Children of Dreams, An Adoption Memoir

by Roberts, Lorilyn

  “Are you ready to go, Manisha?

  “I am coming, Mommy,” she called from her room.

  I grabbed her coat and pulled my black and red Mexican-looking shawl over my head. Even when it was freezing, I hated coats. It was due to hit the 30s later in the evening. I wondered if Joy would be warmly dressed coming from the cold in New York City. I tucked Joy’s coat that I had bought her in Vietnam inside the diaper bag just in case she needed it.

  Wednesday night, Thursday, and Friday would be my only days off from captioning since I had missed a month of work while in Vietnam. I lamented I couldn’t be rich for two weeks so I could have more time to prepare for the adjustment after Joy’s arrival. I forced myself to look at the bright side of things. I worked at home and didn’t have to leave the house to earn a paycheck.

  I gave Manisha a quick hug. “Are you ready to meet your new baby sister?” I asked her excitedly.

  “Yes,” she said emphatically. “Let’s go.”

  Curtis Murphy would be arriving a little after us at the airport. We had arranged for him to come in his car because Anne and her daughter needed transportation back to Gainesville where her mother lived. It was just providence that we lived in the same town. My red Firebird could only hold four people, one too many to fit in my sports car. We would meet him at the airport a couple of hours later since we were leaving Gainesville early.

  The hour and a half trip in the car was one of anticipation and nervousness. I couldn’t wait for Manisha and Joy to meet. I had dreamed about this day for more than three years, even before I began the adoption process. It was important to me that Manisha have a sister, someone that would be family to her when I was no longer around. Now that the moment was finally here, it seemed dream-like.

  I inserted one of the Focus on the Family Adventures in Odyssey tapes into the tape player and cranked on the heat. Manisha had worn her bright red flannel outfit which could serve as clothes or pajamas. Who knew what time we would return to Gainesville, particularly if the plane was late.

  I reflected back to a few weeks earlier when I came home from Vietnam. Manisha had seemed so big after spending a month with Joy. Seven and half years apart in age might seem like a lot now, but I knew down the road, those years wouldn’t matter as they reached maturity. I was one month shy of nine when Paige, my sister, was born. Manisha would be nine on February 23.

  I was glad Joy wasn’t a newborn—someone once told me that the only things newborns do are eat, sleep and poop. In hindsight, fifteen months seemed like a perfect age to adopt a second child. Young enough for bonding with an older sibling yet not so young that Manisha couldn’t help me. Manisha didn’t see it that way, though. She saw Joy as an instant playmate. I hoped that wouldn’t change.

  It was almost dark now that the sun had receded behind some clouds to the west of us. As I sped along I 10 east toward Jacksonville, I had a few more moments to reflect before pulling into the parking lot at the airport.

  Would Joy remember me after almost a month? I wondered if Manisha would have pangs of jealousy having been the center of my attention since I adopted her almost six years earlier. Would she remain seizure-free? That was a big one. I had received the final medical report back from Dr. Hostetter on Manisha’s blood work. She had sent a sample of her blood to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta for testing with a new, more sensitive test for neurocysticercosis. The doctors had been unable to confirm the diagnosis which made the test results disappointing. Either Manisha didn’t have neurocysticercosis or the test wasn’t as sensitive as they had hoped. I knew in all these things I had to trust God, but if my mind was left to wonder, it always seemed to return to Manisha’s haunting medical history.

  I looked at my watch and it was 7:00 p.m. I felt my stomach grumbling from hunger as I had been too anxious to eat before we left. The tape was close to finishing as we approached Jacksonville. Too excited to sleep, it had kept Manisha awake but quiet on the way.

  I had shared with her about my time in Vietnam and what Joy was like to prepare her. Thinking about the two of them together made me think back to my own childhood. One of my favorite memories was when I was nine and my sister was born. I remembered going to the hospital and looking through the glass window at all the babies and the nurse pointing to which one was my new baby sister. How excited I was as I stood and admired her scrunched-up face and whiffs of hair. I remembered when we brought her home from the hospital how I wasn’t jealous but our dog, Gypsy, was. She hid in the corner for a week and wouldn’t have anything to do with anybody.

  When I was eleven my younger brother, Thomas, was born, and although I was happy to have a brother also, I was more jealous of him than I ever was of Paige. He got away with murder. Okay, maybe not murder, but it seemed like it when he took little bites out of all my favorite pieces of candy hidden in my room and nobody did anything about it.

  In the end, we all grew up loving each other and have a good relationship today. Both of them are married and have children of their own. Not only would Joy and Manisha have each other, they already had cousins and extended family which I never had. When the time seemed right after Joy’s initial adjustment, we would travel to Atlanta so everyone could meet her.

  At last we arrived at the Jacksonville Airport and I parked in the well-lit, enclosed parking area which I deemed safer than the dark outdoor lot. It would also require less walking for Anne with her wobbly knee. As I turned off the car, Manisha put on her shoes and waited impatiently for me to open the door. As I did so, a cold rush of air chilled my exposed skin. I couldn’t believe how much the temperature had dropped in the last hour and a half.

  “Make sure you put your coat on.”

