Children of Dreams, An Adoption Memoir Page 5

  I looked at Manisha and reflected on what the future would hold. With her piercing, dark brown eyes focused on me, she spoke softly in clear English, “I love you.”

  I responded back, “I love you, too.”

  I did not know how she could have uttered those words because she could not speak English. I thought about what the Bible said concerning speaking in tongues and wondered if I had witnessed another one of God’s miracles. Whether I could explain it or not, it gave me the assurance I needed over the next few days that God was in control.

  As we sat and waited, there was a lot of talk in Nepali.

  The CDO asked Ankit a few questions as various men walked in and out handing him papers to sign.

  He continued to pour over my documents and after awhile looked up and asked, “You’re not forty?”

  “No,” I said, “but I’m almost forty.”

  “It’s the law you must be forty.” He gave a cursory glance through the rest of my papers. He and Ankit exchanged a flurry of words in Nepali. Some elderly men sitting in the room stared at me. I had the feeling that Ankit was talking about my infertility. I felt exposed that such personal information was being bantered about. I saw worry in Ankit’s eyes and knew my hopes of becoming a mother were precariously in limbo.

  Ankit and the CDO continued to talk for a while longer. I went and sat by him hoping for some reassurance. More old men came in and the CDO turned his attention to other matters. About this time, Manisha’s father, not happy with the sudden turn of events, took Manisha outside and I could hear her running up and down the wooden planks.

  Ankit said to me in a whisper, “The CDO said he cannot approve your adoption because you’re not forty, and he has to abide by the law. He is putting in a call to the legal office in Kathmandu to see if they will give him permission but they won’t do it. We will have to go ourselves and meet with the Home Minister after we get back to Kathmandu.”

  We continued to wait for a long time for the phone call. Finally the phone rang and the CDO talked loudly on the phone. When he got off, they discussed the call. I could tell it wasn’t good.

  Ankit shook his head indicating that he could not get permission to sign my paperwork.

  “I wish I could do your adoption, but I can’t,” the CDO told me in broken English.

  I knew it wasn’t his fault. He had tried. I had known before I came to Nepal about the age forty rule, but what difference did it make in my case because I couldn’t get pregnant? Written laws prohibiting a child from having a home, a future, and a hope—why, God?

  Manisha was an orphan; her mother had died when she was a baby, and her father couldn’t support her. He didn’t want to support her. Girls were considered a liability in Hindu culture and without her birthmother, the life she faced was one of destitution and death.

  This road seemed so familiar to me. I had walked it before, more than once; loss, separation, and abandonment. I cried out, “Not here, Lord, not in Nepal. A three-year-old orphan girl needs a chance to know You.”

  Chapter Eight

  ...ask the animals, and they will teach you

  Job 12:7

  My mind flashed back to when I was young. I was awakened by a big white dog licking me in my face and jumping all over my bed. As I tried to open my eyes from what I thought was a dream, my mother said, “This is Gypsy. We are going to keep her.”

  Gypsy was the friend I longed for but didn’t have. When I came home from school, she would greet me at the door with her tail wagging. I walked her, fed her, and played with her. After we returned from each walk, I would announce how many times she had used the bathroom, both number one and number two, as if to validate I was the best dog walker in the world. I even cleaned up after her when she threw up so nobody would know.

  Gypsy was a stray. The night before she jumped on me in bed she had snuck into the house with my dad. She was God’s gift to me. We were inseparable.

  One afternoon I arrived home from school and knew something was wrong. She didn’t greet me at the door like she usually did and I ran through the house frantically looking for her.

  “She’s gone,” my mother and father told me. “She won’t be back. The manager of the apartment came and took her away.”

  “Where did they take her?” I cried.

  “The manager said they would dump her off on the road somewhere far from here. You know the apartment complex doesn’t allow dogs.”

  I ran out of the room and up the stairs to my bedroom. My mind was flooded with memories of the most important thing in my little world. My heart was broken, confused, and hurting. Gypsy was gone.

  That night bolts of thunder crashed outside my bedroom. Lightning pierced through the window shades. I imagined Gypsy in the darkness. I could feel her white warm fur against my skin and see her dark, brown eyes pleading for me to come get her. I cried into my pillow as peels of thunder bounced off the walls. If Gypsy ever found her way back, I vowed to run away with her. I would never let anybody take her from me again.

  But the next day came and went and she didn’t return. I went to school each day hoping for the impossible, that somehow she could find her way back from wherever they dumped her.

  It was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. We were packing things up to go visit my new father’s family in North Carolina. My mother had recently remarried. I kept looking up the hill in front of the apartment, imagining that she would come running down the street any minute. I knew it would be impossible, but still I hoped. I made one last trip to my bedroom. The car was loaded and we were ready to leave. I picked up my pillow and thought of the first morning she licked me on the face in bed.

  “Please, Gypsy, come back to me. You need a home and someone to love you. I need you.”

  I walked out the door of our apartment to get into the car. I glanced one last time up the hill. Out of nowhere, suddenly, there was something white. Was it, could it be—I dropped my pillow and started running up the hill. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, my mind racing to think what seemed like the impossible. It couldn’t be—but it was.

