Sept. 14, 2007: She's all ours

A year ago Sunday, Niranjana was all ours. We weren't necessarily expecting to have our daughter handed to us, but we were good with it.

After meeting Niranjana on the 13th, we went back to the hotel and had dinner, which included a bottle of Pinot Noir from India. We recounted the experience with my mother, who came with us on the journey. The next morning, we were picked up and transported to Guild of Service's main office, where we met with Kamala, as well as the man who has run the operation for decades.

Around midmorning, we went to the orphanage and watched Niranjana in Montessori class with about 25 other children. We presented gifts to all the children and had fun singing and interacting with them. Then Kamala and Vanaja gave us a tour of the orphanage. I picked up Niranjana, and we headed upstairs. I was as happy as could be; she was scared out of her mind.

We toured the orphanage and took tons of photos of the children in case other waiting parents ended up contacting us (many did, in fact). Then Niranjana was given a new dress and shoes, and she was handed to us with a "here-she-is-good-luck-in-life" look from the orphanage workers. I couldn't decide if the orphanage folks were happy Niranjana was getting a family or they were glad to see a troublemaker leave their midst. The experience from other families since tells me it was the former.

We weren't expecting this. WACAP, our adoption agency near Seattle, indicated we'd probably visit the orphanage every day, then get Niranjana the last day before we went to the airport to come home. Nope, we had her for four days in India.

After leaving the orphanage, we headed back to the hotel, where Niranjana cried then napped. Kamala and our driver picked us up around 4 p.m. and we headed to the church where Niranjana's birthmother left her more than three years prior. We thought the church would be somewhere in Chennai. Turned out to be in a village and took us more than two hours to arrive. There, we met the pastor and his wife, who remembered the 10-day-old baby and were thrilled to meet her again and know she was going to be in a loving family.

As I held her a year ago, I felt as much relief as I did happiness. The beautiful child in the photos I'd carried around in my car and the videos I'd intently studied for the prior 10 months was finally ours.

Yesterday, Melissa and I were looking at the photo my mother took a year ago at the orphanage. The smiles on our faces radiated the joy we felt, while the little girl we held in no way resembled our happy and energetic daughter today.