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 | When the Love is Slow to Come
by Elizabeth D. Branch |
Will you love an adopted child?” “Will you love her as much as your biological children?” How do you answer these questions? With a resounding, yes, of course.
From your standpoint before the adoption, you are filled with only good intentions. You can’t fathom that there would ever be a problem loving a child. After all, you brought three boys into the world by birth, and love them as furiously and fervently as any mother bear. You are filled with anticipation of the first time you will braid her hair, give her a bath and paint her toenails. You tell your social worker that you have mundane thoughts of passing along your “womanly experience” to a daughter, explaining things like her first period, boys and dating. While you used to make jokes about God having a sense of humor giving you three boys, you could never push away the longing for a daughter.
You overcome enormous obstacles and finally leave to get your 3½-year-old daughter, traveling halfway across the globe, to a country that, until recently, you’d never heard of. When they bring her to you the first day of visitation, you cry and laugh, not believing that she is finally here. During the next two weeks of visitation, your husband teaches her how to play airplane and take piggyback rides. Every new day when you arrive at the baby house, she comes running through the door and into your arms. After about three days, she starts to cry when it is time for you to leave. You know she loves you. The first night, after your court date, you bring her to your apartment and dress her in the pink nightgown that you’ve carried all this way. You paint her toenails. You and your husband stare at her, unbelieving at this new little dainty, feminine creature.
However, you never asked yourself if she would love you.
This is my story. This is where the bubble popped, and our difficult journey began. The next morning, our first morning together with our daughter, my husband walked into the living room where I was playing with Lisa. She took one look at him, then hung her head down and started to cry — not just sniffling, but deep, terrified shrieks of fear. We were confused, thinking it was a one-time thing. Unfortunately, this behavior continued the rest of our trip.
David couldn’t look at her, or be in the same room with her, without her crying and clinging to me. One time we ate a meal in the kitchen and I had to get up to get something. She took her glass of apple juice and threw it at David. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without her standing outside the door, kicking and banging on it to let her in. It was as if she was terrified out of her mind of David, one of the most gentle men I have ever known. Of course, David was crushed. Here was the most beautiful little girl, his daughter, and she was rejecting him outright.
The plane trips on our way home were interesting. With newfound freedom, in the baby house they sat on little pots at certain times of the day, she went to the bathroom almost every 10 minutes. This involved climbing over David, who was sitting on the aisle, including more screams of terror. One time I stood up to put something in the overhead bin and the whole plane was treated to her vocal talents. Pictures of our trip show me with Lisa cowering behind me, doing all she could to avoid looking at David with the camera.
I had been the most well-read prospective adoptive parent on Earth. I had read “The Weavers’ Craft” and the chapter about rejection of one parent. However, the book had said that in most cases, the child will reject the mother. It figures that we would be the 1 percent of families who did things backward.
For about a month after we got home, the hysterics continued. She would sink to the floor in tears, and push herself around with her feet. We used to joke about putting a dust cloth on her back so she could clean the floor while she cried. We had to laugh at ourselves because we would have climbed into a hole otherwise.
Everyday, David would go to work and I’m sure Lisa would think, “Phew, that man has left. I’m safe!” Every night though, when David walked into the house, the head would drop and the shrieking would begin. The boys were getting a little tired of this, and David and I felt as though we had 50-pound loads on our shoulders. We would both look at each other in despair and think, “This too shall pass, this too shall pass.” I was so darn tired of it and my inability to find a solution, and frustrated at the language barrier. I wanted to ask her, “What? What are you afraid of? What can I do to make you not afraid?”
Most families don’t appreciate what a great source of help their social worker can be. I called ours soon after we got home, and said, “Help!” It seemed to me that she dropped everything and came to our house. She recommended that all the boys rush to the door when Daddy got home and give him a big, noisy welcome home; that David and the boys wrestle together and laugh. Sooner or later, she would decide she wanted to join the fun.
After nearly a month, I had to get a haircut and told David that our only choice was to let her cry it out. After my appointment, I called to check in and he said, “Don’t come home. She’s holding my hand and we’re at the playground.” Of course, this wasn’t a quick fix, and we took some steps backward, but overall this was the beginning of the end.
One evening, some weeks later, after she had reverted back to crying, David was watching the children alone. He prepared dinner, then went to find Lisa. She was in her bed, cowering, facing the wall. She would not come downstairs to eat, so David brought her plate up to her room. He fed her, bite by bite, by reaching around her with the fork. At one point she reached over her shoulder for a napkin, wiped her face, and then handed it back to him, still facing the wall.
Soon after that, Lisa seemed to call a “truce” with her daddy. David’s best Christmas present that year was having her crawl into his lap while we were opening presents.
Today Lisa adores her father. She runs to the door when he comes home at night. Her favorite “chair” in our house is daddy’s lap. When her English got to the point where we could really communicate with her, we asked her, “Why were you afraid of Daddy?” Lisa thought for a moment, and then said, “He had whiskers.”
Granted, every day we spent in the baby house, David had arrived showered and clean-shaven. It wasn’t until the second morning we had custody that he appeared with his five o’clock shadow. We realized that none of the children had had much contact with men — most of the caregivers were women. All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
We have recently celebrated Lisa’s one-year anniversary of becoming a member of our family, and those crying days seem so far away. It seems that she has always been daddy’s girl. It goes to show that even though the love may be slow to come, it will come. I am reminded of a poem my father used to share with me when I was growing up, the refrain of which became by personal mantra.
Once in Persia reigned a King
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which if held before the eyes,
Gave him counsel at a glance,
Fit for every change and chance.
Solemn words, and these are they:
“Even this shall pass away . . .”
Elizabeth Branch and her husband David live in Huntersville, N.C., with their three “homegrown” boys — Colin, 13; Quentin, 11; and Christian, 6, and their daughter Lisa Asel who was adopted from Baby House 2 in Uralsk, Kazakhstan in November 2001. Their adoption agency was World Partners Adoption. Branch is currently in the process of writing a book about their experiences in Kazakhstan and their challenging early days at home with Lisa, who is now daddy’s girl.
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