|
| Adoption Resources |
|
Advertisers |
|
| Back to China Home Page
| |
 | Have You Ever Known Such Love?
by Sherie Maddox |
Have you ever known such love?” the woman in the back seat of the airport shuttle asked me. I looked down at my 11-month-old daughter who was sitting in my lap, and said to the woman, “It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“It feels so pure, so overpowering, I can’t believe it has been only a week. I feel like I’ve known her forever,” the woman went on, beaming at her own 1-year-old daughter.
“I know exactly what you mean,” a man sitting across the aisle said to her, as he fed his baby girl the last of her bottle.
Several American couples were on this shuttle to the airport from the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China. We were all in China with the sole purpose of adopting baby girls. In just a couple of hours, my husband, Timmy, and I, along with our newly adopted daughter, would be on the first of three flights that would take us home to Port Angeles, Wash. We’d been in China for a month, and for the last 10 days, we’d been with our baby, Kira. This was the baby we had spent more than a year waiting to meet, and who we felt had been matched with us perfectly, absolutely cosmically. Kira was the most beautiful baby we had ever seen.
When the woman asked me, “Have you ever known such love?” a more honest response would have been, HUH?
As I write this, I can’t imagine my life, our lives, without Kira. Today, I know exactly the kind of love the woman on the shuttle was talking about. The kind of all-consuming, tidal wave, hurricane, die-for-you kind of love that, until I bonded with my daughter, I had never felt before. At the time, however, when the woman asked me that question, and for several weeks afterward, I wondered what all the fuss was about. So this is parenthood? This is it?
I wondered if it was me who didn’t know how to love like a mother is supposed to love. I thought that a maternal instinct was supposed to kick in when I held my baby for the first time and that I would be overcome, overwhelmed, totally in love, and maybe even faint from the sheer joy of it all. I had read accounts of other soon-to-be adoptive mothers’ hopes, dreams and expectations of the wondrous event of babies being “placed in their arms” and I started thinking, wow, I can’t wait to be a mother.
The first moments of Kira being placed in my arms by the orphanage director are on videotape. My first words, after “She’s so beautiful,” were “What do we do now?” There was no tidal wave, and no hurricane. I just hoped I wouldn’t drop her.
Kira cried quietly for about an hour that first day, and stayed sad for the next two days. I was so sorry for her losses, so sorry that my tiny girl could have such tremendous grief. I cried with her. The hotel provided us with a crib that I scooted right up against my bed so that I could pick her up easily if she woke up in the middle of the night. For hours, I peered into that crib, lighting up the room with the faint green glow from my watch. I stared at the outline of her little body in new pink pajamas. I watched to make sure she was breathing. She slept for 13 hours that first night and I didn’t sleep a wink.
I kept a diary during those days in China, and there is nothing on those pages about an overpowering love. Nothing at all about how I felt. No mention of anything other than how much she consumed, what we found in her diaper, and when she slept. Staying up all night, worrying about my baby, making sure she was clean, full and happy — was that love? There was no tidal wave, but my protective instincts seemed to be in good working order.
The day we met Kira on April 1, 2001 was also the day that the American spy plane and the Chinese fighter pilot had the in-flight accident that hit the front pages of newspapers world wide. We didn’t know what was going to happen, politically, but my husband and I decided that, no matter what, we would not leave China without our baby. No hurricane, but boy, were we committed to our child.
By the time we had Kira for 10 days, and were about to leave China, I thought that I would have loved my baby as much as the next mother. However, when the woman asked me that question, I realized that I loved my daughter pretty much like I loved — this is going to sound weird — my cat. Yes, my cat. I know that sounds awful, and I don’t say that to just anybody, but it’s how I felt. I know now that it’s how some other new parents feel, too. By the way, I love my cat a lot, as anyone who reads my Last Will and Testament would understand; however, I had hoped there’d be something more to parenthood than just having another cute mouth to feed.
I was not about to admit those feelings to anyone, not even to my husband, and barely to myself. I was afraid that maybe my desire to adopt a child was more about giving an orphan a home than wanting to nurture a child. I still felt that I might not be able to love like other mothers love, and I also wondered if the absence of an overpowering love had to do with my baby being adopted. Now, that was scary.
My husband and I chose the path of adoption to create a family because it felt right for us. Did we make a bad decision? Should I have listened to relatives who encouraged us to attempt pregnancy, even when that didn’t feel right? Were bloodlines and shared heritage and immortality through procreation necessary for me to bond? I pushed those thoughts away and went about the business of feeding, cleaning and cuddling. Parenthood would be all about care taking, I figured, and I was going to be the best caretaker there ever was.
Slowly, as the weeks went on, I got to know Kira better and Kira got to know me. I started feeling powerful waves of emotion when she looked at me. The sound of her voice washed over me like warm breezes. I began to realize that the love for my baby was not an instant bouquet of flowers. It was something more like a bunch of blossoming roses. One after another, the blooms appeared, filling my heart, soul and life.
We had been home with Kira for about two months when I said to my husband, “I seem to love Kira more and more each day.” He said, “I know exactly what you mean.”
My love for Kira has grown like a Northwest garden — big and wild. I feel the promise of many tomorrows, with her in my life. I see what the fuss is about. To the woman on the shuttle, I could now honestly say, “I had never known such love before knowing Kira.” I wish I could tell that woman that we will know such love again, when we go back to China, next spring, for our second daughter.
Sherie Maddox lives in Port Angeles, Wash., with her husband, Timmy, and her daughters Kira, 3, and Maile, 1. Maile was adopted from China in May 2003, during the height of the SARS scare.
|
Back to China Home Page |
| |
|
