The plane-traveler-sized (small) teddy bears gifted from family friend, Colleen, that were to be hugged and snuggled to combat fear of take off, or landing, or any other part in between will not be delivered to their intended recipients.
When we learned that their birth parents decided to parent Josianna and Wendy permanently, we had what you can imagine as a swirling flood of emotions -- relief they were okay (immediately post-quake), at peace they would not suffer relinquishment by birth parents, satisfied they could remain in their mother culture, and heartache for our loss of them from our immediate family. I relabeled Josianna's tubs of size 8 clothes for Baylor and handed down to young nephews the size 5 clothes intended for Wendy. The little swim suits they wore for the endless hours of splashing around with us at the Karibe Hotel, however, I tucked into my private keepsake trunk. I removed from pictures frames their photographs and prepared one large, special frame with black and white prints of them with Hunter and Baylor and all of us, Cluvers, with the four of them, Eldors -- taken on our August 2009 trip into Port-au-Prince. Floating between the glass panels with those images the words, "Love bears all things."
I bought matching necklaces for their birth mom and me -- "Hope" typed into a white rectangle and bordered with rough silver-colored metal, hung on a black cord. I placed her piece of jewelry into a small brown box atop a perfectly-fitted square of cotton with a snapshot of me wearing the same item. A black satin ribbon secured the box and a white tag bearing her name.
Chad had engraved a small, round, wooden medallion with "Espwa" (hope) on one side and "Fanmi" (family) on the reverse. It, too, was wrapped with black ribbon around a small brown box and topped with a name tag for the kids' dad.
Secured in a clear, plastic bag along with the small, rainy day painting Josianna had insisted I buy during our December outing to the Baptist Mission area, the matching ribboned boxes were sent to Haiti. Shipped out to express acceptance of their parents' change in plans, reassuring love to the children and their parents, and above all, hope for their family's future together.
The jewelry the children picked out during that winter shopping trip just outside Port-au-Prince was sealed into two separate bags -- one for each child -- along with the teddy bears that would no longer be needed for airline travel and a few other toy items. I kept for myself, however, the tiny wooden bowl Josianna picked from the vendor -- the one with layers of shiny colored images. She liked the painted items. I preferred the ones with simple carvings, more earthen in appearance.
It was a piece of our healing process. Our hearts, laid bare, were in those packages.
The staff was unable to deliver the items.
The three bags sat in the orphanage office.
I reconciled that I would need to request they simply be returned to me so I may find a different mode of delivery, or, at minimum, have the items for ourselves to gaze upon and to remember.
I waited.
I learned indirectly that the potential courier from Haiti to home had indeed traveled and had been back in the States for a length of time already.
I inquired.
The items were lost, somehow; perhaps accidentally distributed alongside donations to villagers in the kids' location,but not to the children, specifically, nor to their family.
And the typed messages intended for the family and the items marked and created specifically for the children's mother and father? The two things of negligible monetary value, but designed for them and tagged with their names? The message prepared for an English-reading Kreyol speaker to deliver?
Gone.
And the news reports indicate flooding and deaths near Port-au-Prince. And hurricanes will come. And mudslides. And cholera continues to claim her victims. Tarps and wind. Starvation and injury. Rapes and murders. And no way to know if those two babes and their mama and their papa are alive, healthy, okay. "Oke?" "Grangou?" (hungry?) "Fatige?" (tired?)
"Mwen renmen ou." (I love you.)
It didn't have to happen this way. We could have helped put them back together rather than be upended by shocking truths unleashed from the depths of a shaking, rupturing earth, when it was too late to say "goodbye," too late to understand with them, too late to knit a way of trust for communication between a Haitian manman and a northern friend. I asked the right questions, but truth must be admitted by the teller before it can be given forthright in answers. I asked the hard questions, but was given soft answers that turned to cut like glass. But naivete no more; my heart has the scars to prove it.
And even now, I get no assistance with making things right -- with extending healing, in humility and in a new-found, hard-won knowing.
Stars above and the heavens around us, the God who invites and the angels who whisper, the earth that both springs forth life and buries death, wash over Tadeline and Josue with a slower than usual breeze, oddly bright but gentle rays of sunshine warmth, or an unshakable dream of a pale-skinned, awkward, American gal laughing tenderly around their fire . . . let them know. Let them know.
