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Authors: Krista Bremer
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soon as Aliya and Ismail disappeared into the crowd as I made my way through security, I walked through the terminal with a spring in my step I didn’t even remember I had. I felt a sweet relief and a surge of energy, as if a large stone had been lifted from my chest. The invisible tether between us slackened, and I leaned into my new freedom.
An hour later, during a layover in Washington DC, I sat in a waiting area across from a middle-aged woman whose graying hair was swept into a tangled ponytail and whose eyes were puffy with exhaustion. Beside her sat a tiny African girl whose skinny legs barely reached the edge of the plastic bucket seat. She wore a pink jumper that was at least two sizes too big for her, and she sat ramrod straight, staring vacantly into the distance with a resigned dignity, like an exhausted, solitary traveler who had a long ways to go to reach home. When the woman offered a sippy cup from her backpack, the girl accepted it without even making eye contact, as if a flight attendant had just handed her some soda and peanuts.
The woman told me she was returning from Ethiopia, where four days prior she had adopted this tiny, stoic girl from an orphanage. After both her parents had passed away, this girl’s grandmother had been forced to abandon her at the orphanage because she was unable to care for her. She was two and a half years old. Before they had begun the long journey to their new home, the woman said, she’d spent three days in an Ethiopian hotel room listening to this child shriek and howl inconsolably.
“It was great,” the woman said brightly, already displaying that uncanny ability mothers have to extract the positive from even the most trying circumstances. “She rejected me the entire time. From the moment we left the orphanage, she cried—which, of course, was an excellent sign, because it shows she’s bonded with
someone
in her life, so she has the ability to bond to a parent figure. I mean, I would
really
have been worried if she’d accepted me from the get-go.” Her eyes fell, and she contemplated the carpet.
This pair had been traveling for more than thirty hours already, with many more to go before they would arrive on the West Coast, where her husband and three children waited to encircle this girl as family.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” the woman said, reaching over and patting the girl’s tiny belly through layers of pink cotton. The little girl stiffened.
“But these curls—I have
no
idea how to take care of them,” the woman continued, running her fingers over the child’s scalp. The little girl grimaced. When it was time to board the plane, and the woman lifted the child from her seat, she began to cry inconsolably, a haunting wail as if she were grieving the loss of every single face, every single food, every single landscape she had ever loved.
I cringed along with the child when the mother reached out for her, but I was also stunned by this middle-aged woman’s courage and commitment, which drove her all the way across the world to collect this tiny, mysterious girl with her unknown wounds, to carry her back across the globe with the crazy conviction that they would become kin. It was an outrageous risk, an improbable act of faith—yet perhaps ultimately not so different from the journey any of us embark on when we decide to become biological parents, when we resolve to stitch our mismatched lives together to make a family.
8
Desire
T he first sharp pang of desire hit me in the parking lot of my daughter’s preschool. It was a cold winter day in North Carolina, and as I buckled my seat belt another mother maneuvered her gleaming new Volvo station wagon into the space beside my 1992 Honda Civic. She smiled and gestured for me to roll down my window so we could talk.
She was on my passenger side, so I unbuckled my seat belt, leaned across the seat, and groped for the handle to open the window. I rotated the crank, slowly and painfully,
An hour later, during a layover in Washington DC, I sat in a waiting area across from a middle-aged woman whose graying hair was swept into a tangled ponytail and whose eyes were puffy with exhaustion. Beside her sat a tiny African girl whose skinny legs barely reached the edge of the plastic bucket seat. She wore a pink jumper that was at least two sizes too big for her, and she sat ramrod straight, staring vacantly into the distance with a resigned dignity, like an exhausted, solitary traveler who had a long ways to go to reach home. When the woman offered a sippy cup from her backpack, the girl accepted it without even making eye contact, as if a flight attendant had just handed her some soda and peanuts.
The woman told me she was returning from Ethiopia, where four days prior she had adopted this tiny, stoic girl from an orphanage. After both her parents had passed away, this girl’s grandmother had been forced to abandon her at the orphanage because she was unable to care for her. She was two and a half years old. Before they had begun the long journey to their new home, the woman said, she’d spent three days in an Ethiopian hotel room listening to this child shriek and howl inconsolably.
“It was great,” the woman said brightly, already displaying that uncanny ability mothers have to extract the positive from even the most trying circumstances. “She rejected me the entire time. From the moment we left the orphanage, she cried—which, of course, was an excellent sign, because it shows she’s bonded with
someone
in her life, so she has the ability to bond to a parent figure. I mean, I would
really
have been worried if she’d accepted me from the get-go.” Her eyes fell, and she contemplated the carpet.
This pair had been traveling for more than thirty hours already, with many more to go before they would arrive on the West Coast, where her husband and three children waited to encircle this girl as family.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” the woman said, reaching over and patting the girl’s tiny belly through layers of pink cotton. The little girl stiffened.
“But these curls—I have
no
idea how to take care of them,” the woman continued, running her fingers over the child’s scalp. The little girl grimaced. When it was time to board the plane, and the woman lifted the child from her seat, she began to cry inconsolably, a haunting wail as if she were grieving the loss of every single face, every single food, every single landscape she had ever loved.
I cringed along with the child when the mother reached out for her, but I was also stunned by this middle-aged woman’s courage and commitment, which drove her all the way across the world to collect this tiny, mysterious girl with her unknown wounds, to carry her back across the globe with the crazy conviction that they would become kin. It was an outrageous risk, an improbable act of faith—yet perhaps ultimately not so different from the journey any of us embark on when we decide to become biological parents, when we resolve to stitch our mismatched lives together to make a family.
8
Desire
T he first sharp pang of desire hit me in the parking lot of my daughter’s preschool. It was a cold winter day in North Carolina, and as I buckled my seat belt another mother maneuvered her gleaming new Volvo station wagon into the space beside my 1992 Honda Civic. She smiled and gestured for me to roll down my window so we could talk.
She was on my passenger side, so I unbuckled my seat belt, leaned across the seat, and groped for the handle to open the window. I rotated the crank, slowly and painfully,
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