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.
No comments:
Post a Comment