Our First Meeting

Preparing for my trip was probably one of the most stressful things I have experienced in a long time, probably ever. I think it was the idea that I was traveling so far away, forgotten items wouldn't be easy to get, and there were folder after folder of paperwork that needed to come along with me. The main purpose of this trip was to file our I600 form at the US embassy in Accra. The bonus was that I was going to meet and spend a week with Williams! It took me several hours on the plane to kind of decompress from all the getting ready.

The flights were long but fairly uneventful. The biggest problem was that I realized I'd forgotten all of my lipstick and I didn't know if I could survive that. I even called my adoption coordinator, way too late in the evening, to find out if I could get lipstick in Ghana. Her answer was, "Not anything you'd want to put on your lips." That was a kind of scary answer so I found the duty free lipstick store, (yes, there is one) and searched, with no luck, for just the right "Amy in Africa" color. I was just going to have to go to Africa lipstickless. Little did I know that this would be the biggest non-issue I could possibly imagine.

For 11 hours I did the "countdown to Williams". I watched the little map on the screen in front of me showing me inch closer and closer to Ghana and it just didn't seem real. My flight was about 1 1/2 hours late arriving. The airport was nothing like I was expecting. I was picturing the Puerta Vallarta airport which was just chaos, but Accra's was orderly, clean, and quite nice. There were no men grabbing at my bags to "help" me as I imagined. Edward, the poor driver who had arrived at the airport at 5:45pm to pick me up, sat wearily just where I was told he would be waiting. It was about 8:00pm. Besides the "wild airport" fear, I also had the "no one there to pick me up" fear. So far, so good!

On the drive to Teshie, the area where Eban House and my guest house is located, I asked about going to Eban House. Edward said it was too late and all the kids would be asleep. I was devastated! I thought that I was going to be able to go, no matter what time it was, and they would wake him up to meet me. I tried not to act like he had just punched me in the gut, but that's what I felt like. Once again, in rode my adoption coordinator, on her white horse. She called Edward on his cell phone, from Tulsa, to see if I'd made it. We talked and she said of course I could go to Eban House to meet Williams tonight!

When I arrived at Eban House, Auntie Esther was there to greet me. It seemed so appropriate since that is my mom's name. She went and got Williams and there he was, standing in front of me. After all the pictures and dreams , he was right there. I asked him if it was ok for me to hug him and he did his little "Ghana nod" which is one, small nod, and it's easy to miss. He smelled so good!!!! He was a little shy at first, but he warmed up quickly. I only sat with him for 5 minutes or so. It was hard to not just want to sit there and stare at him without talking, like I'd done with his pictures for the last 3 months, but I didn't want him to know yet how weird I am, so I kept it short. It's hard to carry on much of a conversation with a 5 year old boy, who speaks limited English, has just been woken up from a dead sleep, and told his new obruni (white) mother is waiting to to meet him in the other room. The fact that he came out at all seemed like a good deal to me. I'm not sure I would have, had I been him!

I decided to keep him. Oh, yeah, I had to! He was already my son. It's funny how similar it was to meeting your biological baby right after delivery. He didn't talk, he let me look at his fingers and toes (they were all there!), and I got to kiss him repeatedly on the head. He didn't run away from me, so I deemed the whole experience a success.