The foyer in the Bethlehem Baptist Church opens up grandly to a large, auditorium-style sanctuary on the left and a wide hallway to the right. My heart pounding, like a kind of maternal witching wand, led me right. Kids in tow, we walk until our Minnesota caseworker meets us and motions towards an open door.
It is one thing to hold your son in your dreams–those that wash over you in sleep and in daylight moments of reverie–but it quite another to hold him in your arms, to touch each fold in his baby skin, to take in his scent. As I walk through the door, my fingers salivate. There, before me, is Phoebe, our Georgia caseworker, with my son.
Behold Quinn. Splendid in green velveteen and candy cane booties, too lovely for words.
Try as I might, I simply cannot remember the transfer from caretaker to mother-in-waiting. But Phoebe surely placed Quinn in my arms, for I have photos to prove this. Smitten is such a funny-sounding word, and yet beneath its consonants lie vowels of something much more profound. I am smitten. Utterly, totally, helplessly smitten with a baby who would change my world.
The room is large enough to hold church banquets. Today, however, tables are stacked and pushed against the walls, leaving yards of vacancy filled with a few plastic chairs which have been clustered in the middle of the room. As we sit, Phoebe gifts us with those first moments of wonder as we pass Quinn from mother to father, father to daughter to daughter to daughter. Obligingly, he looks deeply into each face and does not cry. The axis of our world tilts decisively towards this moment. We push our chairs closer together, we circle the wagons of our new family, and I pull a bottle from the diaper bag, shake it with a practiced hand, and begin to feed Quinn.
Then Phoebe begins to do her job, fleshing out the details of the final adoptive process. This is the homestretch, she says, and soon you will be on the road back to southern Iowa as a new family of six. After I receive word that the parental release forms have been received in Des Moines, that is. Just this last detail, she says and smiles reassuringly. I’ll call right now and verify this, and then you can take off.
Moments after the second burp, Phoebe returns from the office where she had made the call to Des Moines. She smiles, but the corners of her mouth don’t turn up as they had before. All set? Paul asks. He is a man on a mission. Always. She hesitates–just for a moment–but she clearly hesitates. As I gaze into my sleeping son’s face, however, this hesitation doesn’t register with me, for I cannot imagine anywhere I would rather be than right here, right now.
Not yet, she says. There are blizzard-like conditions in Des Moines, and with Christmas only two days away, the FedEx drivers are struggling to keep up with their normal schedules and routes. I’m sure they will deliver the paperwork soon. You can just hang out here, and I’ll call again in 30 minutes, o.k.?
And so we do. After hours pent up in the van, the girls run the expanse of the big room, racing from one end to the other. Our Minnesota caseworker does her best at small talk, and Paul walks the hallway to the foyer and back. I hold Quinn snuggly on my chest, his dark curls in the hollow of my shoulder, and his arms-once balled beneath his torso-relax now and dangle by his sides.
Thirty minutes go by, and then another thirty minutes. Now lunch time, both caseworkers excuse themselves and meet in the hall outside of earshot. They return with a plan: Because we do not really know when the paperwork will arrive in Des Moines, and the church is getting ready for a big funeral, we have arranged for us to stay at a parishioner’s house nearby. This couple has adopted children, too, and invited us to stay with them until we receive official word from Iowa. Will this be o.k. with you?
Paul looks at me, waiting for my response. I’m sorry, what did you say? As Phoebe repeats the “plan,” I can only nod and say, sure. And then I am stuffing an empty bottle into the diaper bag, pulling out a yellow snow suit, laying it out like an empty snow angel on the floor, and maneuvering my sleeping son into its fleece. Paul is stuffing the girls into their winter coats, zipping and hatting them as we walk down the hall. The caseworkers lead the way, ushering us around the funeral crowd that has convened in the foyer outside the sanctuary. In a profound juxtaposition that is impossible to deny, we leave with one new life as others mourn the loss of another. In the darkness of Bethlehem, love and life light the way forward.
The Sanctuary of Bethlehem often depends upon the hospitality of strangers. Innkeepers, families from other states who, too, have adopted children, and all those who witness the miracle of love incarnate and divine. It is this dependency that imbalances and humbles us in strange new ways. Grace floods the landscapes of our lives. We are but sparrows that sit on strangers’ hands, eating the seeds of their generosity and the fruits of their labor. Even if we persevered, even if we tried very hard, we cannot do for ourselves what others can do for us. And so, we accept their gifts.
After 15 minutes in the van, we arrive at a white two-story home in a well-kept neighborhood. The door has a gold knocker and an evergreen wreath with a large red bow. It flings open, and a mother greets us warmly, takes the girls’ coats and hats, and motions to the living room where beautifully wrapped presents spill out from beneath an 8 foot Christmas tree. This is the place of grace where we will wait for word that we can take our son home.
