Friday, June 17

Today we have a planned visit with our birthmother for lunch at the hotel restaurant. I've got a little polish to put on my application, but otherwise, a low-key day of chilling in the tropics is in order.

We went for breakfast at the hotel. We've run out of Cheerios, and have no other options, and haven't gone grocery shopping, so if we want breakfast, it's to the restaurant we go. I'm not complaining, mind you, just noting why we're there so often. We do have lunch fixings in the room, so we do skip mid-day in the restaurant. Really, though, we end up skipping lunch more than just skipping the restaurant. It's hard to remember that you're hungry when it's so hot.

When we got to the restaurant, we saw bubu having breakfast with jimma (which I've learned I'm misspelling, but I haven't found the correct spelling) and one of their grandkids. Of course, bubu wanted to hold Grace, so we let her. We sat at the next table, ordered coffee and pancakes or whatever, and bantered a little with them. Grace fussed just enough to alert us to her expected bottle desire, so we let bubu feed her, and, as expected, she drifted back to sleep. As they finished their breakfast, we confirmed our visit later, since our birthmother lives with them, we'd been arranging it through bubu, and hadn't actually talked to our birthmother. Breakfast took us clear to 11AM, so we decided on a 1PM meeting.

I was a little apprehensive just hanging out with her without being able to talk much. I thought about bringing the dictionary we'd bought, but it seemed more friendly to just hope to find helpful translation when necessary. Since we'd be in the restaurant, we could call on the waitstaff if necessary. Also, since we can't chat, I think we all know the visit is more for Grace. More to the point, for mom to interact a bit with Grace, and see that she's doing well.

We rested in the room for a bit, trying not to over-think the imminent visit. Claire ran some pictures across the street to have them printed, and I put a few fingers to keys on my project for work to help pass the time. After about ninety minutes housekeeping knocked on the door, and since they hadn't been in the room in three days, we decided to bug out early to give them an opportunity to give a quick once-over.

We went to the restaurant, figuring our birthmother would find us there. We chose a table in the corner, just so there'd be some room. We'd tried to make sure the invitation included her other daughters (and as far as I was concerned, any of the other kids in the house), and we wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to make more room if we needed to. The restaurant is very accommodating, and seldom busy at lunch (except for sushi on Wednesdays, we've learned), so we weren't too worried about it.

I'd brought my Mac to try to finish my train of thought before she arrived, and I just got there when she and her youngest showed up. Her youngest is the one least comfortable with us. I had thought maybe we'd changed her mind a little bit when we visited their home earlier, but it turned out not to be the case. Our birthmother took Grace from Claire and sat in the chair next to Claire, opposite me, and her daughter hid behind her, pressing against the window as hard as possible.

We exchanged a few yokwe and smiles, and attracting the attention of our waiter, she also ordered an iced tea. We smiled and gestured and tried a few phrases and words, but everyone was mostly happy with her cooing with Grace. We tried to engage the daughter a few times, but she wanted none of it.

We ordered food, and after a while it came. I had the Chicken Adobo again, and Claire got a bowl of the soup of the day. Our birthmother ordered what looked like three dishes, sharing with her daughter. She ate a fair portion of each, and had the leftovers boxed. It seemed like she ordered a wide spread so she'd have plenty left over to share. I wanted to offer to have her order something more to take home if she wanted to share with the rest of the house, but I neither knew how, nor did I quite feel right.

At one point Claire took Grace to change her diaper. While in the room, she grabbed a couple of the remaining Matchbox cars from the room. We tried to engage the other daughter with the toys, but she didn't want any part of them. After a while I suggested leaving one on the window sill near her, and letting her go to it. That worked, and she played with it more freely, but she still didn't want anything to do with us.

After we'd finished eating, the gals ordered bowls of ice cream, and when they came, our birthmother took her daughters for a stroll around the hotel's pool, and maybe to the beach. I wasn't worried, but lost sight of them through the restaurant windows. While they were gone, Claire and I chatted about how we wished we could communicate better.

