-malarials. And antibiotics to carry in just in case. And yes, I have insurance that travels with me. No problem. Now all I have to do is figure out how much I can take and what I can bring in... the food may be a wee tad problematic, I don't know. But I do know I was informed to not eat anything even remotely healthy like veggies or fruits... unless well fried and processed. I am thinking a few cases of Cliff bars. What would you do?

Solstice

2007-12-21T20:04:00.000-05:00

I am typing here with the moon over my shoulder... a moon so very ripe and heavy, even closer to the horizon than usual as the ring around her measures an easy five times her normal circumference. Never in my 33 years here have I seen anything like it. Nothing even remotely close.

It is Solstice, and tonight the dark is present for as long as the light shines. It brings an offering to go in to the quiet still places, go into the dark shadowy crevasses within and be with what is there... so often we try to run from the dark toward the light. Away from grief toward joy.

But the grief offers immense gifts... it is only in being willing to go into those dark held places, into the grief that healing can begin. For grief cannot exist without love.

This year Ariah and I made Solstice cards by hand. The greeting read "Even on the Darkest of Nights, the Light Returns."

There has been nothing more dark than the loss of my son and womb. Nothing more dark than the brutal massacre of 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days. And yet out of both grows new life and new hope. Somehow there is forgiveness and healing.

I look at the moon this night and I have to wonder if this is the night that our child is being born on the other side of the world. Next week we go to the equivalent of the INS to file our forms. Two weeks after that everything should be all set to send our dossier to Rwanda. Our fundraising efforts are in full swing and our event is being planned for the 6th of January. We are still being told that a child will be assigned in late January and travel can commence any time afterwards.

It is true, the dark has much to offer. Without this particular dark loss of Trace there would be no light of this child who awaits us in Rwanda.

Tonight I celebrate the return of the light, shown to me at this moment as the ring around the moon.

It's True What They Say...

2007-12-15T17:23:00.000-05:00

A child grows in your heart. I guess my lifelong marvel at the process of conception, pregnancy, and birth led me to always discount this claim from those who were adopting. I honestly thought that people who said this were saying it to make themselves feel better. In my mind, there was no way an idea, an imagining, could measure up to the mysterious miracle of life swelling within a woman's body.

That is what it is for me at this point, right? Just an idea? Heck, we do not even know if this child has been born yet. There is a soul out there, incubating within a womb, or perhaps just recently placed in an orphanage crib, that is making its way to us, but right now although it may be a real child, it is just an idea to me.

Or is it? Maybe not. How can a real child be only an idea?

To think that one process of gestating can't compare to another way of gestating was shortsighted. I am just discovering how unbelievably spiritual and completely mysterious this process is. When I sit still in the silence and close my eyes and clear my thoughts, I find I can feel this baby. I didn't try to do this, I just discovered it. It is as if I can travel to where this child exists on a spirit-level and meet it there, even begin to get to know it. I remarked to Scott the other night just how surprisingly similar this is to what I have experienced with getting to know my last two children who in fact did gestate within my womb. I did not get to know them by feeling an elbow jabbing my side, or a head grinding and turning repetitively under my rib. While I loved the physicality of gestation, if I wanted to truly tune into my child and feel who they were, even communicate with them, I had to meet the baby on a spirit-energetic level.

I guess it makes sense that I can communicate with this baby who is making his/her way to our home and hearts. I don't know why I am so surprised with it... I have long known that people communicate with each other even when they are not in proximity. We accept it as fact that animals know when their owner is coming home long before the owner arrives. Mystery, but fact just the same. We know a mother can drop everything she is in the middle of and bolt upstairs without thinking, to save her child from some perilous activity, all from just an unexplainable "feeling." Of course then, I can get to know this baby in some mysterious way that is beyond what we can explain.

And so, as I unfold to this child in my mind and in my being, I can feel this child also unfolding in my heart. When I walk into the orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda and the Sister takes me over to where our baby lies, I know without a doubt that I will recognize him. The mother who has just pushed the last shoulder of her baby from between her legs will pull her baby up to her bosom and talk gently to him, looking into his eyes. And she will know him, will not be surprised with him in the least. In awe, yes. Sky high, yes. Exhausted to be sure. And she will say, "It is as if I have known him forever." And in many ways, I will have.

