While I am sad to part with my babies, I know she must be ecstatic to get her babies back. I got to see her re-meet them for the first time since being gone almost two months. That was difficult for me to see, not because they loved her more than I ( which was a legitimate fear I had that might have broken my heart a little), but because most of them didn't even remember her. She knew them much longer than I had. A lot of them she had been with since they were small babies, new not only to us but to this world. Even more than that I couldn't help think of the missing children. I know while I had been here there had been at least two of the babies she would have known and cared for pass away from our floor and another that was taken back to the orphanage. Seeing that really brought home the fact that I am leaving for probably at least two months, and when I get back my babies probably won't remember me. I hate thinking that even worse would be if any of them didn't make it till I came home. I know that is a very real possibility. My one baby returned home to me from the hospital, but he is still very critical and will remain so until he either has a miracle or passes away, and I learned early on that even the lives of the children apparently doing very well here can be gone in an instant with no warning. Now when I go through the rooms I hold the babies a little longer and a little tighter knowing it might be a very long time before I get the chance again, and even if I do it will never be in the same way it is now. I will no longer be their momma, but just someone passing through their lives.
I don't know what will happen after I return from Hong Kong. Honestly I don't even know how I am getting there. I leave in little more than a week, but I have yet to find out where I am going and what form of transportation I am using to get there. I guess untimately it doesn't matter. I know I am going and they will figure it out for both of us before I leave. After my new little one is recovered and returned I could return here, but the nurses should all be returned and they should no longer have floors needing to be covered. I know they are opening another floor on another unit and that they have a couple nurse who have not been able to return because they have been trying to work out visas. I could possibly help in any of those units that are short staffed, or stay here and help out, or be sent to accompany another child for surgery, or perhaps something else I have not even thought of. What ever it is, chances are very good that I will not be needed to return to my babies. My time with them is drawing to a close and I will need to start saying my goodbyes. If I return here I'll still be able to play with and visit and love on them. I hope I will get the chance to do that, but I am eventually going to have to let go, whether now or later. I will eventually go home, and even if I stayed they would not. Two of my children received presents from their adoptive families this week.
I don't know which children are matched with families or possibly getting adopted, but there comes a point in the process that the families are allowed to send small approved things to the children. Apparently this means that they are very far along in the process. Two of my children recieved little photo albums of their future families this week. I know that it probably didn't mean as much to them as it did to me, at two it is a very difficult thing to explain that the little book of pictures they see is their future family when they have never known a family in their lives. It was both beautiful and difficult (as I realize I say about pretty much everything here) looking through those little books. I want so much for my babies! I look through those albums and see those smiling faces and can't help but ask if they could possibly love my little one as much as I do, as much as I think they should be loved. I wonder if they will realize how absolutely special this baby is and how blessed they are to be a family to that child. Being here they are loved, but they don't have the attention or opportunity or security that they deserve. I wonder if they will have all that and more there. I know being in a family is a wonderful thing and exactly what I hoped for them, but seeing it I wonder if it is enough. I want more than just a family. I want them to have the right family for them. I want them to have all of the the opportunity of loving and belonging they have been cheated of in their short lives.
All of this has caused me to reevaluate so many things. Not only the part of being here, but the fact that being here causes me to talk to many people about things I hadn't before. I have seen so many different views of adoption and children from so many possible angles. A lot of people have opinions about it, and those a opinions are far more varied than I imagined. I niavely assumed that most people's opinions followed along with my rather simplified view. A child is a child, and every child deserves to be loved, but for few people it is that simple. Perhaps in some ways it shouldn't be. There is the thought of needing to biologically have children of your own, for both a need for legacy and personal need. If you do have biological children should you adopt or not as well. If so before or after having your own children (for the record I hate that phrase. If you are even considering adoption that phrase should not even pass through your mind. If a child you adopt is not your own you shouldn't adopt.) Then there is the question of inter racial adoption, and where and how adoption should be done. After that there is the question of what is the best way of raising an adopted child to feel loved and always to know they belong and what role in their lives the fact that they are adopted will play. I have come to realize that each of these questions can trigger many varied opinions, and I don't know what is the right answer or if there is one. I'd suspect that it is one of those things that every circumstance is different, just as every child is different.
What I have learned is that I love these children. I can't see them children with disabilities or Chinese children or orphans anymore, even if I tried. I see children. I know that I could take any one of my babies into my home and love them utterly and completely with all that I am. I could, with even the breath of an opportunity, devote my life to making sure that they were always loved and cared for and could have everything I could make possible. I know right now I have nothing to offer a child, but I also know that I want to adopt one day. I know when it came to loving a child it would make no difference in my love how they came to be in my arms. Some day, if God grants me a child or children I will be blessed no matter what struggles they have, what shape, color, size, or origin.
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