little Anali.
In the fall of 1990, Jeff and I traveled to Guatemala to meet for the first time a baby girl, Anali, whose mother had given her up for adoption, unable to care for her baby girl herself. Many women living in poverty in Guatemala had taken the same path with and for their children.
We returned home and waited until the proper paperwork was complete. Every day in our home in Tracy, I worked along with Jeff in the church we pastored together, and I told the story again and again of our meeting little Anali to curious folks in the congregation. They were waiting, it seemed, along with us.
And so we met the attorney who would facilitate the adoption of Anali – and many, many other children. We spent Thanksgiving that year around the dining table with other prospective parents – mothers-to-be from the United States, also in the country to meet their adoptive children
And every morning, as soon as I arose, I carried with me in my mind the baby girl we had met. We prepared a room for her in the big parsonage, and we told our friends the story of our meeting.
One day, we received a phone call from Guatemala with the news that little Anali’s birth mother – her mother – had decided to not give her baby up for adoption, that she had reclaimed her child. At the time, Jeff and I didn’t seem to have time to process the grief we felt. We set about completing forms again to receive a child. This time, we didn’t travel to meet the baby again. We waited at home for the news that our baby was ready to come with us to the United States.
A second time, the baby’s birth mother reclaimed her child, and so we took new adoption papers to the courthouse in Stockton. The day I drove to Stockton to deliver the papers, I felt as if I held a heavy weight in my arms. A woman from the congregation – whose adult son had disappeared many years before – kindly rode with me as I traveled to complete the transfer of papers – again.
After we received news that the third baby girl was not coming, I did not carry another heavy load of papers to the Courthouse in Stockton, and when Jeff and I announced to the congregation that we would be leaving that spring, the woman who had ridden with me to Stockton – came up to me, grief in her eyes, and said: “I can understand wanting to leave a place where something bad has happened to you.”
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I remember distinctly the morning after we had received the news that little Analie’s mother had reclaimed her child. As soon as I rose from bed, and as I prepared for the day, a thought came to my mind, a thought I’d held for the months since we’d met the beautiful baby girl we’d awaited. “Little, little, little, little, little Analie,” I repeated to myself. And on that morning, when I began to recite the lovely refrain, I stopped, noticing my thoughts. Usually, I followed the refrain with images of the two of us as we grew together. I reminded myself that little Analie would not be coming to live with us. That was that.