Things that go bump in the night

2007-12-13T00:04:00.000-05:00

Okay, okay... I realize I have yet to fill in the details of what the heck we are doing with this adoption thing. I am finding that backtracking is hard to do though- to write journal entires in such a way that doesn't really chronicle a day, but rather writing an entry telling a story that has already happened... it is just sorta... well... counter-intuitive. Do I even make sense? I'm talking about writing, for example,

"June 19, 1985: Dear Diary,
On May 3rd, 1985 here is what happened....." Makes no sense, right?

Well speaking of sense... I don't know that I do anymore (make sense). I am on so many hormone pills, what with trying to induce lactation and all... plus I gotta admit I'm kinda punchy after homeschooling all day and then swigging down a cocktail of caffeine and mate (read "mah-tay") in hopes of keeping my eyes open long enough to dig out from under the heap of sticky notes on my desk. I can't read half of them, and the ones I can make out don't tell me a thing about what I am supposed to be doing...

Anyway, I will get back to the more serious job of explaining our journey at some point, but for now I had to just had to report in with some musings on the things that swirl around in the vortex I once thought of as my head.

We are planning this fund-raiser to help with adoption costs, and as if I have nothing better to think about (like preparing my home and heart for a baby) I lie awake at night thinking fund-raiser stuff... the stuff Lizzy is supposed to be worrying about, not me.. The "coordinator" as I call her, Lizzy, asked that I send her the list of things I can't stop contemplating in the wee hours. See below:

Things that go "bump" in the night: For Lizzy:

who's gonna set up the place?

who's gonna clean up the place?

is fred really gonna decorate?

who's gonna magistrate?

what about signage?

what about wattage?

who's doing silent auction?

this is real, this adoption?

when do I do email invites?

should we put up christmas lights?

how on earth do we get people there?

my god... I forgot to change my underwear.

How did we get here?

2007-12-11T10:12:00.000-05:00

Nearly two years ago now, my husband Scott and I conceived a very wanted and welcomed child. Sadly, our dear son Trace Oak was born still after a catastrophic uterine rupture took his life at term. I also lost my womb on that same day... leaving us with the question of how and when our next child would come.

We had contemplated adoption- both domestic and international- but we had a few kind women offer to do a gestational surrogacy for us and over the year since Trace's death and we had agreed to stay open to what presented itself, to not push the river so-to-speak, and to watch for the doors to open. We were led to believe that was a surrogacy....

One night just a few weeks ago, though, I was in our bed reading a story to our soon-to-be-six year old daughter Ariah. Even at this age, she still depends on us to put her to sleep (a current frustration of mine, but perhaps a different blog) and it was quite late on a Sunday. But you know how somehow it is possible to have your lips move and eject sound that forms the words to a story all while your mind goes over the details of more adult topics? Well, my mouth was moving, my mind drifting, and out of nowhere came this voice, "Go call Hope."

Now I had never spoken to Hope; a midwife friend had passed me her number in the wake of Trace's death some 10 months prior. As soon as I registered this strange command, I resisted it. "This is a Sunday night. I am reading a story to my daughter. I cannot call some woman I do not know in the middle of a story on Sunday night! I will call later."

"Call her NOW." The voice responded.

"That is ludicrous," I argued. "Nothing is going to change between now and tomorrow."

On and on this futile process went (still while moving my lips to form the book's words) until finally I paused the story and moved into the dark of the bathroom to make the call.

Practicing

2007-12-09T23:10:00.001-05:00

Well, I see how this blog thing is... I am supposed to be sleeping, or at the very least crossing things off from the seemingly unending "to-do-for-adoption" list. Sigh. Instead I am lurking around my own blog spot trying to figure out how things work, and deciding that I am decidely elderly since I can't figure out all these bells and whistles...

I was warned that a blog can eat up all your time, but I want to be able to update everyone, so I'll give it a whirl. Just know I am not trying to win any awards with my writing style, lol.

Tomorrow's to do list:
create real blog entry
pick up supplemental feeder for breastfeeding from adoption agency
call travel clinic to schedule meeting
research vaccines (again)
plan music for fundraiser
send paperwork to homestudy social worker
get going on dossier for Rwanda!

Oh, and take Ariah to homeschool meet-up, pick up play date, take puppy for a walk, get kids to chorus, make dinner, clean up, and do Christmas cards. Phew!