Motherhood

I can’t help but feel simply honored, overwhelmed with surprise at my luck to have Solomon in our lives. His smile is worth a million sleepless nights; his coos engross and entertain. When he snuggles into my chest, tips his head into the crook of my neck, time stops for a while and I’m completely content, peaceful to the core.

I like being responsible for his life, on call 24-7 to his needs. I like the new element of care-taking he allows. I welcome the protective instinct he has ignited. What I’m happily surprised about is the way in just a week’s time, Solomon has enhanced our experience and subsequently our attachment to Haiti.

Solomon’s charms aren’t for us alone. He draws people to him. Children at the school flock around him, the teenagers vie for holding him, the staff leave their desks to come kiss him, greet him, hold him or rock him to sleep. Questions about how he came to be our child are detailed, frank, but without the bite of judgment. Just curiosity. And our story seems to be accepted and understood.

The most common follow-up question after talking about Solomon’s story is, “will you adopt me?” Young and old, the employed and the unemployed ask this with a smile, partially in an air of humor, but with a thread of honesty woven through.

We meet strangers in the market and on the street because Solomon is in our arms. The community we’ve observed for 4 months is now wrapping its arms around us in ways for which I didn’t even dare even hope. The shyness and reservation we used to encounter from strangers here is erased with this little brown-eyed child. Today two women who I've seen begging in the street many times approached me, reached for Solomon, and while they held him told me about their own children, their ages and what they are doing now. Our previous encounters looked more like the poor asking the rich for money. Today we were just a few moms bragging on our children.

What a week it has been. We've taken Solomon everywhere with us, integrated him into work, enjoyed him in play. He sleeps in the back of my clinic, hangs out in our office with Patrick, teaches class with me, or gets loved on by one of many staff, teachers or students who are eager to "help" us with him. :)

The way the students and staff of the school are encircling us is incredible. All beam when we arrive with Solomon in our arms, advice and help is offered up from everyone. I'm overwhelmed by the acceptance. I didn't expect it. Not to this degree. I supposed I had anticipated the worst, wondering if we'd be greeted with suspicion and resentment as a white couple adopting and "Americanizing" a Haitian boy. Maybe our co-workers know how much we appreciate Haiti and its culture; maybe they understand we aren't out to change Solomon but bring him up the best we can in his culture. Or maybe all are aware of the desperate situation so many of Haiti's children find themselves in and they are simply grateful that one child found a home that can provide food, education and healthcare. Whatever the reason for the universal acceptance, I have become re-enamored with the Haitian culture, its people, and their capacity to love, to accept and to nurture.

I used to think our timing was off... that we were starting the adoption process this too soon after coming to Haiti, but couldn't help it because we'd fallen in love. After only 6 days, I know that we were meant to meet Solomon and that the timing is perfect. He introduces us to a level of cultural immersion we'd never have known without him. Haiti honors and values the family, holds up its children with pride. The fact that we, too, celebrate the children of this country and have endeavored to raise and care for one ourselves has made our friends here happy. “God will bless you,” they say. He already has.

The part of Haiti I love the most--the community centric approach to life--is rising up around us. Because of that, Solomon has made our lives easier, more interesting, filled with a new purpose.

I feel more peaceful, more centered, more certain, more grounded than I've felt in a long time. I am still, however, working on feeling "ownership" of Solmon. The fact I refuse to ignore or to wish away is that Solomon has a mother, a mother that loves him. She loved him so much she risked giving him up in hopes he could find a home that could give him the opportunities she could not afford. I imagine with time, with a million bottles and diaper changes, with his first words, first books, and all the beautiful milestones of childhood, I'll start to feel like his own. I can't ever replace his mother but instead will become his second. What a lucky child to have two mothers that love him.

For the moment, I allow myself to just be in awe of him... so proud to have the privilege to be able to cuddle, kiss, love and take care of him. And I still can't believe it when he picks me out of a crowd, when coddled and held by one of his many admirers, he sees me and locks his gaze on my face. I feel like the uncoordinated kid on the sports team that suddenly, surprisingly, with a shocking turn of events, gets chosen first.

In a few days I will embark on a trip home, a trip I've been looking forward to for months, a vacation long-ago planned. Suddenly, leaving is going to be harder than I ever dreamed. My heart is pulled in two different directions. Instead of visiting home with Patrick, we have divided our vacation in two parts so one of us can stay behind with Solomon. Unfortunately this will be the pattern of our visits to see family and friends for the next several years as the paperwork and the legal process of adoption unfold. How to tear myself away from this new attachment to this country, to this place. It will be difficult, but I imagine it will make coming back all the more filled with joy.