For the Love of This Boy

We met him in China, less than a month ago. He was chubby-ish and pale but he was solid and real. I can say that our meeting had no surprises or disappointments because I had prepared myself to meet him where he was and I forced myself, for many long months, to keep my mind blank, to not fill in dream moments. It was hard and at times I failed but, riding that bus to the Civil Affairs Office I attempted to blank my mind and just meet a new person. Not a baby or a son. Not my daughter's brother.  Just a person.
I am glad that I took that route. Because he was there, with the history of is life right there with him, almost like a shadow. The abandonment and separation from his birth mother. The surgery he endured with no one to call his own standing beside him. The days he spent in an Orphanage. The days he spent at the Anhui Cleft Healing Home with caring nannies who laid him in little patches of sunlight and fed him with a spoon. China in his blood and on his beautiful skin. He was all of that and at the same time so much more but also just a little person. A lonely little boy waiting to see what we had to offer.

And I loved him.
Not fiercely at first I will admit. But cautiously and willingly. Ready to see what he needed.
I held this boy who didn't even turn to look for a familiar face when we boarded the bus and I knew that I must respect the pain that he had endured as a part of who he was.
And that was scary. Because with Ev it took me months to turn off the "self" and to turn my face and being
completely towards her and her struggles. I was in the comfort of my own home by then. I had the knowledge that she liked me by then. We knew each other a bit by then.
This time I jumped in with a stranger.
It was so scary that parts of me have sort of shut down and are not back up and running yet. I have turned some things off so I can do this job of getting to know him and learning who he is and meeting him where he is.
But there is love. A joyous playful kind of love that shocks me to the core. You see, I have wondered for a very long time how I would love another child as my love for Ev seems so big a fierce and omnipresent. But I found a place in me that is just for him. It is a well, a deep, deep well of love that has been there for a long time because it feels familiar. My heart was waiting for him. HIM. When I held him, something in me shifted and I realized that there would be love and plenty of it, for him.

Every day that I have him, I love him more. He brings mess and laughter and cat chasing glee into this house. He doesn't eat all nice and proper, it's a head down elbows flyin' get it in the mouth attack that leaves me stunned and surprised.  He brings climbing and falling and loosing toys to a whole new level. He is the small destructor. He is a Mama's boy and I love it. He hugs and gives slobbery wonderful kisses. He will throw a 2 hour fit over something minor and get up laughing when he's ready. He is who he has always been and I am meeting him and learning him and loving him.
This is one happy Mama.
Happy and tired.
All of the turned off places will turn on again for me, when I can handle it. When I am ready to face the grief I feel for his birth mother. When I can look at the hundreds of pictures from Love Without Boundaries and truly see those moments for what they are and let myself cry for happiness and sadness. I have no room for that stuff right now.
There is just room for the Liam that is here, and his sister and his father.
And this new wonderful love that is growing and settling into my heart.

My son.
I am so thankful that he was sent our way.