UNSPOKEN by Lynne Reitman

There is a picture I have of Eliana’s birthmother and myself meeting for the first time. Eliana was 22 years old when we went back to Paraguay to meet her. At an internship she had done with an adoption agency, she had heard of a group that organized trips and reunions for families who adopted children from foreign countries. Eliana decided she wanted them to help her find her birthmother.

The program suggested that I write a letter to her birthmother, explaining who I was and how wonderful Eliana was and Eliana wrote a letter asking to meet or correspond or connect in any way she felt she would want to. She specifically said that she was not angry and just wanted to meet. After several months the agency located Esteria Enciso,  Eliana’s birthmother, and started talking to her about possibly meeting the daughter she had given up for adoption 21 years ago. These discussions went on for awhile and by the time we left for our trip to see and tour Paraguay we knew part of that trip would include meeting Eliana’s mother.

Shortly after arriving in Asuncion we were told that the second day of the trip would be the reunion. We were staying in a hotel with many North American families with Paraguayan children and some of them also had reunions scheduled. The anticipation made connecting with these families very easy. We watched in the hotel lobby as families left for and returned from their reunions. The kids huddled to debrief and the parents did the same. Then it was our turn.

On our way to the meeting which was to take place in a private room in a restaurant in Asuncion, we sat in the back of the cab squeezing each other's hands and anxiously smiling. The ride was too short. We arrived at the restaurant and walked around to the rear along a slate path and came to an opening where there was a patio and a sliding glass door into the private room where the meeting was to take place. There, a woman from the agency met us and told us that Eliana’s birthmother and her husband had gotten lost and would be late. We walked into the room with our disappointment and fear.

There were several women in the room – the social worker who had developed a relationship with Eliana’s birthmother, the young woman from the agency who had prepared Eliana, and a young psychologist who would be acting as our translator. There was a large table in the middle of the room filled with rich and creamy Paraguayan cakes and chocolates and two large thermoses of coffee. Cups and saucers and plates were laid out. As much as Eliana and I loved chocolates, for once, they were irrelevant. I took some coffee, which was incredibly tasty and sweet.  I loved this. Through my excitement and worry I realized how happy I was at that moment. How glad I was that we had arrived at this place where Eliana and I were at ease with each other and able to receive her mother into our lives.
   
Eliana saw them first and went to the glass door to meet them. I saw the resemblance immediately – the heart shaped hairline, the dark brown eyes slightly too far apart, the hesitancy and charming unease that had drawn me to Eliana from the beginning when we first met – here it appeared in her mother. I looked on as they fell into each other and hugged and cried and gazed at each other’s faces. So glad, so immensely glad, to see each other.

Then her mother noticed Eliana’s hands – long with slender fingers that tapered – and she said something to her husband. The translator told us that she had said that Eliana’s hands were just like Melanie’s – their daughter and Eliana’s half-sister. Eliana was thrilled and looked my way – I had very often told her how beautiful her hands were – the frequency with which I said this was a joke between us.

Her gaze toward me brought me into their circle and her mother walked over to me and gave me a deep look of gratitude and love that acknowledged the years that I had raised Eliana and the gesture of bringing her back so they could meet again. We stood holding each other’s arms and looking into each other's eyes and one of the several wonderful people in the room managed to take that picture.

I look at it every day – not just that it’s on my desk – I stop and really look at it. It represents the best of me and the luck I had having this woman be the mother of my child.

As she and Eliana sat side by side holding hands, smiling, excited, surrounded by friends and family – they gave her 2 gifts – a jaunty black hat that I knew Eliana would never wear, and a silver ring that I knew she would never take off. Then Eliana took out the scrapbook she had made for her mother – pictures of her life. This had been a very seriously studied gift. We thought about what pictures would best help her mother see what Eliana’s life was without making her feel too badly about what she had missed. Pictures where there was room for her to imagine herself there. Pictures of Eliana in her halloween costumes, with girlfriends, boyfriends, graduations, volleyball games. And she smiled and touched every picture – the same smile I had seen on Eliana’s face thousands of times that her mother had missed these many years.

They couldn’t get enough of each other so we started making plans to meet again before we had to leave the country. There was confusion and indecision and anxiety in trying to make this plan. Eliana was crying watching her mother go through the same difficulty making decisions as she had. She had always been disarmed by my decisiveness.

We left it to the agency to organize the next meeting, talking to everyone when the emotional charge was lower and thoughts more clear. Eliana and her mother had such a difficult time having to leave each other again. I don’t think they could have done it except for the next family coming into that sweet and sacred space for their reunion.