  “Okay, Mommy,” she replied.

  We walked to the connecting overhead bridge from the parking lot to the terminal, and I found the kiosk which displayed the arrivals and departures. I checked the arrival time and gate for Joy’s flight which showed it would be thirty minutes late. We would have plenty of time to grab something to eat.

  “How long till Joy gets here?” Manisha asked.

  “If it’s 7:30 p.m. now and she arrives at 9:30 p.m., how much time will pass?”

  She hated it when I asked her “time” questions, but I always made use of opportunities when they presented themselves.

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  “It will be about two hours.” I wasn’t going to press her on it tonight. There would be other opportunities. The hard part would be to keep her entertained while we waited.

  The Jacksonville Airport was not that big, and at this time of night, not that busy. We found a place to eat that had a television and claimed the two best seats—right in front of the screen, to pass the time while we waited. Curtis had called and said he would arrive around 9:00 p.m.

  The weather report showed snowplows removing mounds of debris from roads in several cities in the Northeast. I couldn’t believe Joy had arrived in the middle of a huge blizzard. One airplane had run off the runway in New York and I had panicked that it was hers. The last couple of hours of waiting seemed the longest.

  As the minutes grudgingly ticked away, I watched as a couple of other planes came in, releasing passengers in one fell swoop of instant noise and controlled confusion that slowly dispersed into quietness. At last the time drew near as Curtis walked up and found us waiting by the arrival gate.

  “How is everybody doing?” He asked.

  “The plane is running about thirty minutes late.”

  Manisha wanted to walk around so the two of them took off leaving me alone. I took another sip of my Coke as I watched the captions on the television screen. Not bad, I thought to myself. I wondered if I knew the captioner. CNN was captioned by Vitac, one of NCI’s competitors. Too bad they didn’t have Fox News on. Every Monday night, 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. I would caption “Hannity and Colmes” and “On the Record” with Greta Van Susteren. I checked my time. “Hannity and Colmes” was on, but the plane would be here soon,
about 9:45 p.m., and my thoughts focused on Joy.

  Shortly Curtis and Manisha returned as the overhead sign lit up that the plane from Newark, New Jersey, was approaching. I stood up and walked over to peer out the dark window. A few minutes later a large jet cautiously approached its resting spot. The airport employees pulled the portable gangplank up to the plane and latched it to the plane’s side. Soon people began to pour through the open doors. Curtis, Manisha and I stood and waited, looking for a large woman, one Vietnamese child, and a baby to appear. The plane must have been completely full as huge numbers of passengers exited. Humanity kept pouring through the doors as I excitedly waited in anticipation. The mass exodus slowed down to a trickle and there was still no sign of them.

  “I wondered if they missed the plane,” I mused to myself, afraid to say anything out loud. We waited another minute and no one else exited through the doors. I double checked the flight number and date. Did I make a mistake? I had almost given up hope they were on the plane when there appeared through the doorway a heavy set woman precariously walking with a cane, pushing Joy in a stroller, and one little girl, Jade, her daughter, following closely behind.

  “There they are,” I shouted, stating the obvious. I should have known Anne would be the last person off the plane because of her leg. We hurriedly walked over to them. Exhausted, Anne looked relieved to see me. I could tell the last few days had been an ordeal.

  “Joy did great,” she said, “mostly sleeping.”

  I squatted down to eye level in front of Joy’s stroller.

  “Do you remember me?” I asked her.

  She looked at me questioningly, as if to say, “Why did you leave me in Vietnam?” Someday I would explain it all, I thought to myself, and reached over and gave her a big hug.

  “I want to push her,” Manisha insisted.

  Anne was more than willing to relinquish responsibility of Joy to her new big sister. As Manisha grabbed the handlebars of the stroller, I quickly stepped back a few feet to take a picture.

  “Smile.” The camera responded with a click as I snapped the first picture of my two daughters together.

  “Can I hold her?” Manisha asked.

  I walked back over to Joy and unsnapped the safety belt around her waist. She was holding her favorite toy I had left with her, a little round yellow rattle with a fake mirror on the inside. I lifted her out of the stroller and handed her to Manisha. Joy stared at the new person whom she had never met. Looking tired from her journey, she seemed content to let things take their course.

  Manisha walked around proudly holding Joy on her hip and giving her a peck on the forehead. I was thankful that she had so much love to give her. Manisha was happy to hold her new sister, and it gave me a few minutes to sit and talk to Anne.

  Curtis had walked off to check on the progress of the luggage, and Jade, who seemed to have been overlooked during the arrival, stood by holding several bags which she gladly set down beside us. Anne handed me some paperwork, including Joy’s passport and adoption papers. I would have to sort through them later. I sat beside Anne on the bench as we watched Manisha and Joy together.

  “What is this?” I asked, as I peered into the bags Jade had discarded. In one was an adult-sized yellow sweatshirt.

  “It was so cold in the New York airport and I had no warm clothes for Joy,” Anne said. “A man saw her shivering and took his shirt off and put it on her.”

  I held up the yellow sweatshirt and wondered who the man was. I would never be able to thank him personally, but God knew.

