Children of Dreams, An Adoption Memoir (6 page)

Within me a sense of longing arose, a burning desire to partake of the beauty of our heavenly home that God is preparing for us. Whatever my eyes have beheld here, that my senses have been awakened to, so much more so will it be there. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 2:9, “… as it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.’”

Eventually everyone returned to the van. Manisha and her father climbed in sitting to the left of me in the back. She had warmed up to me again and I was able to hold her for a few minutes as the van gathered speed on the half paved, half dirt road.

Her clothes now were not only dirtied and soiled, but smelled of sour milk. Her shoes, riddled with holes and far too small, had been tossed into the back of the van.

It was still hard for me to believe she was going to be my daughter. I would rest easier when we were in the air over Kathmandu headed toward Los Angeles. That seemed an eternity away right now. There was lots of talk going on but since everyone spoke in Nepali, I didn’t know what was being said except for the occasional translation by Ankit.

We continued to travel for a long time passing through small villages where we had to make numerous stops to register with an official who sat in a hut beside the road.

A couple more hours passed and no McDonald’s or Wendy’s showed up on the radar, so I thought before things got desperate, I better do something. There were too many jolts of the van on the bumpy road to wait too long.

Ankit asked the driver to stop and a few minutes later he pulled the van over to the side of the road.

“Is this okay?” Ankit asked.

“Well, I don’t have any toilet paper.”

He looked back at me in amazement. “Why didn’t you bring toilet paper?”

“I didn’t know I would need toilet paper. I just thought we would stop somewhere at a restaurant and go.”

“We’re out in the middle of the Himalayan Mountains!”

There were no restaurants out here, just mountains and small make shift homes with poor, needy children running around taking care of cows more dead than alive, and one monkey in heat. No five star hotels, let alone anything resembling a Western style restaurant.

“We’ll stop at the next village and I’ll try to get some,” Ankit said.

Guys just don’t get it, I thought. Or maybe I really am a soft American.

Later we made a brief stop at a little shack in a small village. Ankit ran in and purchased some toilet paper, quickly came out, and handed it to me through the window. I tried not to look embarrassed and avoided eye contact with everybody. I was just glad to have my toilet paper.

We proceeded to drive along the road and every few minutes the driver slowed down and Ankit would look back at me with a questioning look, “Is this a good place to stop? Do you want to stop here?”

“Yeah, this is okay,” I said at last. I just wanted to be done with it.

I climbed out of the van and started heading down a little path off to the side of the road carrying my toilet paper mumbling to myself, “I am not a soft American girl. Gee, they probably do this all the time.”

After doing my deed I headed back up the trail and saw that everyone else had left the van. Fortunately nobody went my way, so I just waited until everybody returned.

By now we were all hungry so I handed out some of the snacks that I brought and we began to munch on them. It was about 3:00 or so in the afternoon when we finally arrived at the CDO’s office.

We pulled off the road to a large open area in front of a two story, white concrete building with brown shutters. A red and white Nepali flag hung limply from a flag post out front. There were a few children and men milling about. It was quiet and peaceful, unlike the bustle of activity in Kathmandu. The whole area was surrounded by mountains off in the distance.

As I looked toward the east, Ankit said, “Just over those mountains is China.” It felt like the ends of the earth. I took a few pictures and then followed Ankit up the flight of stairs to the second story of the CDO’s office. Manisha and her father followed closely behind. I clasped my documents under my arm and held on to them nervously.

“You need to be friendly with the CDO and talk to him when he asks you questions.” I could tell Ankit was also nervous.

Appearing in front of a government official who wielded such power over my future was certainly out of my bailiwick. I tried to focus on the matter at hand but my heart was racing, wanting it to be done. My throat was so dry I wasn’t even sure I could respond to any questions he might ask me.

As we stood in the doorway, the room appeared very dark. We were motioned in and I found an empty seat several feet from the door. As I waited for my eyes to adjust, I gazed through the window. The Himalayan Mountains in the distance seemed to symbolize the huge hurdle in front of me in the guise of this official.

Manisha sat beside me. One exposed light bulb with wires crisscrossing the ceiling provided the only lighting. Old wooden chairs lined the bare walls. I felt like I was starring in a movie as I sat in the dusty, dingy office of the CDO of Dolakha, Nepal.

A man in his early 30’s, the CDO was dressed in a green suit with a pointed little cap on top of his head. It was hard to comprehend how a man on the other side of the world could have such incredible control over my destiny except God had given him that authority.

My thoughts flashed back momentarily to all that preceded this defining moment in my life. As a child my parents told me I was born under a cloud. My husband chided me, “Is this another one of your sad stories?”

“I don’t love you anymore,” my partner spitefully responded one night after I presented him with evidence that he was seeing another woman. I remembered the wine bottles and cheese that I uncovered in the garbage after being away for a few days visiting my family.

I replayed scenes of the long hours I worked as a court reporter putting him through medical school. I recalled the night he contacted the police after I confronted him in his office at the hospital. Two weeks after our divorce was final, the other woman gave birth to his child. I was devastated and hurt. Only a loving God could help me to recover and begin a new life in Him. Would God give me a chance to redeem the years the locusts had eaten?

A few years after my divorce, I received a letter from World Vision, an evangelical organization that sponsors children in Third World countries. The beginning of the letter, dated February 13, 1993, read: “Over 150 million children worldwide are trapped by hunger, sickness, poverty, and neglect.” I took the letter and put it on my refrigerator. Someday, I thought, I am going to adopt a child from another country. How and when, only God knew.

