Guarding My Heart

Brendan has just left for his last day of work before having eight days off. Harrison is lying on his floor rhythmically kicking his bedroom door which, oddly enough, is how he settles down for his afternoon nap these days. It is (relatively) quiet in my house.

The afternoon sun is shining on the floor of my dining room, highlighting the floors that need to be cleaned, the rugs that could stand to be vacuumed, and the toys strewn here and there, but for the moment I am just enjoying the quiet. It feels like the first time my head has had any quiet since the call of Wednesday morning last.

I am still feeling the emotional aftershock of our week, in a bone-tired way that makes me want to curl in a ball and do nothing but escape into a book. There is so much that I dislike about what happened last week that it is making our baby's impending arrival a little less sweet than it should be. Most of it I don't feel comfortable writing about here because I would not want something I said in frustration to set the tone for our continued relationship with our adoption agency. Let me just say that in situations of extreme stress and pressure you will see both the best and the worst of people. I think we saw a bit of the worst of our agency, even though we have been more than happy with them in the past. I don't think this particular situation is likely to present itself again for our agency, and even if it did they would have some experience under their belts and would thus be more prepared to handle it in the manner it should have been handled in.

We were given less than four hours to decide if we were going to Korea or not, and once we had decided we were told that we should plan on being in Korea by Monday, March 19. Despite the fact that we told them we did not have passports in hand, we were pressured into buying airline tickets for a departure date that was iffy at best, based on our passport situation. When my passport did not arrive, I was made to feel that I had failed, when really my agency had failed to offer me guidance, time in which to make sure my plans were accurate and doable, and time in which to decide whether this was the right answer for our family. I want to know why I couldn't have made plans for leaving the following week. I want to know why I was made to feel as if this whole mess was my doing, my fault. I want to know how we are getting back the money we paid them for an escort. I want to know why it took so long for them to understand the distress we were working under, why it took so many phone calls to explain this and for them to do the right thing by offering us options that made sense. They did the right thing in the end, but at that point I had already lost a lot of faith in them. I want to know why every time I asked how the baby's ticket was to be arranged for the return flight, I got a different story. I want to know that my baby will be home on Wednesday, for sure and for certain, with no glitches.

I am not allowing myself to be overwhelmed with happiness right now because I cannot let myself believe she is coming home in case she isn't. I cannot enter into the motherhood of a second child after suffering another fallout of the kind I had last week, which is likely what would happen if I got my hopes up and then she didn't come home on Wednesday. I am guarding myself from that right now. When she is in our arms I will let the happy shine on in, like the sunshine on my dining room floor, illuminating all of the good things that are yet to come. But right now I am just trying to get through the next 2 1/2 days.