reflections on coming home

One of the joys of traveling to meet K the week we did is that there were TWO other families also visiting their sons for the first time at K's orphanage. Earlier this week we got an email with photos and links to videos that one of the other families took of us with K during that week. These shots catch us at some moments when we weren't thinking "let's take a picture of this" so they capture a bit more of an unedited view of the week. These first two were sad for me to look at - they are from the first few minutes after we first met K, and he first met us. I'm reminded how very afraid he was that first day. I don't know what kind of preparation, if any, he was given prior to being rolled into the visiting room and left alone with English-speaking strangers who want to be close to him. His reaction that first visit on the first day was definitely fear. Not knowing him then, I didn't know how to read his body language as well as I did by the end of the week, but he is definitely afraid. These two pictures were taken within the first 15 minutes of us meeting each other...

As I think about what the pick-up trip will be like, I'm guessing it's going to be terrifying for K. He hasn't seen me for months. The only memory he will have of me is likely what his Baba has been able to keep alive with time she's spent looking at pictures with him and talking about us. But I'm going to show up at his orphanage one day, and they'll bring him down to me, pass him off to me, and we'll go get in the car for a 2.5 hour drive through the mountains - no day to adjust to each other again or anything like that - just pass off and go. That in itself will be a jarring experience to this little boy who can probably count on one hand how many times he's left the orphanage or been in a car.

And he has no way of knowing that he's never going back. And he doesn't know yet what a very, very good thing that is! So although we, from the outside, know that his life is beginning, as far as he knows, everything that he's ever known is gone. Except he doesn't even know that.

We'll spend a week in a hotel in the capital for various appointments - again, WAY more out-of-the-ordinary than he's used to, at the same time not having any of the comfort of familiar routines. Worst of all, his new caretaker, me and likely Owen, aren't going to speak his language! I'm working on some basic functional words (sleep, eat, bath, go out), but I know I'm not going to be speaking his language.

After a week of getting acclimated to that routine, (stay in the hotel room, eat hotel food, go to various appointments), we're going to suddenly change it up by packing everything up, driving to the airport, and then flying home. Even if I learn words such as "fly" or "airplane" he doesn't have any frame of reference to put those ideas into to prepare him for an international journey home! By that point, all I really figure I'll have to comfort him with is the fragile thread of my presence - hoping that over the week we are together in the hotel before we leave that he has the chance to remember that I am okay, to learn again that I am gentle, and to hopefully learn to trust, at least a bit, so that in the unfamiliar, Owen and I will be his familiar to cling to.

Seeing this picture from the end of our last visit that our friend sent gives me hope that maybe, in a week, it will again be possible for him to find some comfort in being with his mom. There's a big difference between the way this dear boy relates to us in this picture than in the photos above...