The Eagle has Landed in Newark

We are back in the USA and much has transpired since my last post.

Most importantly - Steve has been able to pick Cate up! Only for a few moments, and only in search of me, but it is a major milestone. And I have to add, that she looks for him everywhere... when he is out of sight, she is not happy and she truly looks to him when she wants to play. I predict within a month of two, she will be a daddy's girl, and my work will be done.

Cate became a U.S. citizen in Newark. I wondered as we handed over the sealed documents from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, the ones with warnings written all over them that we were not to break the seal, if she could have any idea what this would mean to her someday. I was carrying her in a little hip bag, and for the first time during our very long, wearisome day, she was a bit fussy. So, she cried and complained as the customs official broke the seal and I thought of how very many people around the world would dream of this moment, even recognizing what they would leave behind, would dream of this chance to come to this country and call it home. And I realized, what we had dreamed for Cate was just a place to call home. And tomorrow, she will see that home for the first time.

But, first, our swearing in. I will admit to getting a little teary, even as the youngish adoption officer asked about what state we were from, joked about sports teams and then had us raise our hands and swear and oath that everything we had said in our documentation was true (as if there could have been the possibility of falsehood after all the fingerprinting, clearances and references we have provided). Anyway - it was short. Over in ten seconds, and not nearly the solemn occasion I had imagined in my mind. But still, it was done, and Cate was 100% ours, ready to take home, in both the eyes of China and the U.S.A., and so a tear did come to my eye.

That evening, Steve and Alex had plans so I went to meet our new friends for dinner at a Chinese regional restaurant in the hotel. I just could not order a pizza on my last night in China and I wanted to seize my last opportunity for something authentic. Without the energetic Alex, I planned for a relaxing meal, and then back to the room to pack before our 5 a.m. wake-up call. But, I was wrong. It was Cate, easy-going, quiet Cate, who lost it at dinner. Just as the first course of the meal was delivered, she lost it. Lost it in that way from which you know there will be no recovery. We fled. Ran to the elevators and had to wait five crying, terror-filled minutes before an empty car opened up. I took her to the room, and she cried and cried and cried with an anger and anxiety that broke my heart. I have seen this same out-of-control, angry, over, over-tired cry from Alex. But in Cate, I felt it was a little more, almost like she knew that another great change was coming, before she had figured out who we were and where she was and why she kept waking up in different places, and where were all the people she had known before? I tried to give her a bottle, but she threw it. I put her in her crib, and for the first time, she screamed. So, I did what I would do with her brother in that state, I picked her up, and held her tense, fighting body as closely to me as I could and I started to sing. And in that moment, I became her mother. For real and forever. In that desperate moment, she quieted, and put her head on my chest, and I became her mother. To me, and I think, to her.

Steve and Alex came back shortly after that, and our new, dear friends, had my meal packed and brought to my room. And we sat on the floor, all together, and ate, which is probably what we really needed most before packing and a 5 a.m. wake-up call.

Somehow, we managed to fit it all into our luggage - all we had brought and all we had acquired in China. It was outside of our hotel room at 6 a.m. We carried two sleepy children to breakfast and then boarded the bus to the airport for the first leg of our flight - the trip back to Beijing. And here is how it went.... When I stepped off the bus at 7:30 a.m., I knew my new baby had a bad smell. What I did not know until I stood up was that the source of that bad smell was running down my shirt, down my pants and onto my shoes. And so begins the journey of 24 hours and 12 zillion miles. What I also did not know was that that same baby would need to be changed ten times in the teeny-teeny-tiny bathroom of an airplane ten times that same day... so memories of my trip home will be clouded with a certain aroma I would rather forget. We ran out of diapers. We ran out of wipes. We ran out of clean clothes. Luckily, there were friends to help with the first two items and her brother's extra set of clothes to help with the other.

The first few hours of the trip were the hardest. Overtired parents and children are not a good match, especially when you arrive at the airport and discover you have towait to board a very crowded bus to get to your plane.We finally arrived in Beijing about five hours later, only to discover our flight was delayed by two hours, turning our three hour lay-over to five. But, ever attempting to be the optimist, I decided this would increase the chance that we would all sleep on the way home. And we did, and 14 hours didn't seem as long as it had going to China, although we had a new traveller along. As luck would have it, Cate and I shared an aisle with a kind Chinese man, who now lives in Canada, and a smiling face can put a very different spin on a trip than one whose eyes say, "Oh, great. I am next to a kid." Cate did well, and I will always be grateful to the kind eyes and curiosity of of our smiling seat-mate.

And so, we arrived in Newark, and unexpectedly, I found myself again, choked up and my eyes filled with tears. We had made it. This whole incredible, tiring, fantastic, stressful and memorable journey. We had made it. We had brought Cate home.

Tonight, we stay with Omi and Pop Pop, and much to our surprise, Cate seems to have quickly felt almost at ease here. We don't know if she has ever been in a home before and here she is with her grandparents and her uncle, a dog and a cat and an Easter basket. Has she ever been given a present? She gives little notice to the toys, but carefully organizes the candy. Now she sleeps, in a crib bed made just for her. What does she make of it all? We don't know. At times she laughs and smiles, at others, seems overwhelmed. But I hope that she knows, as crazy as it all has been, as crazy as it all will be, as crazy as we all can be, she is with her forever family now.