Tuesday, June 28

Today is our first day on the island “alone.” The other adopting mother left last night, after frantically chasing around her visa. We know our visa request has been approved, now we just need to hear word that it's here, or at least has been shipped. Those are our two next milestones.

We started with a quick breakfast at the hotel. Claire paused as we passed the second door, and gave a pouty-lip as we knew knocking on the door would just be weird. Whether or not someone else is there, our friend is no longer there. We continued to the restaurant and had some breakfast. We were asked again about the camera, evidently some believing we'd lost ours, but we explained it belonged to the other adopting mother, and she had gone.

While we were in the restaurant, we got a call from Maddy. It seems she had received a call from a friend at the DHL office. They let her know that some package had arrived for the embassy. They, of course, didn't know what it was, but he said that he'd call again after he'd delivered it so she could call the embassy and see if it was our papers.

She also let us know that her car was still broken, and that she probably wouldn't be able to make it for our lunch date with our birthmother. That was disappointing news, but we've been able to make lunch work with gesturing and the assistance of the waitstaff, so it was only disappointing.

We returned to the room, anxious and waiting. Claire checked her e-mail to see if any new information had come from other sources; none had. The television was out, again, so we just milled about a little bit.

I made some notes on the Mac and tended to Grace, while Claire made a first-pass at packing our stuff, in the event of the arrival of our package. No flights leave for Hawaii today, but we had seen the frantic pace with which the other mother had packed, and she wanted to be a little less frantic when our time came. There's plenty of stuff we don't need in the next days or week, so we could put many things in our checked baggage and just have it waiting for us. The rest of the shirts and shorts and such can go in our carry-on, and be used during our return.

She also received a call from the other mother, who was safe and sound in San Francisco, enjoying a day-long lay-over in relative luxury. She bragged about hot water and too many television channels. She also lamented that her son had cried the entire way from Majuro to Hawaii. She also said that the flight was really full, and the people on either side of her were very upset, of course. It doesn't sound like either offered to switch with her, though, possibly offering her the opportunity to stand and move about with the fussy child. I would have done at least that much, thinking that she'd be away from me for moments if nothing else. He was calm and quiet for the flight from Hawaii to San Francisco, probably exhausted from five hours of sobbing before that.

We got an expected knock on the door, and welcomed our birthmother and her girls. They were here for lunch, and whatever other hanging out time afforded. We struggled through some greetings and guessing. We worked out that unlike we'd been told, in the earlier phone call, Maddy would be joining us after all. We made our way to the restaurant and grabbed a bigger table in the corner.

As we were making our way, we got a call from another couple that Claire had met on Saturday. They are returning adoptive parents of a little boy, Andrew, who they adopted three years ago. They were here to celebrate his birthday with his birth-family. They were also on their way, or had just landed, or something like that, to our hotel. Claire invited them to join us.

No sooner had we settled in and ordered beverages, than the returning mother appeared. She explained her son and husband were snorkeling in the lagoon at the beach outside the hotel. They had taken an outrigger from the other side of the island to this side. A little bit of a touristy thing to do, but it sounded fun.

Shortly after the mother joined us, Maddy arrived with her daughter. She was the one (we joked she was “the one”) who Maddy had gone to Hawaii to see graduate. She was home for the summer, and then off to either Hawaii or Oregon for college. She was pretty and quiet, but jovial when included in the conversation or teased.

Before we ordered lunch, the husband and son of the other family joined us, having finished swimming. Conversation swirled around them and their adoption experiences, and some of the differences between their first visit, for the adoption, and their visit now, returning as tourists.

I felt a little bad as we fell into chatting with our new English-speaking friend. We introduced our birthmother and her girls, and tried to include her, but it was hard. She seemed mostly OK with the situation as she got to tend to Grace a little bit. Even Maddy chatted more with the new couple.

Don't get me wrong; just like the other adopting couples we've met, they were great. They just had stories of old, since they adopted three years ago. It was about the time Maddy started doing the work for Gordon and the agencies, so they had some catching-up to do.

Our birthmother also felt comfortable handing Grace back to one of us when she fussed and wouldn't settle. Grace was having a combination of inattention, and her nap time was being interrupted, and her eating schedule upset. Plus she was being rough-housed with a bit more, and our birthmother kept trying to get her obviously not interested youngest to engage with Grace. I think there was a little, probably warranted, jealousy there, as Grace got all of the attention from mom during these brief visits.

Lunch was fine, but long. It stretched on for about four hours. After they deemed it time to take their boy back to the hotel, the other family left. This triggered a good-time-to-leave vibe, so Maddy and her daughter also said they had to go. Maddy injected that she'd send our birthmother home. I'm not sure we had quite the quality time we wanted to have, but she offered to aid with another visit on Thursday, so we tentatively set something up.

The other family was trying to arrange a fishing trip for Friday morning, which we'd also tentatively agreed to, so Thursday fit best. Tomorrow Claire wants to try to focus on getting some things done before we leave. There's some running around and dropping things off, like some school supplies the other mother had left behind, because she didn't make the chance to deliver them. So, Thursday.

Since lunch ended about 4PM, we weren't really thinking dinner. We got a tuckered-out Grace to sleep for a while while we watched the rest of the episodes on the DVD we'd started yesterday.

Grace woke, and while we cooed with her for a while and tended to her, we tuned in some television, which had returned at some time while we watched The Big Bang Theory. After she went to sleep again, we turned in also.