by Brandi Rarus
Yet, I’d never felt closer to God. I believed that God was with me, listening to me, and hearing my request. I talked to God all day long about my little girl. And I prayed that Jess would pick me as her daughter’s adoptive mother.
At the time, our family was attending a deaf church with a very small congregation, and many of my colleagues from Communication Service for the Deaf were parishioners there as well. I also asked them to pray that Jess would pick me. I stood up in front of the entire congregation and just asked.
“May this baby find the proper parents in Brandi and Tim,” we all prayed.
At work, I met with people in my office, and I asked other people to consider me in their prayer groups. Whenever Marlys emailed me with an update, I immediately forwarded it to my prayer chain—a small group of church elders, with whom I was in regular contact—and they prayed for me.
By the first week of November, my patience was wearing thin, so I called Marlys and asked if she had any news. She had just been getting ready to call me.
Jess wanted to meet me.
At that moment, I knew that little girl was mine. I just wept and wept. Developing my portfolio had been a mountain; meeting Jess would be a hill. I ran straight upstairs to Tim’s office and shut the door.
“This is it,” I said through my sobs. “We have a daughter.”
I felt such an intense identification with that baby, such an immediate, intuitive bond. While I imagined that Jess loved Celine very much, I believed that because Jess was hearing, had she tried to see her daughter’s future, she’d have seen a black veil of limitations.
But when I saw her future, I saw her challenges, her accomplishments, and her wonderful life. I didn’t know the particulars, but before I’d even laid eyes on her, I understood her.
I knew that it was in God’s hands; I had done all I could. A deep sense of calmness and relief just washed over me, one I had never known before—peppered only with sheer excitement and the need for even more information.
When? Where? How? Who would be there?
Two days later, on Friday evening, November 5th, Tim and I, along with an interpreter, drove to Fairmont, Minnesota, to meet Jess and her parents at Perkins Restaurant. Jess and her mother had already arrived and were sitting at a booth when we entered the restaurant. Tim and I didn’t know what Jess looked like, but she and her mother recognized us from our adoption portfolio. I remember thinking how pretty Jess was. In a way, we could have passed for sisters, with our light-colored hair worn swept to the side and our similar coloring, although her face was rounder than mine and my eyes are blue. Hers are hazel, and when she smiled, she lit up the room. How I came to cherish that smile.
We went over to their booth and sat down. Jess’s mother starting crying, which made me cry a little, too. There would be seven of us in total, with Marlys and Jess’s father, who arrived shortly, so a small table was attached to the booth.
And so the meeting began. It was a bit awkward for Tim and me at first because Jess’s parents hadn’t seen Marlys since Sandy and Stephane had relinquished Celine and she had gone back to foster care, where she was at the time, and they were very angry with them. They wanted to know why they had let her go and how they could have done such a thing. Tim and I just listened uncomfortably while Marlys tried explaining that what had happened was all for the best.
As the evening progressed, Jess told us about her life and then said, with sort of a triumphant look in her eye, that BJ wouldn’t be a problem for us. She also assured me that she would go through with the adoption, saying that otherwise, she would have to quit college, go pick up Celine from foster care again, and raise her on her own, which she was clear she did not want to do.
Tim was much quieter than usual. Even though we had an interpreter with us, he figured that it was best to leave the communicating to me—especially when the topic of a cochlear implant came up; he didn’t want to jeopardize our chances of Jess choosing us as the adoptive parents of her baby, thinking that it might be a deal-breaker.
However, I told everyone that if Celine was a good candidate for a cochlear implant, I wanted her to have one, that I was open to exploring all options. The conversation then turned to Celine’s cerebral development. The topic seemed to make Jess and her parents worried. I just looked Jess straight in the eye and said, “There’s nothing wrong with Celine’s brain. She’s absolutely fine.”
As the meeting drew to a close, Marlys told Jess that she didn’t think she should make a decision immediately, but that she should go home and think about everything that we’d talked about and then decide if she felt that Tim and I were the right parents for Celine. On the way out, I asked Marlys to please let us know as soon as Jess had decided.
Chapter Ten
WAITING ALL OUR LIVES
IT DIDN’T TAKE long for Jess to decide. The following evening I received an email from Marlys, saying that she had chosen us to be Celine’s parents.
I was ecstatic! Finally, after years of waiting, only a few hours and a tank of gas kept me from my daughter. I just couldn’t wait to meet her; I had no idea what she even looked like.
It turned out that Jess had loved our portfolio, and after meeting us, just knew in her heart that we were the right parents for Celine. At first, she was a little afraid to trust herself because she had been sure that Sandy and Stephane were “the ones.” But finding her courage—as she’d done so many times before—she picked us without any input from her parents, feeling that this time, she just had to decide for herself.
Marlys had emailed me Lois and Chuck’s phone number, so I called and we arranged for Tim and me to drive up to Blue Earth, Minnesota, the following Tuesday to meet Celine. I could barely contain myself until then.
