(out of order) Gotcha Day morning

Rather than keep posting what I wrote this weekend, I'm going to be in the moment right now. 

Today is Gotcha Day.  It's 6:45am local time.

That means that in a little less than 3 hours, we are meeting our travel group in the lobby and driving to the Zhengzhou registration office, where our children will come to meet us. 

That is a completely overwhelming thought.  I have already shed a few tears thinking about what this morning will mean for each member of our family - especially Fiona.  I can only imagine what she is experiencing. 

She is being driven from Nanyang City four hours north to Zhengzhou by an orphanage officer.  These are not her foster parents.  I don't know how well she knows these people.  When she gets here, the other members of our group will serve as photographer/videographers while we meet her.  I have no idea how that meeting will go. 

Some kids shut down when they meet their parents, some scream and cry, some just move smoothly.  None of these is an indicator of how their attachment will go.  For instance, our friend said that her daughter (who is now 3 and very attached and happy) screamed, cried and mourned intensely for the first 3 days, then, her mother says, "It was like a light went on and she was a new child."  All of these scenarios (and more) are possible. 

I had a discussion with another very seasoned mother about tears - ours and the children's - and the many things that these tears mean.  

So when I cry today, it is out of joy for our family, the addition of another beautiful soul to the most important group of people in the world to me.  It is sorrow for her losses, her pain through these transitions.  It is my pregnancy-like emotions, fatigue, overwhelmedness.  It is love for this little stranger.  It is trepidation about the responsibility of helping her through her grief and helping her to realize that we are her family forever, that we love her, that we will protect her and provide for her and that she will never again have to face loss like what she is facing today.  It is worry about all the unknowns, variables and the learning curve ahead of us all. 

All of these feelings can be summarized as love, however.  We will face it together, we will weather it together and through better and worse, we are a family from this morning through eternity.