When we learned that their birth parents decided to parent Josianna and Wendy permanently, we had what you can imagine as a swirling flood of emotions -- relief they were okay (immediately post-quake), at peace they would not suffer relinquishment by birth parents, satisfied they could remain in their mother culture, and heartache for our loss of them from our immediate family. I relabeled Josianna's tubs of size 8 clothes for Baylor and handed down to young nephews the size 5 clothes intended for Wendy. The little swim suits they wore for the endless hours of splashing around with us at the Karibe Hotel, however, I tucked into my private keepsake trunk. I removed from pictures frames their photographs and prepared one large, special frame with black and white prints of them with Hunter and Baylor and all of us, Cluvers, with the four of them, Eldors -- taken on our August 2009 trip into Port-au-Prince. Floating between the glass panels with those images the words, "Love bears all things."
I bought matching necklaces for their birth mom and me -- "Hope" typed into a white rectangle and bordered with rough silver-colored metal, hung on a black cord. I placed her piece of jewelry into a small brown box atop a perfectly-fitted square of cotton with a snapshot of me wearing the same item. A black satin ribbon secured the box and a white tag bearing her name.
Chad had engraved a small, round, wooden medallion with "Espwa" (hope) on one side and "Fanmi" (family) on the reverse. It, too, was wrapped with black ribbon around a small brown box and topped with a name tag for the kids' dad.
Secured in a clear, plastic bag along with the small, rainy day painting Josianna had insisted I buy during our December outing to the Baptist Mission area, the matching ribboned boxes were sent to Haiti. Shipped out to express acceptance of their parents' change in plans, reassuring love to the children and their parents, and above all, hope for their family's future together.
The jewelry the children picked out during that winter shopping trip just outside Port-au-Prince was sealed into two separate bags -- one for each child -- along with the teddy bears that would no longer be needed for airline travel and a few other toy items. I kept for myself, however, the tiny wooden bowl Josianna picked from the vendor -- the one with layers of shiny colored images. She liked the painted items. I preferred the ones with simple carvings, more earthen in appearance.
It was a piece of our healing process. Our hearts, laid bare, were in those packages.
The staff was unable to deliver the items.
The three bags sat in the orphanage office.
I reconciled that I would need to request they simply be returned to me so I may find a different mode of delivery, or, at minimum, have the items for ourselves to gaze upon and to remember.
I waited.
I learned indirectly that the potential courier from Haiti to home had indeed traveled and had been back in the States for a length of time already.
I inquired.
The items were lost, somehow; perhaps accidentally distributed alongside donations to villagers in the kids' location,but not to the children, specifically, nor to their family.
And the typed messages intended for the family and the items marked and created specifically for the children's mother and father? The two things of negligible monetary value, but designed for them and tagged with their names? The message prepared for an English-reading Kreyol speaker to deliver?
Gone.
And the news reports indicate flooding and deaths near Port-au-Prince. And hurricanes will come. And mudslides. And cholera continues to claim her victims. Tarps and wind. Starvation and injury. Rapes and murders. And no way to know if those two babes and their mama and their papa are alive, healthy, okay. "Oke?" "Grangou?" (hungry?) "Fatige?" (tired?)
"Mwen renmen ou." (I love you.)
It didn't have to happen this way. We could have helped put them back together rather than be upended by shocking truths unleashed from the depths of a shaking, rupturing earth, when it was too late to say "goodbye," too late to understand with them, too late to knit a way of trust for communication between a Haitian manman and a northern friend. I asked the right questions, but truth must be admitted by the teller before it can be given forthright in answers. I asked the hard questions, but was given soft answers that turned to cut like glass. But naivete no more; my heart has the scars to prove it.
And even now, I get no assistance with making things right -- with extending healing, in humility and in a new-found, hard-won knowing.
Stars above and the heavens around us, the God who invites and the angels who whisper, the earth that both springs forth life and buries death, wash over Tadeline and Josue with a slower than usual breeze, oddly bright but gentle rays of sunshine warmth, or an unshakable dream of a pale-skinned, awkward, American gal laughing tenderly around their fire . . . let them know. Let them know.
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