  “Isn’t it interesting, as young as Manisha is, that she knows to poke her hip out to hold her,” Anne commented.

  “Yes,” I responded, “just like she’s an old pro at it.”

  As we sat and rested, I contemplated the future, enjoying the scene of Joy and Manisha getting to know each other. There had only been a few times this side of paradise that seemed perfect and this was one of those blissful moments. I realized at that moment that God brought Joy to me and not any other child.

  My first referral had hepatitis and God had not given me peace to adopt her. The second referral, Thi My-Sa, was my child of prayer, but unable to be adopted by me because of paperwork. The third, Nguyen Thi My-Duyen, disappeared before I ever arrived in Vietnam, and finally, Joy.

  I knew I was where I was supposed to be. Nothing had happened by accident, mistake, or coincidence. The past and the future receded into the background as I watched my two daughters together for the first time—a memory that would be stored in my treasure chest of God’s blessings.

  As Manisha continued to walk around with Joy nestled securely on her hip, I paused to reflect on another moment, one in the distant future. Would it not be that different when we arrived in heaven? Jesus would welcome us with scarred hands, embracing us with His perfect love. We would know we were His, bought with a price, our adoption papers sealed forever. What a reunion that would be when we truly arrived “home.” This night was a foretaste of an even more perfect reunion, a symbol of what God has in store for all of us.

  God had unleashed the chains of bondage to sin and healed me from the past. His grace had helped me to overcome my fears and given me strength in weariness. Only through His miracles had insurmountable obstacles been overcome. He had made what seemed impossible possible. Through all the storms, trials, and tribulations, He had vanquished the powers of deceit and deception. God answered my prayers, redeemed by His unfathomable love, by making me a mother to two orphaned children. He gave me a treasure hidden in a field and a pearl of great price. Through adoption I was able to create my family as God had given me my Children of Dreams.

  Bits and Pieces

  In the beginning...

  Genesis 1:1

  Although I grew up in a moral home, it was not a Christian home. As a young teen, I read the Bible in the darkness of my room under covers and was amazed at the humanity of Jesus Christ and His unrelenting love for those who hated him. It was as if I was among the masses that listened to Him on the hills of Jerusalem. I was amazed by His teachings and accepted His salvation—so I could be with Him in heaven for all eternity. I didn’t want to go to hell.

  Without a Christian worldview, my choices were based on human determination and not godly wisdom. Neil Armstrong’s words when he stepped on the moon, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” resonated with my “nothing ventured, nothing gained” mentality. I believed I could “go where no man [or woman] had gone before,” as the Enterprise did in the original Star Trek series. Whether it was chasing aliens on distant planets or becoming the next Jacques Cousteau, I thought if I made straight A’s and met “Mr. Right,” my dreams would come true. They didn’t.

  In the fall of 1985, I was a full-time student at the University of Florida when I returned home from school one day and discovered that my husband had packed his bags and left. I frantically called him to see where he was. Why wasn’t he coming home? Did he not love me anymore?

  After working six years as a court reporter putting him through graduate and medical school, he had promised me that I could return to school when he began his residency in radiation oncology. Obtaining my college degree was another “dream” that had been taken from me. Now all that mattered was my husband had left. I withdrew from college for the semester to deal with the crisis. We had a few counseling sessions, but he wasn’t willing to work on the marriage. I continued to work on me.

  The following January, I enrolled at Santa Fe College to retake the Calculus course I had dropped the previous fall. When I got to derivatives, a mental flashback to my husband abandoning me made it seem insurmountable. The professor had been covering derivatives the day I came home and discovered he was gone. Rather than dropping the course or communicating with my professor at Santa Fe College, I quit going. Despite attempts by my instructor to contact me, I never answered her calls. I received an “F” for the course on my otherwise impeccable record at Santa Fe College.

 
; A few years later, when the divorce was final and God had given me new direction, an opportunity arose through the National Court Reporters Association to enroll in the External Degree Program at the University of Alabama. The thought of earning that elusive college degree consumed me. Without missing a beat, I called the University of Alabama to obtain more information on applying to the program.

  Suddenly that “F” in Calculus looked “damning” on my record. I had no one to blame except myself. I deserved the “F.” There was nothing I could do to change it. The ink had long dried, recorded in the books for all to see, including the Registrar’s Office at the University of Alabama.

  I went to the Office of Student Affairs at Santa Fe College to obtain a copy of my transcript. Thirteen “A’s” and one “F” were printed across my transcript. I shared with the counselor the circumstances surrounding the “F”, lamenting how I wished I had dealt with it and how I hated seeing it on my permanent record. It never occurred to me that they could do anything about it. I asked her if she thought it would cause my application to be rejected from the University of Alabama.

  The counselor told me to wait in her office for a few minutes and she would be right back. She left and returned shortly and handed me two sheets of paper. The first sheet contained my official transcript. On the second page, in large letters written across the Calculus I course were the words, No Record.

  Santa Fe College had deleted the Calculus I class from their computers. As far as they were concerned, I never took the course. There was “no record.” I looked at the transcript page, and sure enough, Calculus I was not there. I didn’t know colleges had it in their power to remove courses that students had taken and for which they received failing grades.