  Gypsy ran frantically toward me, tattered, dirty, and exhausted. Somehow she had miraculously found her way home through the raging storm. After being lost for days in the cold November nights, miles from our home, Gypsy had done the impossible. She had found her way back to me.

  “Gypsy!” I cried. I crouched down to grab her as she jumped into my arms, holding her tightly around the neck, crying and rejoicing all at the same time. My dog was lost, but now she was found.

  “I will never let go of you,” I promised. She squealed with delight and licked my face. For the first time in my young life, I knew there had to be a God.

  Chapter Nine

  …weeping may remain for the night

  Psalm 30:5

  Does God not take care of orphans and widows? In John 14:18 Jesus promised that “I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you.”

  Surely God would not abandon Manisha, leaving her here in Nepal where she would never hear of the Savior’s love. If God was able to reunite a little girl with her beloved dog against all odds, if God could become the husband for a young wife abandoned by her unfaithful husband, if God was my heavenly Father who had promised to never leave me or forsake me, surely He wouldn’t abandon me now.

  God, who knows every hair on my head, who knows everything about me and loves me anyway, who sacrificed His only Son so I could have eternal life with Him, could I not render unto God what was God’s and render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s? Did God not put the authorities in power in Nepal? Did not the winds and sea obey Him?

  When everything seemed hopeless, could I believe that God is the Great Shepherd who never abandons His sheep?

  In John 10:11, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.”

  For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scat
tered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries and I will bring them into their own land (Ezekiel 34:11-13).

  I reflected back to what Manisha said to me shortly before the CDO said he couldn’t approve the adoption, “I love you.” It was as if God had said to me, “I love you.”

  The trip back to Kathmandu was emotionally difficult. We arrived just after dusk. Manisha had thrown up two more times in the van. She needed a mother’s comfort and touch to clean her up and make her feel loved. Her old, thread bare shoes looked like they had been used by a half dozen kids. I longed to be her mother, to bathe her, to give her a new dress and a bright pair of brand new shoes she could show off, but it wasn’t meant to be this night.

  The most I could hope was for her dad to take some things I had brought and give them to her. I picked out a pink corduroy dress and blue checkered shirt that I knew would fit her. I also handed him a pretty nightgown and underwear. But he did not know what they were for and I didn’t know how to explain it to him. The little girls of Nepal did not wear nightgowns or panties to bed. They were too poor.

  I said good night to both of them. As they left for Ankit to drive them back to their hotel, I closed the door and realized how totally exhausted I was. All I wanted to do was sleep.

  The next morning arrived. I heard stirring on the street four stories below with the first rays of sunlight peeking through the window. I had become accustomed to hearing people throw up every morning as the hotel walls were thin and betrayed more than I cared to know.

  I wanted today to be different. I found a new place to eat where the food promised to be more appetizing. There appeared to be more Westerners and Europeans here. I had yet to run into another American.

  Later in the morning following breakfast, I heard a knock on my door. I opened it and Manisha stood by her father with a broad smile and eyes sparkling like diamonds. Even in my troubled heart, I felt swept off my feet as she modeled her new outfit. Far from her home where she wore ragged clothes and shoes, she had become a princess. Rags to riches in a day, fairy tale stories still happen. I wanted this one to end with her knowing her King.

  Earlier I had called my mother and asked for prayer. Isaiah 34:5 6 came to mind, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will bring your children from the east and my daughters from the ends of the earth.”

  “O, Dear God,” I prayed again, “Please let this be Your will. Please give me the desires of my heart.” I had dressed up, too, waiting for Ankit to come and take me to the Home Minister.

  He arrived a little later and we had a big discussion about whether to take his motorcycle or a taxi. I was all dressed up and didn’t want to ride on a motorcycle. He hated spending so much money for rides even though it was my money, but every time I rode on a motorcycle, I was covered with dirt. I prevailed this time. We hired a taxi.

  As we traveled to the Legal Office, he warned me, “The Home Minister is directly underneath the Prime Minister. Try to make a good impression.”

  The courthouse and government buildings were located in the heart of downtown Kathmandu. A tall, white wall surrounded the entire complex. The taxi dropped us off outside the walled entrance and we walked inside to the legal office of the Home Ministry. It was a beautiful day. The sun’s rays lifted my spirits as if God’s radiance shown upon me, but Ankit was uncomfortable.

  “They don’t like me in the legal office,” he said. “I refuse to pay them money for the adoptions.”

  Bribery is what they call it in America. Although illegal even in Nepal, with some adoption facilitators it happened all the time.

  As we sat patiently waiting, nobody went out of their way to help us. Ankit eventually engaged a male secretary at the front desk in conversation, and he motioned us into another room.

  There followed a lot of talk in Nepali. I knew that whatever happened there would be no bribes and no money to pay anyone off. God would have to intervene and make it possible for me to adopt Manisha.

  I prayed quietly for God to move on the Home Minister’s heart. An errand boy, after an extended discussion with Ankit, went into his office. We waited until he reappeared. Speaking in Nepali, he relayed the Home Minister’s decision.

