Meeting Dagim

Admittedly, this post is about 6 months late.  Somehow, writing about meeting Dagim seemed too personal.  And also, I couldn’t find the words.  Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on our trip, I hope to do a few posts about Ethiopia as well.

We arrived in Addis Ababa really late in the evening (maybe 10pm?  I can’t remember and sadly did not keep a journal).  The baggage claim area was jam-packed and I kept fretting that our luggage would get lost and suddenly I regreted carrrying on all of Dagim’s things (formula, bottles, clothes, diapers) and NONE of my own things.  I started worrying about spending the next ten days in the same dirty outfit.  I did have several heavy magazines, a book, Uno, Click and Clack trivia cards, a new journal (that I did not write one single word in during the entire trip) – none of which I even touched on the plane because I couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than five seconds (except the question of when the next meal would be arriving).  Luggage kept looping around and around the conveyor belt.  I saw the other families in our travel group get their bags and began to panic.  I’m a bit competitive in situations like this and I really wanted to be first out of the gate (I think I’d be fantastic on The Amazing Race except for the liklihood of giving myself a stroke).  Chris tried to calm me down but it was really useless – I was pacing, jumping up and down to get some height to see the bags, wringing my hands.  Chris sent me to change some dollars into birr, probably just to get rid of me for a few minutes.  Our luggage finally did arrive but by that time all the other families in our travel group were gone.  It took awhile to actually get out of the baggage claim area (there was almost a fight between an elderly man who kept cutting in front of people and a man who told him to stop) and into the pick-up area – during this time I worried about how we would know who was there for us (as it turned out, this wasn’t so difficult – the wonderful Travis is very tall and I recognized him from other blogs).

Travis and Ryan greeted us and we rushed out to Ryan’s car (it was very very late by this point).  They stopped off at the grocery store so we could pick up some things.  I really didn’t want to stop – I was exhausted and still a bit uptight from the whole luggage ordeal – and how could I food shop without a list?  Ryan and Travis then brought us to our guest house, showed us around and said they’d be back first thing in the morning with Dagim.  They weren’t joking either.

Chris and I woke up early (after not really sleeping much at all) and started to fix breakfast (I was grateful to have water, juice and cereal from our shopping trip the night before).  I actually felt really calm at this point and I said, “You know, I don’t think I’ll cry when he gets here.”  Then I heard the car pull up and the tears started flowing.  Ryan came in to get our camera so he could take pictures for us.

Here is Dagim, being carried by Travis into our guest house, moments before we first saw him:

And here is us, seeing him for the first time:

[After some discussion, Chris and I have decided to keep our first pictures as a family private.  I do hope, dear reader (I think there may be one person left who still checks this blog after my prolonged hiatus) that you will understand.]

Dagim wasn’t exactly instantly taken with us.  It took some coaxing to get him to come to me – Travis told him that mommies were nice and soft and warm.  We saw down with Dagim and just marveled that there he was – with us – after what seemed an eternity (a wait that seems so short to us now).  My first thought was that he was perfect – really, just perfect!  Dagim didn’t make eye contact with us (which we had prepared ourselves for) and he mostly looked at the light on the ceiling.  When Travis and Ryan left, he got upset and wanted to leave with Travis.  Of course, we had prepared ourselves for this type of thing but in all honestly, it really broke my heart that he was reaching out for Travis to take him.  After they left, we continued to sit with Dagim, quietly, not talking very much (Dagim was silent through all of this).  He soon fell asleep in my arms.  We brought him upstairs to the bedroom and we all took a nap on the bed together.  When he woke up, he apparently decided that I was his best bet.  He clung to me for the next several days, not wanting anyone else (including Chris, which was really difficult for both of us – for him emotionally and for me physically – I mean this partly as a joke and partly in all seriousness as I literally carried Dagim, at 22 pounds, around all day for several days – my arms actually looked different by the end of the trip).  That first day I held Dagim the entire day – he would not be put down.  We didn’t even know if he could walk or not (he could).  

After we woke up from our nap, we met up with all the families in our travel group for lunch.  At that point, we had only been a family of three for a few hours but it seemed like we had always had Dagim, that we belonged to each other.  Chris and I had longed for a child, for this child, for many years.  And suddenly there he was, in my arms.  I felt, at that moment, sitting with the other new families in a restaurant halfway around the world from our homes, that loving Dagim would be the greatest thing I would ever do.