Knowing Little Faces

This continues on from the last post.

During Gay’s house building trip to Cambodia last year, she spent some time at AOA, my kids’ former orphanage, on our behalf, dropping off gifts and recent pictures of our kids for nannies. While there, she took a lot of photos, most of children.

Many little faces I knew, having photographed the same kids myself on our trips to pick up Sam and Cj, and the act of recognition was both pleasant … knowing specific children were looking well … and sad … realizing that yet another year had come and gone while they were confined to orphanage life.

One face, however, took my breath away. I don’t know why this little five-year-old girl touched my heart the way she did, nor why I hadn’t noticed her before since she’d been at AOA since infancy, but from the second I laid eyes on her I had to know more.

I contacted the orphanage director for information, and was happy to learn that she was about to be adopted by a French family. There had been hold-ups in French adoptions, but they were opening again soon and she was expected to be with her new family within a matter of a few months.

Mark was very relieved, as the thought of me mother-on-a-missioning again, and another round of adoption fees had him a bit nervous, although supportive and willing as anything to have another child if it worked out that way.

Up until that time, I’d not been inclined to think in terms of older children. Babies fit for our family, and birth order felt important, with Sam keeping his position of oldest of my younger children. My perspective, however, had changed.

When Angelina Jolie completed her most recent adoption of her Vietnamese-born son, Pax, I immediately felt I understood exactly why a three-year-old was her third adoption.

I’ve written before about how adoptions subsequent to the first can feel like pushing your luck. When the first time turns out so marvelously well, when the child fits the family as if made for the place, is brilliant and beautiful and funny and sweet and loving and healthy, you have to wonder how one can ever experience such good fortune … and for it to happen again?

When, as in my case and Ms. Jolie’s, it happens exactly like that twice, a sense that we’ve somehow managed to get away with something, that two perfect babies are more than we deserve, comes along with the gratitude … a feeling that such amazing providence must be honored.

For all my thoughts of birth order and my deep love of babies, the fact that I have taken two such perfect infants from Cambodia leaves me wishing I could bring home at least one older child with little chance of adoption and nothing but a very tough life ahead.

In August, I’ll be at AOA surrounded by children with familiar faces and predictable futures. I’ll be too old to adopt any of them.

Our trip to Cambodia is going to be a hard holiday.

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