Blog ahead entry #2- Three Years

March 17th is not only for the Irish anymore, at least not in this house. This is the day, three years ago when I answered the most important phone call in my life.
I had worked a 12 hour shift the night before but my fellow nurses looked the other way as I crept out of the hospital a bit early to get home and be ready for The Call. At this point we had been waiting 8 months (I know that to the families waiting now, 8 months seems like a ridiculously short time but it was OUR wait and it was long), I had been following the rumor mill so I knew that we were getting the call and I was banking on not having to wait all day because we lived in Alaska and people always confuse the AK for Arkansas (see the agencies start making the calls at the East coast and march right across, so had they not gotten confused , I WOULD have waited all day but hey..)
I tried to lay down and rest some, knowing that it was my last chance to rest for quite sometime but that morning began my very long stretch of complete emotional wired-nes that lasted for say, oh three years now, but, I digress.
Soon enough the phone rang and I had my little paper with prepared questions and slots for the information they give you but when I heard those wonderful, magical words "You have a daughter", I completely forgot about my OCD paper and jotted things down all over the place. Then this voice began telling me things about this faceless little person that was going to change my world, "she was born in the Jiangxi Province, her name is Yi Fu Mei, she is small, she is healthy, we have 2 pictures..., she is 8and a half months old" I was shaking like a leaf. I think that I wasn't even breathing. I had waited so long for someone to give ma a chance to be a Mom that when the moment finally came, I went into a momentary, yet complete neurological shut down. That was ok with the girl form the agency, I think she's used to it. I kept saying "are you sure? are you sure? This one is mine, she is for me? She is ok? She'll be ok until I get there, right?" I was over the moon and suddenly terrified. The call ended with promises of an e-mail of the photos and I called Les home form work and yes, I did wait for him to look at her, I think.
We were blown away by that serious, round face, those dark eyes that betrayed nothing. I know that a parents emotions at this point can range from, no feelings of attachment to a complete attachment. I was the latter. One look at that face and I was her Mom, that was it, game over. It took me about a half a second to know in my heart that in all of the world, this girl was mine. No matter where she was born I would have found her, no matter what I had to do, she would come home with me. I tell Evelyn all of the time what a miracle it was that we found each other, some day she will understand how profound that is, for now, it's enough that Les and I know.
So yeah, she has been home with us for three years. I wouldn't trade a single minute of it, as a matter of fact, I would live them all over again and again and again.