The letter ended with the quote from Proverbs 13:12 (LB): “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams come true at last, there is life and joy.”

I looked at Manisha and reflected on what the future would hold. With her piercing, dark brown eyes focused on me, she spoke softly in clear English, “I love you.”

I responded back, “I love you, too.”

I did not know how she could have uttered those words because she could not speak English. I thought about what the Bible said concerning speaking in tongues and wondered if I had witnessed another one of God’s miracles. Whether I could explain it or not, it gave me the assurance I needed over the next few days that God was in control.

As we sat and waited, there was a lot of talk in Nepali.

The CDO asked Ankit a few questions as various men walked in and out handing him papers to sign.

He continued to pour over my documents and after awhile looked up and asked, “You’re not forty?”

“No,” I said, “but I’m almost forty.”

“It’s the law you must be forty.” He gave a cursory glance through the rest of my papers. He and Ankit exchanged a flurry of words in Nepali. Some elderly men sitting in the room stared at me. I had the feeling that Ankit was talking about my infertility. I felt exposed that such personal information was being bantered about. I saw worry in Ankit’s eyes and knew my hopes of becoming a mother were precariously in limbo.

Ankit and the CDO continued to talk for a while longer. I went and sat by him hoping for some reassurance. More old men came in and the CDO turned his attention to other matters. About this time, Manisha’s father, not happy with the sudden turn of events, took Manisha outside and I could hear her running up and down the wooden planks.

Ankit said to me in a whisper, “The CDO said he cannot approve your adoption because you’re not forty, and he has to abide by the law. He is putting in a call to the legal office in Kathmandu to see if they will give him permission but they won’t do it. We will have to go ourselves and meet with the Home Minister after we get back to Kathmandu.”

We continued to wait for a long time for the phone call. Finally the phone rang and the CDO talked loudly on the phone. When he got off, they discussed the call. I could tell it wasn’t good.

Ankit shook his head indicating that he could not get permission to sign my paperwork.

“I wish I could do your adoption, but I can’t,” the CDO told me in broken English.

I knew it wasn’t his fault. He had tried. I had known before I came to Nepal about the age forty rule, but what difference did it make in my case because I couldn’t get pregnant? Written laws prohibiting a child from having a home, a future, and a hope—why, God?

Manisha was an orphan; her mother had died when she was a baby, and her father couldn’t support her. He didn’t want to support her. Girls were considered a liability in Hindu culture and without her birthmother, the life she faced was one of destitution and death.

This road seemed so familiar to me. I had walked it before, more than once; loss, separation, and abandonment. I cried out, “Not here, Lord, not in Nepal. A three-year-old orphan girl needs a chance to know You.”

Chapter Eight

...ask the animals, and they will teach you

Job 12:7

My mind flashed back to when I was young. I was awakened by a big white dog licking me in my face and jumping all over my bed. As I tried to open my eyes from what I thought was a dream, my mother said, “This is Gypsy. We are going to keep her.”

Gypsy was the friend I longed for but didn’t have. When I came home from school, she would greet me at the door with her tail wagging. I walked her, fed her, and played with her. After we returned from each walk, I would announce how many times she had used the bathroom, both number one and number two, as if to validate I was the best dog walker in the world. I even cleaned up after her when she threw up so nobody would know.

Gypsy was a stray. The night before she jumped on me in bed she had snuck into the house with my dad. She was God’s gift to me. We were inseparable.

One afternoon I arrived home from school and knew something was wrong. She didn’t greet me at the door like she usually did and I ran through the house frantically looking for her.

“She’s gone,” my mother and father told me. “She won’t be back. The manager of the apartment came and took her away.”

“Where did they take her?” I cried.

“The manager said they would dump her off on the road somewhere far from here. You know the apartment complex doesn’t allow dogs.”

I ran out of the room and up the stairs to my bedroom. My mind was flooded with memories of the most important thing in my little world. My heart was broken, confused, and hurting. Gypsy was gone.

That night bolts of thunder crashed outside my bedroom. Lightning pierced through the window shades. I imagined Gypsy in the darkness. I could feel her white warm fur against my skin and see her dark, brown eyes pleading for me to come get her. I cried into my pillow as peels of thunder bounced off the walls. If Gypsy ever found her way back, I vowed to run away with her. I would never let anybody take her from me again.

But the next day came and went and she didn’t return. I went to school each day hoping for the impossible, that somehow she could find her way back from wherever they dumped her.

It was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. We were packing things up to go visit my new father’s family in North Carolina. My mother had recently remarried. I kept looking up the hill in front of the apartment, imagining that she would come running down the street any minute. I knew it would be impossible, but still I hoped. I made one last trip to my bedroom. The car was loaded and we were ready to leave. I picked up my pillow and thought of the first morning she licked me on the face in bed.

“Please, Gypsy, come back to me. You need a home and someone to love you. I need you.”

I walked out the door of our apartment to get into the car. I glanced one last time up the hill. Out of nowhere, suddenly, there was something white. Was it, could it be—I dropped my pillow and started running up the hill. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, my mind racing to think what seemed like the impossible. It couldn’t be—but it was.

Gypsy ran frantically toward me, tattered, dirty, and exhausted. Somehow she had miraculously found her way home through the raging storm. After being lost for days in the cold November nights, miles from our home, Gypsy had done the impossible. She had found her way back to me.

“Gypsy!” I cried. I crouched down to grab her as she jumped into my arms, holding her tightly around the neck, crying and rejoicing all at the same time. My dog was lost, but now she was found.