What I wish

When a child is born, all parents have things they wish for, for their child. Adoption is no different. I wish for many, many things for Phillip. I know better than to expect. There are just too many unknowns to "expect" anything at all. But I do have wishes. Hopes.

I hope he walks one day, even if that is with a walker. I hope that the therapy we can provide can give him some sense of independence and he can play and have fun and laugh like any child should. I would love to see him run across our backyard and kick a soccer ball with his brothers, but I will be elated if he can simply walk across our living room, assisted.

I hope he can talk, to communicate with us. The official word is he doesn't, but we've heard he does. Not much, which is completely normal for these children. We know he can understand, and that is a good sign. I hope that once he gets to a home where children can have a voice, that he will one day become a noisy little chatter box, just like the rest of our children. I hope to one day hear him whisper in my ear that he loves me too.

I hope he won't have to wear a diaper forever. Really. Ugh! We think it's because in between the times when all the children are placed on buckets, he can't get himself to the potty and no one can help him. It's easier for them to keep him in a diaper. Welcome to the world of institutionalization. We hope it's not that he has no control, but that he has no voice (yet) and no way to get himself there.

I wish for him to be cognitively healthy, cognitively "typical". We know he is massively delayed (again, typical). I hope that with some incredible amounts of tutoring, resources and patience, he will have the ability to catch up to his peers and be mainstreamed into a classroom. Right now, he's probably a typical three to four year old. There is not much about him that is six, aside from his chronological age. Again, welcome to the world of institutionalization.

I hope that when we take him from the orphanage, he will be able to trust us, that he won't be scared. Even if he does talk, it will be a different language. He won't be able to ask questions. He'll have to trust us. I pray that he will feel secure enough that he will be able to love us as much as we love him, that he won't be desensitized and unable to connect with us. I pray that when we walk in the door and he sees our crazy children, that he will know that this is a group of people who will move heaven and earth for him every day, for the rest of his life, that he will never again be abandoned.

We'll advocate and fight and deal with all of those issues, and probably many more, when we get him home. What I wish for him right now, this day, is much more simple and yet much more profound and needful. I pray the director will take a few minutes to hug and hold him. I hope someone will read him a book. I hope he goes to sleep tonight with a full tummy and a blanket and a knowledge, somehow, someway, that we are coming for him, that we're fighting like crazy for him, that he has a family halfway around the world who hasn't even met him but loves him beyond what he can comprehend, that in our world, despite the fact that he has special needs and can't walk, he is perfect enough, worthy of a family. Worthy of love. That's my wish for him, right now, today.