The New Christmas Tradition

By Sandy E

I recall it was in mid-November of 2003, as I was just turning 45, when I mailed in the initial application to Wide Horizons For Children, which was the first step in the adoption process. It was a big decision and I knew I had to make it that month, for the Guatemala program cutoff was 45 years old for the mother applicant at that time. By then I had been through the fertility route for a few years and although I had two grown step-kids in their twenties, my husband and I thought it would be doable for us to raise one more child that we could share between us. We were always open to adoption and knew from the start it would be a foreign child. Mike wanted a Spanish speaking culture and I wanted a Catholic country, so we both agreed on a little boy from Guatemala. Although WHFC could not promise a son, we were told that it was very likely that we could get a boy placed with us. I recall the scared feelings and tears in my eyes that day in November when I mailed it in. But by the next spring after working with one of WHFC’s social workers through the winter, Alison Mack, I was feeling much more comfortable with the whole process. I found the staff at WHFC just incredibly knowledgeable and extremely supportive and I knew quickly that we had chosen the right agency as well as the right country program. It just all seemed to fit us. With the home-study completed we were placed on a waiting list and within a month we received a call about a newborn boy that needed a home.

He was born on June 8th in a rural section in the western highlands just over the southern border of Mexico, San Marcos, but he would be fostered in the city. My heart raced while on the phone and the excitement was overwhelming. My step-daughter happened to be visiting that week from Indiana, and the next day the three of us drove to WHFC’s Hartford office and received the referral. We were told that we had a few days to consider the child, but I knew as soon as I was handed the photos that there would be no need to consider anything less than acceptance and love for the boy. He was absolutely the most beautiful baby I had ever seen and I fell in love instantly from the photos.

His birth name was Carlos, which was a nice name, however we already had a name picked out which we felt was very fitting, the boy would be named Adam Jefferson after Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson, who we feel represent the economic and personal freedom which America was built on. The name seemed to fit him nicely.

We visited Adam for a week that September and then received the call in January to travel to bring him home. It was January 21st of 2005 that we arrived back home at the airport in Hartford, just hours before a major blizzard hit the state, ironically named appropriately, Charles. In just a few hours we had gone from 70’s weather and the sunny skies of Guatemala City to single digits in Connecticut, but it was the best day of my life. My husband and I both agreed, that the week touring the countryside and bringing Adam home would be remembered as one of the highlights of both our lives. We had requested to meet with Adam’s birth mom, however it did not happen and I was a bit letdown, but I did get one good photo of Carolina, and I vowed that I would have her memory be a part of our lives and someday, when he is older, we would bring him back to meet her, if possible. Mike’s two children easily welcomed Adam into the family and we realized that he completed both our worlds.

Now three years later after the initial application mailing, also in November, I find myself with tears in my eyes again after mailing the first package of photos to my son’s birth mom. I had thought about it for sometime, but never got around to do it, or maybe I just could not bring myself to send part of him back to her so soon. I knew it was best for Adam that I hold on to a part of her also, for him to know, as difficult as it was to do. The package had to be right and after thinking about it for a few weeks, I decided to send a Christmas ornament of an angel inside a nice holiday tin. I also enclosed about 8-10 photos of Adam from the past two years of his life with me, and a card, religious in nature, with a manger scene on it. I did not write anything, feeling that nothing needed to be said. She would understand by the items enclosed. Most of the photos were from special occasions, birthday, baptism, and one with me holding him. I wanted to ease her mind that she should have no regrets or doubts that she did the right thing by placing her son in our care. I have decided to make it an annual tradition of having Adam pick out an ornament every Christmas with me to mail it to his birth mother along with his photo. I think this tradition will help to keep her memory alive in us, and as difficult as it was for me to do, I know in my heart it is the right thing for my son.

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