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Southeast Asian adoption: not-so-new reality. The call came, at last, on a rainy Monday morning. Can you come to New York to meet your son on Wednesday at noon?

Seven months earlier, we had received a photograph and a letter introducing him. The sisters gave us no information about his age, or size, or health, the vital statistics every parent-to-be wants to know.

The paperwork involved in adopting a Vietnamese infant in the 1970's took many months. As the war raged on all around the orphanage where our tiny son lived, we hoped and prayed for the child we only knew through the mail. Pictures and letters from the nuns were few and far between. Each one became precious, and circulated widely among our family and friends before being placed in a baby book.

Sometimes the letters shared tragedies the shelling of the orphanage and middle-of-the night evacuation to a beach, a measles epidemic taking its toll among the babies. More red tape on our end, an appeal to our senator to intervene with the immigration office.

In early November, nearly nine months after we started our journey toward parenthood, the way was finally clear for Paul to come to us. Friends who had been missionaries in Viet Nam brought us pictures of him, the first we had seen in many months. He had gone from a newborn in arms to an almost-toddler sitting very upright. But his remarkable smile, dimpled chin and masses of curly, black hair reassured me that he was the same baby we already loved.

The last two days of waiting were so hectic. I addressed the announcements that had been ready for months. We arranged flights to from our home in mid-state Illinois to New York. Then there was last-minute shopping for diapers and bottles and baby clothes. Eight and one-half months old surely he will wear the nine months size. I knew so little about being a mom. Then, suddenly, it was time to go.

We're going to be parents tomorrow, I told the flight attendant who stared at my flat belly.

We went to the airport early the next morning, barely able to contain our excitement for even one more hour. Planes do arrive early sometimes, don't they? Not this time. We waited in a crowded area with thirteen other sets of expectant parents. A sick passenger on the flight, not one of our little ones, prompted a three-hour delay while public health officials determined the illness wasn't contagious. Finally, the children were escorted or carried to us.

Here's your son, a flight attendant handed Paul to my husband, special delivery from Viet Nam.

I couldn't even find the words to thank her for caring for him on the twenty-four-hour flight. I was completely enchanted by the little hand that reached for my finger. I undressed my baby and counted fingers and toes like any new parent. I changed a very wet diaper and dressed him in his new clothes, red-white-and-blue, to celebrate his arrival in his new country.

There never was a more special delivery, or a more precious moment when we became parents for the first time. Southeast Asian adoption, definitely a reality for us.

Learn more about this author, Joyce Good Henderson.
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