The Wait, Post-Match

Today elsie elsewhere asked me this question in one of her comments:

So how are you handling the wait post photo/post knowledge of the Bee?

She’s actually already addressed this question’s topic for herself–as she is a Woman With Referral–in this post. I have also read other bloggers’ reactions to the “waits,” pre- and post-referral, and it does vary some, although typically folks have a harder time once it becomes real. When it was just merely abstract, the wait was hard but the abstraction of what you are waiting for–who is she? what does she look like? where is she? how old? does she have hair?– kept the fact of her distance at bay. At least, that is my interpretation of how other people talk about their experiences with the two kinds of waiting. That the waiting post-referral is much more wrenching.

I guess I am a contrarian. (Surprise, surprise.) For me, the wait is SO MUCH EASIER now that I know who my daughter is. When I was waiting for an idea, it felt like a huge blanket of blackness spread out in front of me. Like I couldn’t see, and–worse–like I couldn’t believe. I lacked total and complete faith that *this* could ever happen for me. I suppose that might come from years of infertility and miscarriages, when the sense that the idea of a thing is all you’re ever going to get pervades your life.

It doesn’t really matter why I felt this way. The fact of the matter for me was that DTC and LID were just acronyms; that my social worker’s blessing was just that, a blessing, not a baby; and that money spent was…well…money spent. I had spent money before in this quest for a child, and I understand very well that all you can really purchase is a service, not a guarantee, and, certainly, not a child.

Which, of course, is all well and good when it comes to adoption.

The minute I was “matched” with my daughter by my agency, everything changed. My heart sped up. In fact, I could actually feel it rumbling around in there, as if it was having hunger pains. And that was good. That was life. Feeling. I allowed myself to want something, and I wanted HER.

I have four photos of her post-lip repair, and two photos of her before the repair. All of them are in frames around my house. The week I was matched, I drove to Lin3ns-n-Things and stocked up on frames of all sizes. Wherever I go in my house, I can see her. I have two photos by my bed; one on my dresser; a little one in an enamel frame by my bathroom sink; two in the TV room; two stuck with push pins over my office desk; one as the desktop on my computer screen; one in the car; one sitting on a shelf above the kitchen sink (I call it: eyes for doing dishes by); and the I AM A BEE 5 x 7 on the kitchen island, where I can hear my husband humming, “I am a bee” under his breath as he makes his morning tea.

This is REAL. She has a name, a face, a birthday, an orphanage, the deepest eyes I’ve ever seen, no hair, and a nickname courtesy of some truly creative photoshopping. She laughs out loud when the nannies play with her. She is learning to walk, holding on to one of their hands.

Speaking of hands, I am guessing she is a lefty because in all four recent photos of her, her left hand is busy holding, clutching, pulling, or rubbing. (There’s a photo I haven’t posted of her, which is the most bizarre yet–she’s got a small piece of rope in her left hand, and a bunch of bananas sitting on the floor in front of her. Yep. You heard me.)

Bottom line: I get to call myself a mother. That’s why this type of waiting is so much easier for me. I get to learn how to be a mother. And, yeah, she doesn’t know I exist. I’ve never wiped her bottom, I’ve never wiped her milky drool, I’ve never wiped her tear. Yet. But, in my heart, I’m growing something for her. Just for her. And it is so much better this way.