Bright and early Tuesday morning, after dropping the boys off at day care, we were on our way. I thought of that ride as my “going into labor” because when we arrived, my daughter would be born to me. After two-and-a-half hours—which felt like an eternity—we pulled into the driveway of a quaint, white farmhouse that must have had close to a dozen cats roaming around outside.
It’s uncanny. I’ve always thought that foster homes should be on farms—perhaps because farms have such a wholesome appearance. They’re so all-American, with the flowers and the white picket fence—the kind of home that you’d want to grow up in, where it’s safe and warm and the love is real.
Lois and Chuck’s foster home seemed exactly like that.
When I got out of the car, I saw Lois inside the house, standing right by the open front door and holding Celine. I felt a sudden, urgent need to run up and take the baby in my arms and kiss her. I got out of the car and sped up the front steps into the house, holding out my arms, and Lois said to me, “Would you like to wash your hands before you hold her?”
I quickly went into the kitchen and washed them and then she gave me Celine.
My God, she was so unbelievably beautiful—blonde hair like Blake’s and mine and blue eyes like all my boys, as if she were our biological daughter. And she looked so happy.
I was in such a daze and so focused on Celine that I didn’t even realize that Lois had started signing to me. While we were there, I voiced and signed, and Lois signed back. She hadn’t mastered ASL and couldn’t understand Tim, so I interpreted for her. Although her signing was limited, we all managed just fine.
I liked Lois from the minute I met her. She was very warm and good-natured and so easy to talk with. She was like a cuddly grandma and the ultimate caretaker—someone who feeds you milk and chocolate chip cookies, yet is extremely professional.
She invited us into the living room, and for the next two hours, we chatted and played with Celine. Tim and I were right down on the floor with her—in heaven. He was with her the entire time, but I also spent time talking with Lois. My mission that day, in addition to meeting my daughter, was finding out as much information about her from Lois as I possibly could—not just medical and physical, but also personal.
&nbs
p; I just dove right in, asking her point blank, “What happened to Celine? What was Jess’s story? BJ’s? Sandy and Stephane’s?” I just had to understand my daughter’s past, knowing that one day she would ask me about it.
Lois would give me bits and pieces of information and then just clam up. She said that it had been very hard on Sandy and Stephane—and I could feel her deep compassion for them—and then, in midsentence, she just stopped. She clearly was walking a very fine line between what she would and wouldn’t share. She didn’t want to betray their confidence. Yet, she also respected my need to know.
Meanwhile, Tim was holding his little girl like his life depended on it.
All those weeks, I had thought that he was removed from the adoption process and only began to get involved the day we met Jess. I didn’t think it had registered with him that there was a baby out there, one who might actually be our daughter—that all along he was thinking, “Yeah, Brandi, whatever. I already have three kids, and now I’m going to have four.”
I thought he was oblivious to how much time and energy I’d spent developing our adoption portfolio and communicating back and forth with Marlys. I thought that, even though he knew that the baby was deaf and had agreed to move forward, he was doing it for me.
I was wrong.
Tim had wanted to adopt Celine, but knowing that we were just one of several applicants, he didn’t want to get his hopes up. He couldn’t see how Jess could turn us down, but you never know. He also knew how deeply disappointed I would be if things didn’t work out, so he just dealt with it all by being removed.
Yet, the moment he laid eyes on Celine he thought, My little girl—in so many different homes. She doesn’t deserve that.
He felt nothing personal against Lois and later saw how deeply she had loved Celine; it was just the principle of the thing. He didn’t want his little girl in a foster home—he wanted her home with us.
He was lying on the floor next to her—he looking at her and she looking at him so innocently and helplessly. He was thinking that all she ever wanted was a good home, a good family, and parents who could give her what she needed, when all of a sudden, she just reached up and grabbed his finger.
His heart melted. At that moment, she became his daughter, too.
It was as if she were saying to him, “You’re my dad,” and she was his little girl. Instantly, the overwhelming issue of having too many children disintegrated into thin air; all his worries and anxiety were gone, replaced by a full and vibrant picture of us as a larger family.
When it was time to leave, all I wanted was to pick my daughter up and bring her home. However, the child protective laws required that we visit her in foster care two more times before the paperwork could be completed and we could bring her home. It was the longest two weeks of our lives.
Knowing how much I still thirsted for information, Lois suggested that, before beginning our long drive home, we stop by New Horizons’ main office, only ten minutes away, to pick up Celine’s medical file, which we did.
Well, I suppose that everyone is tested, at times, and this was one of mine.
The file was three inches thick!
I’d never seen so much medical information in one pile, with terms like “hypotonia” and “mucosal thickening.” It really scared me. The whole way home I just sat there flipping through pages of information I didn’t understand. One CAT scan of the baby’s brain said that she was losing her hearing and another said that there was a white mass—scarring on her brain—which scared me the most.
I became concerned about the kind of care she would require and if I was taking on more than I could handle. Looking back, I can really appreciate what Sandy and Stephane must have gone through. I just stared and stared at her pictures, which were also in the file. By the time we pulled into our driveway, I had worked myself up into a frenzy.
