The Wait and Again: A 14-Year Journey to Adoption

Three years after filling out paperwork to adopt a baby from China, this NYC mother met her daughter—a moment in which time stood still, and the waiting finally stopped.

The Moment finally arrived on Oct. 8, 2007. The long wait that had begun three years earlier, when I filled out an application, was about to end.

The 8,000-mile, 20-hour plane trip brought me to a gray building with an institutional-like feel in Guangzhou, China where my daughter was waiting. She too had endured a long wait and a long journey. I may never know exactly where her journey began, but her report indicates that at around 8 days of life she was left at an outdoor marketplace and then found and placed in an orphanage where she lived and waited for 14 months.

On that day in October, after a five-hour car ride from the orphanage, she too had arrived at this somewhat mysterious waiting place.

The wait had the feel of “forever.” The seasons changed and returned. Life continued while it stood still. I was told by an angel here on Earth in Utah, named Stefani, the China program coordinator at my adoption agency, that I did a great job of waiting. I think this is because as the months became years I inwardly and deeply understood that the years would dissolve into hours and for just one moment, time would stand still and the waiting would stop.

I replayed that Moment over and over and over again in my head. I lived it and breathed it. In many ways I became it. I watched it in my mind and convinced myself that through the intense fear of uncertainty and distance yet remaining in time not space, the Moment was on its way.

The wait became too long to allow my father to meet his seventh grandchild. She will know how much he loved her while he was waiting. She already knows that he gave her the gift of a beautiful name and blessed her with her very own angel.

The good of the wait was that the man who would become her father showed up just in time. He too loved her before he met her, and this made the last part of the journey serene, sweet, and complete. He made it his mission to forever capture that very first Moment when my daughter would be placed in my arms and make me a mother. The photograph is proudly displayed in my young daughter’s princess room. She looks at it and she loves it. She understands that Moment and recently drew her own interpretation of it.

That first Moment played out for real, the way I dreamed it would. I had an overwhelming feeling of calm. And so did she. I watched as she was being carried by a woman whose face and language were familiar to her. As they approached, my arms stretched out waiting, ready to receive. She was so courageous, so cute and so calm.