Some thoughts on joy and sorrow and homecoming day

My dad said once that life runs along two rails--joy and sorrow. And like railroad tracks, the two cannot be separated and so often we experience both of them at once.

Today marks Oliver's 2nd Homecoming day. Two years ago today we drove to the Cincinnati airport as a family of 4 and left as a family of 5. Two years ago today we finally touched and held and kissed the baby boy we had been praying for and longing for and loving from far away. I remember feeling that we were in a sacred space. And there was such joy.

But I cannot celebrate the 23rd of January without also feeling the sorrow that comes with loss and brokeness. For what marks a day of joy for us runs alongside searing loss. Oliver did not come to us out of a blank past or in a bubble protected from the world. He came to us out brokenness. He was not placed in our arms as blank slate. As I reached for him the first time overflowing with joy, he was afraid and overwhelmed and unaware of who I was. Today we bathe him and rock him and laugh with him and hear his words and dance with him because his first family cannot. And that brings so much sorrow.

So I ride along these two rails with Oliver--the privileged joy we experience as his parents, the heaviness of sorrow at all the loss that brought him to us. I rejoice with him that he is loved and safe and I grieve with him that he will always carry within him the mark of parents he does not know. I laugh as he dances, I sing with him as he sings, all the while wondering if I am hearing the notes of his birthmother in his songs or the seeing the movements of his birthfather in his steps.

When we started the adoption process that eventually brought Oliver to us, I am not sure I realized how deeply I would feel all of this, not just for me, but for Oliver (because it isn't really about me, but about him). Of course he does not remember his Homecoming Day or the days before that and right now his world is not complicated by questions about his origin (mostly his days are complicated by where his cars are and when he can watch PBSkids). For now I think it is my responsibility to carry him along these two rails of joy and sorrow and to hold for him this part of his story until he can tell it himself. Someday he will have to give words to the loss that brought him to us and (hopefully) the joy of belonging. Someday he too will wonder about whose notes he is singing and whose steps he has inherited.

But for now, for today, it is my honor and privilege to rejoice over this son who came to me from far away, and to grieve over this son who experienced such undeserved loss. Hopefully I will ride these two rails well, embracing them both, so that someday Oliver can understand and embrace them too.

So today baby, we celebrate the day you came home to us. But more than just today, we celebrate YOU. All of you and all of your days and all of your story and all of the sorrow and all of the joy.

Happy Homecoming day to our sweet boy--without this day we would be missing you.

 

 

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