  Ankit breathed a sigh of relief and anticipation.

  “The Home Minister has said it’s okay for you to adopt Manisha.”

  My eyes filled with tears as I remembered Manisha’s softly spoken words in the Himalayan Mountains, “I love you.”

  God had given me a daughter from the ends of the earth. He would restore the years the locusts had eaten.

  Sher Bahadur Deuba, the Home Minister, later became Prime Minister of Nepal on three separate occasions. I can’t underestimate the power of prayer and that it is God who moves in the hearts of kings and leaders to do His bidding.

  Chapter Ten

  ...a time of happiness and joy, gladness and honor

  Esther 8:16

  It would take a couple of days to process the paperwork. We would have to travel back to the Dolakha District and meet once again with the CDO to have him sign his part of the documents. I was actually looking forward to making the trip again. I could enjoy the scenery even more knowing that everything would be approved. I had not gotten a picture of Mount Everest the previous day. Ankit assured me we would stop and get pictures. Wednesday I would be able to return to the legal office and pick up the paperwork.

  When I got back to the hotel, Manisha and her father weren’t there, so I went in search of another place to eat. Ankit thought it would be a good idea for all of us to be at the same place, so he made arrangements for Manisha and her father to relocate.

  Later that afternoon, I was able to take Manisha out by myself for the first time. I carried her around on my hip as we walked the streets of Kathmandu looking through shop windows. There were lots of billboard advertisements for safaris through the jungle, elephant rides and plane trips into China, and escorted hiking trips by the Sherpas to Mount Everest.

  Nepal has fourteen peaks more than twenty-six thousand feet high. In the Janakpur District alone, in the Mechi Zone of the Himalayas where we were, there were seven peaks more than fourteen thousand feet. The road on which we traveled gave us vistas of some of the highest peaks in the world with Mount Everest at 29,028 feet.

  In a different time and place, I would have jumped at the opportunity to go on one of the excursions. I had gone scuba diving all over the world, including diving with hundreds of Barracudas in the Bahamas. I bled blue blood when I was bit by a grouper at eighty feet on the Great Barrier Reef. I was waited on hand and foot and treated to spectacular diving in the Red Sea off the coast of Eilat, Israel, surrounded by poisonous lion fish and garden eel. I traveled to Europe more than once, studied in England and Italy, toured Australia and New Zealand, and chased sharks in the Caribbean.

  I was in Jerusalem taking a course in Biblical Studies at the start of the 1991 1992 Gulf War. After being shown how to use a gas mask and self-administer a nerve gas antidote, I paid a hundred shekels in an all-night escape from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. I caught the last plane out to Switzerland and then spent a few days in Engelberg skiing while the world was on the brink of war. I whitewater rafted down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon and trekked through the rain forests of Central America in Belize and Honduras. I lived for myself, until God called me to adopt. Now it was as much fun to look at those advertisements with Manisha as it was to actually have experienced them a few years earlier.

  I had become accustomed to the stares of the Nepali men which were more apparent to me now that Manisha was with me. I was stopped on the streets by shopkeepers, who spoke just enough English to sell trinkets to the tourists, “What caste is she?” they would ask, as if the higher the caste, the more value she had.

  In Nepali society, the little girls did not have the same �
�worth” as young boys. Manisha’s father wanted to remarry, which made him anxious to complete the adoption. He could not marry until the adoption was finalized or else Manisha would not meet the United States definition of orphan.

  When Raj and his new wife had their own children, Manisha would have come after their children in hierarchy as far as food, clothing, and bare necessities. Her life at best would have been difficult and death was a certainty by the time she was seven.

  After being asked several times, I thought I’d better find out. Ankit told me that Manisha was a Chetri, the second highest caste after Brahmin. Her last name in Nepali, Karki, was a common Chetri family name. It bothered me that everyone asked, but it was easier to answer the question than to evade it.

  Many also thought Manisha was a boy because of her short, oily hair. When I later washed all the oil out, I was surprised that her hair was curly and thick. The substance her father kept lathering on her head prevented little critters from taking up residence. I later discovered lice. I relentlessly searched for the disgusting creatures on my new daughter’s head while she squirmed impatiently—and was convinced the miniature, prehistoric-looking monsters were also on mine.

  I couldn’t wait to remove the nose ring and earrings. I had already come up with a plan for that. The red dot on the middle of her forehead also had to go.

  I began to teach Manisha English and she made her first childish attempts to mimic the sounds I made—the word for lion, the word for flower, the word for cookie, the word for dirty, but her favorite word was “meow.” Any cat we saw required at least a 30 second examination, maybe longer. She taught me the word “bani,” which means rice, and Ankit made sure I knew the Nepali word for bathroom, which was Achi ayo.

  We walked around for about an hour and a half, long enough to tire me out. Twenty-three pounds gets heavy after a while. As we headed back to the hotel, I heard another language being spoken that surprised me. A group of young people were talking in Hebrew. I turned around and asked if they were from Israel.