Each day we pass through an old set of gates to visit our daughter.
They squeak and crash shut behind us,
And each time we pass the threshold it’s as though we have entered another world…
We are no longer in the land of mummy and me classes, sing and sign and baby ballet… we are now in an orphanage, where none of these classes exist and we feel each mile that separates us from our very privileged life in the UK.
Neither my husband or myself had ever stepped foot in an orphanage before coming to meet our daughter. For years we envisioned what it might be like, but never really knew until we were here, and still 98 days later it is still hard for us to fathom that in 2019 children live in facilities such as this all over the world, no mummies, no daddies, no aunts, uncles or grandparents…
Each day for us starts the same wake up breakfast go to the orphanage, leave at lunchtime, return after lunch, leave … repeat…
for nearly four months this has been our life.
Our son pulls out his little red bag and plays with small figurines, collector cards and hot wheels, he swings on the swings and does his homework all from inside these gates…
…he watches the older children play but cannot join in…
He watches for his favourite babies and runs to see them as they pass by in their prams and in our room he makes the rounds to each baby and says… “I love you, you’re so cute, you’re so beautiful”
His love is blind, but it is perfect and exactly how love should be when it comes to these children, he does not see a baby with Down syndrome, cleft lip, or cerebral palsy… he just sees a baby, and he says “mummy they only need love”
To him it is simple, love is the answer.
I don’t know if when I was five I could have handled spending my summer away from everyone and everything I knew in an orphanage, but he has, and he has and he has done it courageously, and gracefully and he has fearlessly loved each baby he has laid his blue eyes on.
All of our eyes and hearts have been opened so wide that we will never fully be able to close them again. Never.
Our son asks why we can’t take more babies home… “maybe if we get a mini van..” he begins…. or “our house is more than big enough…” and “all they need is love…”
and oh how we wish we could take them all…
We explain how the other babies have mummies and daddies coming to adopt them and how some will have family members come and collect them, though that really isn’t true, one of the many half truths we have told him on this journey. The sad reality is that most of these children will not be adopted or reunified with their birth families, most will live their childhood in the orphanage.
For us this time is beyond bitter sweet as we cannot contain our excitement that soon our daughter will officially be ours, we also cannot contain our grief and sorrow for the little ones we will leave behind.
As a new day dawns in our daughter’s life, the lives of her orphanage siblings remain the same, they sit and they wait, they grow, and still no one comes.
So now we count down the days until we pass through the gates for the final time and hear them creak and bang closed behind us, this time with our daughter in our arms, and as a family of four. The gate closes on her past and on so many beautiful faces we will likely never see again and we will wonder where they are and how they are and in our hearts we will take them with us… always.
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Beautifully written.
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