On February 18, 2022, in a court room in Sofia, Bulgaria, Adell Nesil became our daughter! The most difficult wait in our entire Bulgarian process started on that day as well. That’s when we started waiting for an invite to travel.
Our wait for an invite to travel was extended a bit due to our new daughter’s age and the US requirement that she receive the full Covid vaccine series. Being “fully vaccinated” for Covid means two weeks following the second shot.
Finally, I was invited to arrive in Bulgaria on April 2nd. So exciting! We had three weeks notice, so I spent that time getting her new room completed. Most of the things I had purchased over the previous year, and now it was finally time to put it all together!
Counting all those sleeps was so hard, but I knew it was even more difficult for our daughter. For the past few months we had been having video visits on a regular basis, and every visit she wanted to know when is airplane day. Airplane Mommo! Airplane! We were so excited to tell her there was finally a date!
After an uneventful travel day, I arrived in Sofia on April 2nd. The next day my NGO representative and I made the 5 1/2 hour drive to the city of Shumen where our daughter lived with her foster family. Shumen is a beautiful old city, and I was glad to be back. We checked into our hotel and had dinner. We then made plans to meet for breakfast then pick up our daughter! Oh the excitement! I didn’t sleep even a minute that night.
The next morning was a blur. We were just a few blocks from the Center for Social Care. We walked into the familiar building I had visited so many times back in November. I quickly connected with Dean on FaceTime . He was so happy to see and hear her screams of delight when she saw me come up the stairs. It was such a great moment! The only picture I have is a screen shot. This is Adell, saying, “Tati!!! Tati Mommo!!!”
My returning to Bulgaria for Adell is likely one of the few, if not the first, times someone has kept a promise to her. I cannot tell her whole story, but I can tell you the system did her wrong. She should not have waited until 14 1/2 years old to be adopted. But guess what! This time I was able to show her Mom keeps her promises! Mom came back just like I said I would!
We took a quick round of pictures with the important people in her life: foster family and social worker. The only tears shed that day were mine. My tears were for all the things she was leaving behind: Her past, her language, everything familiar to her, and knowing how difficult the next few months (years) will be for her. My tears were also because this was too easy for her. She was all excitement, with no hesitation. This is no surprise, as Adell had no attachments to them, nor they to her. While she was very excited to see me, she was more excited about that whole airplane prospect. She was more excited to see what gifts I had brought. She was more excited to climb into a car with total strangers and drive away. Because in her lifetime she had driven away with lots of strangers, so this was no different except the woman everyone was calling “mom” didn’t know how to talk, and was speaking gibberish.
The drive back to Sofia seemed to take forever. I am very glad I thought to bring an iPad and headphones along. Adell spent most of the drive making videos and playing children’s games. Unfortunately staring at an ipad while we drove some windy mountain roads wasn’t the best idea.
We took several rest breaks, but missed my favorite road-side food stand. Once back in Sofia we stopped and got Adell’s passport taken care of, then were dropped back at the apartment I had rented. When we walked in, Adell looked around, and found the second bedroom. Then she looked at me completely confused. “Mommo!” She said, pointing to the bed, then to my phone. She managed to tell me to open my pictures. She found the picture of her new room waiting at home. THIS was NOT the room in the picture! Oh sweet one. I had no way to tell her we would get there. We had two full weeks to wait, but we would eventually get on that plane and fly away.
Two full weeks to get to know one another without any of the other kids. 1:1 time as new mother and daughter. Time to start the learning process of what makes each other tick, where are our vulnerabilities, and our limits. Time to really get to know who we’re going to spend the rest of our lives with. Now to start counting sleeps again until we go home.
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