To calm my nerves, I called my sister-in-law on the videophone and showed her the pictures. After that, I went to the kitchen and told Tim my concerns.
“She’s our daughter,” he said. “She’s going to be fine.”
That was it. End of discussion.
From the moment she grabbed his finger, he was tied to her. There was no way he’d ever let her fly away or leave her stranded. But for just a split second, the thought flitted through his mind, and he imagined if he did abandon her and met her in twenty or thirty years—perhaps her life was great, and perhaps it wasn’t.
But he sure wasn’t going to take that chance.
I remember feeling so grateful that he felt that way, and years later I marveled at how we had really held each other up; when one of us had doubts, the other remained strong.
Wanting to better understand what was in the file, I had emailed my good friend Sheila as soon as we arrived home. Sheila was a nurse and the director of a large regional health care facility in Watertown, South Dakota. I asked her if she’d look through the file and give me her opinion. Sheila and her husband lived about an hour and a half north of us, near the lake house that Tim and I owned with Ann Marie and Jon.
The following day, she left work in the middle of the afternoon and drove down to our house. I’d left the door open for her.
“Oh, Sheila,” I said, handing her the file as she came in.
She gave me a big hug and said that she would read over the file to give me her initial thoughts, and then take it home to read it more thoroughly and also give it to one of the doctors at work to read.
“What does all of this mean? Is she going to be okay?” I asked, needing to prepare myself in case my little girl was going to be mentally challenged or disabled in any way.
Sheila just said to me, “What is disabled, Brandi? Aren’t we all disabled in some way?”
Then we stood around my kitchen island reading the file together, me asking questions, and Sheila, ever so calmly, answering them ever so simply.
Sheila explained that “hypotonia” meant low muscle mass and that Celine’s hypotonia was not attached to a brain injury but “failure to thrive,” meaning that with physical therapy, she’d probably be just fine. She also said that Celine definitely had had “an incident”—that she had been affected by a virus or some other malady—but that it didn’t look like it was ongoing.
“What about the scarring on her brain?” I then asked, terrified.
“Let me put it this way, Brandi,” she said. “Didn’t you have meningitis?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Then I bet that you have the same thing on your brain. It’s from the virus. It’s what happens when you get a fever like that,” she explained.
“My God, she’s just like me,” I said, all my worries flying right out the window.
I knew then that Celine was going to be all right. It was as if Sheila had said to me, “She’s your daughter, Brandi. She belongs with you.”
Just then, what my mother had said to the doctors, when I was so sick as a child, came flooding into my head, “She will not die, doctor. She will not die.”
My mother’s knowing had become mine; her strength became my strength.
I didn’t care what the doctors said or what I read in the medical records. The voice that was claiming that she would be all right was much louder than the voice that had concerns.
Just as with all my children, my expectations for her were high, and I knew that whatever the future brought, I would rise to the occasion and deal with it. I understood this was a giant leap of faith, but I wasn’t looking back. The pull toward my daughter was just much too great for me to do otherwise.
Sheila went on to say that nothing ominous had been written in the report at all. She explained that at seven months old, Celine was what she was, and even though she would eventually become completely deaf, the report didn’t conclude that there would be any further complications.
After Sheila and I finished our discussion, we had a glass of wine and then hugged, talked, laughed, and cried.
It’s strange, but at the time, it did
n’t even seem like I had made a choice. Yet, I had just made one of the biggest choices of my entire life. I understood that there was a chance that my daughter might have a learning disability, but any child could. My boys could have had learning disabilities. You just teach the child differently.
The following day, I splurged on a shopping spree for girls’ clothing. No more looking the other way! I just shopped till I dropped—I bought a pink velvet dress and red velvet jacket from Baby Gap and brown spotted pants with a burgundy hoodie from Gymboree. And lots more. It was absolutely a dream come true. I must have charged more than five hundred dollars on my credit card that day.
Clothes and fashion have always been my indulgence. My grandmother was a seamstress in New York City back in the 1940s, during a time when women weren’t in the work world the way that they are today. I inherited my fashion sense from her—through her genes and by her example.
She was a very classy woman—always done up beautifully and looking great. And she was so strong. I think that I’m in touch with my female strength and femininity because of her, too. She instilled that yearning in me for a daughter, someone to pass along my sense of what it means to be a powerful deaf woman and everything I had ever learned. I was about to have a daughter to buy clothes for, go shopping with, and do all that girly stuff with. Four years later, when my daughter was in preschool, she would win the award for being “most fashionable,” and the first word she finger spelled would be “mall.” That’s my girl.
She was wearing her brown pants and burgundy hoodie outfit the day we brought her home. It was Friday, November 19th, when we picked her up at the adoption agency.
ZOE ON PLACEMENT DAY WITH FOSTER PARENTS LOIS AND CHUCK
Tim and I went alone, just as we had always gone alone to the hospital when each of the boys was born. We felt it was “our” time with the new baby.