THANKSGIVING
November 2009
Disappointed, I headed home to Estados Unidos. After I exited customs in Houston to wait out my three hour lay-over I turned on my cell phone and it immediately started ringing. It was Lesly, eager to tell me that she had received a call just hours after I left Guatemala from GOYA, my Libby's birth mother.
Just by chance, during that same time, Goya was trying to find Lesly to ask about the baby she had relinquished three years earlier. She wanted to find out how the child she had loved, breastfed and was forced by the child's father to give up at 9 months old, was doing. It was serendipitous that they found each other. Cell phone numbers had changed, Goya had moved about and after all, it was Guatemala. Things are often difficult in Guatemala.
I had to sit down as I could not believe what I was hearing. Just days earlier I had given up hope in finding the woman I wanted to thank for making it possible for me to have my beloved daughter. I told Lesly to tell Goya that I would be back in January and I wanted to meet her.
I could hardly wait.
MEETING GOYA
January 2010
It was early in the day when I headed to Guatemala City with a friend to meet up with Lesly who had arranged for the meeting with Goya. We were first to meet at a little store in Mixco, outside of Guatemala City.
It was mid-day by the time we got there and Goya and her children, Mario (10) and Jessy(6) were nowhere to be found. I was very disappointed.
Even those who are very poor often carry cell phones in Guatemala even if they have no minutes to call out. Goya had one that day. Lesly was able to call her and she said that they were walking around looking for us. Mixco was ver large and it was very busy. I was losing hope as we moved from place to place trying to figure out a meeting spot that they could easily find....but nothing is easy in Guatemala.
After nearly two hours of trying to connect, we parked in a McDonalds' parking lot. Lesly decided to go out to the busy street to see if she could find Goya and the kids. It was a very congested boulevard with loud trucks and cars that had no exhaust systems... the noise and the plumes of black smoke from each vehicle added discomfort to the hot and polluted afternoon. As I casually looked toward the street having cautioned myself of the possibility of this meeting not happening, I saw Lesly walking toward the car with a very beautiful and petite woman. In that instance, there was my Libby, perhaps thirty years older, approaching me. The resemblance was uncanny.
I got out of the car. Walking quickly toward me was a young boy with an eager grin and soft chocolate eyes. I opened my arms and his walk turned into a run and he flew into my hug. Right behind him, was a tiny girl, who was a curly haired version my Libby and with a leap, she too was in my arms for the embrace that could have lasted a lifetime.... but soon Goya was standing nearby. I stepped over to her and in one fell swoop, wrapped her and the kids into my very soul and instantly fell in love with this little family who would become my own.
THE FIRST DAY
We all went into McDonalds and squeezed together in a large booth and I asked about their lives and how they spent their days. There answers were quite simple, Mario attended school while Jessy accompanied Goya to a job where she made tortillas. Then I pulled out a red folder filled with pictures of Libby. At the first site of them, precious Jessy burst into tears and in Spanish, she said, "we used to cry together." It nearly broke my heart. Her memory of her baby sister was the sadness they shared. I reached my arms across the table and pulled her to me and held her while she cried. Her soft sobs melted into my shoulder and my utter helplessness overwhelmed me as this child's pain, greater than any pain I had ever witnessed, was so much bigger than her tiny being should ever have had to endure. I was overcome with guilt as the realization of her unspeakable loss was the greatest and most profound gain in my entire life.
As Lesly returned to the table with the food, the children became joyful as they anticipated the Happy Meals, and the toys that accompanied them, as the most fancy meal they could imagine. Mario and Jessy reminisced about Libby while Goya poured through the photos. Although, I tried to speak to the kids in Spanish, I was distracted by the depth of feeling that was quietly portrayed in their mama's face. I saw a pain I could not comprehend. I saw a mother who had no choice. I saw a mother who loved her child.
THE FIRST PICTURE
