Desmond’s Arrival: Part 2

Tuesday morning, December 20, 2011. 

We leave the hotel and arrive at JFK International Airport, find the parking area for our terminal, and start following the signs to where we are supposed to meet our agency’s greeter.  (The greeter is there to make sure the proper child is delivered to the proper family and also handles the brief amount of paperwork that must be signed before you can take your child home.)  When we spoke to her the night before, our greeter told us that the terminal was in the basement of the building, and that we would have to walk down around the building into what felt like the underbelly of the earth.  She was not kidding.  It certainly felt like the sidewalk to nowhere, and it ended up at a terminal whose only sign of life was the tiniest Dunkin’ Donuts kiosk you have ever seen; this is where we would wait to meet her and the other families.  It was a long wait, as we were very early.  We drank some coffee, ate some ridiculously expensive banana bread, took pictures, and checked the flights every five minutes or so:

Steph and soon-to-be big brother, Jack.

Super excited Sara and Brendan.

Fourth from the bottom, Desmond’s flight (Tokyo-Narita) finally landed! 

If you have never waited for an international flight to come through immigration, then you should know that this is a long process.  The sign saying that they had landed was very exciting for about ten minutes; we then waited for what seemed like hours for people to start coming through the gates.  (During this waiting period the abandoned-looking terminal became inhabited by a pigeon eating a bag of Cheetos.  I kid you not.  Steph and Jay have photographic evidence.) 

Finally, the gates opened up and travellers started pouring through.  We found a spot near the railing so we could watch for our babies.  The first baby to come through went to the only family expecting their first child and we were able to witness their first moments as a family.  The second baby, another boy, met his family.  And then we saw them:

Steph and Jay’s Sophie and our Desmond walked off the plane, the tiniest travellers stretching their eager legs after more than a day’s worth of travel induced confinement. 

It took my breath away.  There was an audible “awww!” coming from the crowd around us and Desmond stopped for a moment, perhaps overwhelmed by the sea of faces that had gathered in the terminal.  Then, in what we now know as true Desmond fashion, he started to run.  His escort, the young gentleman in the photo, kept a close eye on him.

One moment a railing and a hundred people separated us, and the next he was in my arms, crying and reaching out for his escort, not too happy to see us, though we were so very happy to meet him.  The airport is a cruel place to meet your child for the first time: large crowds, lots of noise, errant pigeons, and other crying babies make the scene overwhelming.

 

There is no place to sit quietly and gaze at one another and really our only instinct, and that of the other families as well, was to get out.  Sign the paperwork as fast as possible and head for home, or at least the quiet of the car, away from all of the staring faces of curious onlookers.  We said goodbye to his escort, who let us know that he needed a diaper change and change of clothes, and we walked up and out of that basement into the fresh air.

There are those who will tell you that their moment of meeting their child was one of bliss, the magic something that was always meant to be coming together at long last, and that it all went beautifully.  I am not that person.  I will tell the truth, because what, really, is the point of sugarcoating it all?  He cried hard.  He screamed and his head never stopped turning to look for a familiar face.  It was heartbreaking and people stared at us, but having been through this moment twice before we knew that keeping calm and going forward would get us through it.  I whispered to him that it was fine to cry, to scream, to rage; he had every right, given what had happened to him in the last 30 or so hours.  We made it to our car, determined that his being in need of a diaper and clothing change was a huge understatement, and in our first moments alone with our littlest boy we got down to the business of cleanup.  As soon as the first two layers of pants came off, our little guy settled down to sniffles and sighs, his sweaty body relaxed, and he started to take us in.  A fresh diaper made things better yet.  The moment of pure magic happened when I pulled out a cup of Cheerios; he reached for them and knew exactly what to do:

“Feed the lady with the ridiculous grin; she seems to like it.”

And later, “ Feed the guy some pizza; he seems to find it funny.”

And so we met Desmond and began the second leg of his long journey to our family. 

Desmond’s Arrival: Part 1

Let’s back up

In May of last year we knew that our agency in Korea had reached it’s quota for emigration permits (EP) and that our littlest son would not come home in 2011.  Fast forward to November 2011, when rumors started to circulate through the families working with our stateside agency that all of our children had somehow been submitted in the very last EP batch.  It turns out that we were all submitted because our stateside agency is due to close in the near future due to the loss of the agency’s director early last year; our Korean agency submitted all of our agency’s files so that the closure could happen in a more timely manner.  Being submitted held no guarantee of actual travel, but the hope and positive energy of that little bit of news could probably have floated all of our children home in a big happy bubble. 

Emigration permits can take weeks or even months to be granted, with the trend at that time running about four to six weeks.  If we were going to get good news, it would likely coincide with the Christmas/New Year holidays.

What does it all mean?

When the rumors started flying about EP, the speculation meter hit an all-time high.  Would they arrive before Christmas?  Would we even be granted EP, given the fact that the babies referred in Dec. 2010 would not even receive EP before the end of the year?  Should we buy another set of presents to put under the tree?  Honestly, I did not think that he would come home.  I didn’t let myself believe that it could all work out and be true.  Friends and family joke all of the time about my eternal optimism, but on this I could not afford to believe because I was afraid that if I got my hopes up and he didn’t come home I would be crushed.  We had heard nothing official from our agency, who always err on the side of caution and preparing their families for the worst-case-scenarios, so it was truly a huge guessing game. 

Then one day we got a call from our agency’s stand-in director, who asked for our updated email, cell phone numbers and work numbers, because “we are hoping for some very good news to call you with in a day or two”. 

And like the Grinch, my heart grew a few sizes that day, and made room for the possibility of miracles. 

Long Story Short

EP was granted, travel and escort were arranged, and Desmond was due to arrive in the United States on Tuesday, December 20th.  We shopped for more presents, got all of our wrapping done, cleaned the house, packed and repacked the diaper bag, and made about a million excited and nervous phone calls to our friends, Steph and Jay, whose daughter was coming home on the same flight (along with the sons of two other families).  On Monday we headed to NYC, stopping at the Ikea in Paramus on the way, because what else do you do the night before meeting your youngest child?  We stayed in a hotel next to JFK airport, which had a great breakfast waffle station but also smelled ridiculously of Carpet Fresh.  We did not sleep at all, a result of both excitement and the musical group in the room next to ours who insisted on singing and playing instruments well beyond 2 am.  It didn’t matter, though; our happiness could not be tempered by exhaustion. 

Getting ready to head to the airport in the morning was one of the most pinch-me moments I’ve ever lived through, as in Pinch-me, because this can’t really be happening.  We cannot seriously be on our way to meet our son for the first time when he was not expected to come home for another 6-10 months!  For a bit of perspective, families with our Korean agency and the same referral month (March 2011) still have not been submitted for EP as of May 2012. Even if they were submitted today, they might still be weeks away from approval and travel.  To say we were lucky is the understatement of the century; our families had been given the most amazing gift and we all knew it.