Monday, January 30, 2006
We have returned from Guatemala! And what and amazing trip we had. We arrived in Guatemala City Thursday evening, January 19th. It was a relatively uneventful trip, the only adrenal pumping moment was a last minute scramble to the SF airport because of a ride snafu, but we survived and made our flight with very few minutes to spare.
It was night when we flew into Guatemala City, and I watched out the window at the huge sprawling metropolis coming closer as the plane touched down. Lights and neighborhoods spread out for miles.
Our hotel could have been any hotel any where in the world. It was very nice with that fake sort of grecco architecture, shiny floors and faux impressionist oil painting that create an atmosphere that makes foreign travelers feel secure. Most importantly it was a large facility with many restaurants and areas to walk around. We couldn't leave the grounds once Lotus Maria arrived so I was happy to see that there was enough to do that we all would go stir crazy.
Nate and I checked in and got settled and amazingly enough actually feel asleep. The next morning we both leapt out of bed and scurried around trying to get the room ready, which was ridiculous since the hotel had pretty much supplied all we needed. Lotus Maria and her foster mom were going to arrive at 10am, but I was ready at about 7.
We went downstairs and got breakfast and met a woman from Texas named Stacey and her beautiful 7 month old son. This was her third and final visit. She had found out she was out of PGN (which is a term I had never heard 6 months ago, but now it rolls off my tongue with ease. Basically it means the adoption is final, but the baby can't leave the country yet.) and she had decided to come down and just stay with him at the hotel until they could leave and come home. This could take a week or 4 weeks. She didn't seem to mind the unknown and was just thrilled to have her son.
At 9:30 Nate and I camped out in the lobby, just in case they showed up early. The Foster Mother, Miriam Janet, and Lotus would be accompanied by our lawyer who we had never met. As we waited about a half dozen women with children, mostly babies, but some older children as well, entered the lobby and waited for the new parents to arrive. The hotel we stayed at is the place that almost all of the people adopting from Guatemala meet their children for the first time. I had a really hard time seeing all these children that needed homes. I assumed that our experience would be some what unique and solitary, so it was difficult to realize it was a shared experience. It was surreal to have this very personal moment in this very sterile, yet opulent lobby of a hotel which by nature is an impersonal environment, and to be surrounded by families from all over also having this personal moment.
As each woman entered I scanned the faces of the foster mothers and babies terrified we wouldn't be able to recognize our child even though I had studied her face in photographs thousands of times. Stacey from Texas joined us at our watch spot in the lobby. Her son was nodding off in her arms. "Did you expect to see so many children?" She asked. I said no. "Neither did I. It's a little weird isn't it." The doors slid open yet again and a solitary well dressed woman entered. "Is that your lawyer?" Stacey asked us. "I don't know what our lawyer looks like." I replied sullenly, realizing that would have been a really good question to ask the agency before we left the country. The doors would open again and a woman with a child would enter. 'Is that your baby?" Stacey would ask. "No, I don't know, I don't think so..." She was being nice, but she was driving me crazy.
After a few more moments of Nate and I pacing the lobby and trying not to jump out of our skin we spied the bobbing head of a held child weaving through the front parking area and I knew immediately that was our girl. She was in the arms of her foster mother, Miriam Janet, who I recognized from the photos we had received. Lotus Maria's hair was in about 10 tiny ponytails on top of her head which stuck out like little antenna. She was dressed in a little denim dress we had sent down and lacy tights which we definitely did not send down. Miriam Janet rushed over to us and was terribly apologetic that she was a few minutes late and said she recognized us from the photo album we had sent to Lotus before Christmas. She only spoke Spanish and I was doing me best to translate to to Nate and respond while not taking my eyes off our little girl. "Everyday we look to the pictures that you sent and I tell her this is your mommy and this is your daddy." I have no idea if this is true or if the baby could comprehend the photos and their meaning but she didn't scream when she was placed in my arms.
Our lawyer,Sandra, rushed over from the other side of the lobby. She got us all seated and Nate sat down with our questions while I wandered the lobby with this antenned child, our child. Shockingly Lotus Maria wasn't upset, but her body was stiff, maybe because of the strange woman holding her, or the stimuli of all the people in the lobby or just the awareness that in her little life there would be more change.
Miriam Janet was fantastic. She had written the baby's schedule out for us, but in Spanish. I barely know the word for bottle or diaper in English much less Spanish so I was very grateful that Nate was there and calm enough to get clarification and ask questions. She brought us formula, clothes, diapers. So most of what we brought with us we never needed. It was obvious that our child was well cared for. Her chubby rosy cheeks are made for kissing and her arms and legs are round rolls of soft delicious baby fat. She is a big girl and was already giving my arms a workout. Her hair, though ridiculous styled which would prove problematic later, is a dark and shiny. Lotus's eyes matche her hair in deep dark color and are encircled by long lashes that dusted the tops of her cheeks her she blinked. In a nutshell she is perfect and all we had to do was keep her alive for the next four days.
Then just as quickly as Miriam Janet and Sandra swooped in they were gone and there we were with our precious little girl, in the lobby of a hotel in a country we had never been before, with a language we barely spoke hoping for the best.