One of the silver-linings of the length of our stay is supposed to be the time we have to get to know our birth-families. Technically, it's an open adoption, meaning that we're supposed to maintain contact in the future, if that's what everyone wants. It is what we've been working to be comfortable with, and it's actually become disappointing that it's been so difficult. I feel we're clicking more with bubu, which is at least an in with the family. We've got optimistic hope that we'll be able to take advantage of time in the future to learn a bit more Marshallese, and to take advantage of the kids learning English in school.

After a few hours, our birthmother had to return home to tend to the kids as bubu had to come to the restaurant to work. She asked our waiter, a great fella named Acme, to translate for her. She wanted to thank us a lot for spending the day with her, and to let us know she's really happy that Grace has us for parents now. We returned the sentiment, about the time together, that is. They left, and we thanked Acme for helping out. He said he's happy to and would be happy to help later if needed, too.

We returned to the room, fed Grace, and let her take a little nap. Claire ran back across the street to collect her photos. I set in to try to wrap up my software, at least this first pass, and got pretty close.

The other adopting mother came up and invited us to a talent show taking place near the RRE. Evidently her birthmother had invited her, as her father was in the show, and she wanted to extend the invite to us. We were glad for the invite and accepted. The show started at 8PM, so we planned to gather about 7PM and meander over.

We got to the RRE about 7:30PM, and realized we hadn't made solid plans with the other birthmother. We waited outside the entry for some time, and the show started to be about to begin. We'd run into the birthmother's father, who said he thought she was on her way. Upon learning the tickets were a dollar, we decided to go in and compensate her for the extra tickets. As we were queued to purchase tickets, dad stuck his arm in and gave us three tickets to get in. We found seats and waited for the other birthmother to arrive and for the show to begin. The show began first. She arrived probably three acts in.

Everything was in Marshallese, of course. There were occasional bits in English, but they were always mid-sentence, leading me to believe they were more the case of words or phrases that had no Marshallese equivalents. There were a couple acts that sang, and a number of all-girl acts doing hula dances or dances that looked a bit like hulas.

The sound was very loud, and we were appreciative of the occasional rains that would cause them to cover the speakers with tarps, which just cut enough off of the highs to make the sound a little less piercing. Either the mix was very treble, or everyone sings and tunes their instruments in the higher frequencies.

Another thing we noticed was that the songs tended to go for a very long time. At first I thought it was because, like a lot of songs, there were repetitious bits, and it just seemed long because I couldn't understand the lyrics. Claire, however, was trying to record the show to share with others, and had to stop after one band passed eight minutes with the same song. Another band sang Stand By Me, in English, but hit the chorus probably about 15 times before they were sent off the stage.

At 10:30 we hit intermission. Through the other birthmother we learned that it was truly about half way, and that the show would probably last another couple of hours. We lasted through another band and dance group, and then Grace, who had been awake the whole time due to the volume (she had drifted off a few times when the speakers got covered—as much as possible I'd been keeping a hand to her head, trying to mute the sound for her), had grown a little fussy. We thanked the other birthmother for the invitation and made our way out between acts.

The show was fun, and except for the tremendous treble and extended mixes of the songs, was pretty full of talent. Only one of the singers was really off, but that was maybe just me not being used to the tonality expected. The dancers needed to smile more, because while they were all pretty fluid and synchronized, it was true that the dancers who smiled seemed to be dancing better (that I've learned from watching dance competition reality shows with Claire).

Just after leaving the RRE parking lot there was a big traffic jam. It seemed that there was a mandatory search of all cars heading in our direction going on. We slowly made our way to the front of the line and were directed to a spot on the side of the road. The friendly cop asked for my license. He was a little surprised to see my Minnesota license. For a moment he was concerned because it says “2010” on it, but after conferring with another cop they found that was the issue date, and the expiration date was next to it, noted as “2014.” They asked for the other papers, and I told them we were borrowing the car, so we might not have them. I pulled everything out of the glove box , and after digging a little found a proof of insurance form. It, however, had expired a few years ago. He was getting ready to start writing a ticket, when I found the right one. He was relieved and put a sticker on the driver's side mirror and sent us on our way.

We returned to the hotel, and everyone else turned in. I spent a few more minutes putting the final touches on my app for my client, wrote an explanation e-mail, and turned in, too.