This month our son Andrew celebrates his 22nd birthday.  

When he was three days old his mother said goodbye to him, gave him to a family she had worked for in Mexico City, and never saw him again. Five days later my wife Harriet and I flew to Mexico to adopt him and bring him with us to the United States. 

In his mind, Andrew tells us, he has always been our child and we his parents, but sometimes, when I try to imagine those first eight days in which he lost a mother and floated on a stream of strangers, I feel an urge to comfort him and the woman who gave birth to him. I wonder, too, if part of the ache I feel is for myself, for the moments in my own life when I felt abandoned and unable to speak. 

When Andrew was still a toddler, I told the story of how we became a family. It's called "Here in My Arms." 

The first part of Andrew's story is below.

[Video begins with a view of an empty baby buggy.]

[Music begins: piano playing “Here in My Arms”]

Tony Kahn:

For over three years my wife had battled infertility, with injections, operations, and drugs. If nothing happened by the time she turned 40, she promised herself, she’d end the struggle of trying to beat the odds and bear a child.

[Soft background sounds of a party, people talking, clapping, etc. This continues under the narration.]

That spring, on her 40th birthday, she learned she was pregnant for the first time in her life. But the pregnancy was weak and started to fail. We followed the blood tests closely and watched it slowly fade away. It seemed clear, now, if we were ever to have a child, it would have to come from someone else’s arms.

[As video shows a picture of a birthday cake, we hear the singing of a birthday song, “How old are you now?” ... laughing fades to echoes. Then we see views of older family photos and heirlooms, and a form being filled out.]

Harriet Reisen:

They wanted to know all about your childhood, about your family relations... [her voice continues in low tone under Tony’s narration.]

Tony Kahn:

That September, Harriet applied to an adoption agency, and started filling out the forms for the home study required by state law. From now on, we realized, our private lives wouldn’t be so private.

[We view stairs, and hear the sound of footsteps walking up them. Then we glimpse the offices of a large bureaucratic office pool, followed by views of children’s photos, including some of Tony as a boy.]

Soon after we had our first interviews at the agency office. I resented the right of strangers to judge my fitness as a parent. The only thing that kept me going was my wife’s undeniable desire for a child.

[Tinkling music begins under narrative.]

Competition for children was intense and I worried about making a good impression. My own childhood had not been particularly happy or secure. What was I supposed to say about that?

[The next scenes are views of birds flying, and swing sets in a park, accompanied by sound of birds cawing]

It was hard, after those interviews, not to envy biological parents. No one asked them to make a case for their child. They just made love. We not only had to prove we were fit to be parents, but specify the kind of child we’d want to raise. Half the time, the process felt like an inquisition, half like a shopping expedition.

That December, as part of the home study, the social worker from the agency visited us. Harriet spent a week cleaning the house from top to bottom. I bought the richest cookies and cakes I could find. Maybe sugar would speed things up, I thought.

[We view Harriet’s hands at a table laden with desserts, accompanied by subdued conversation.]

We told the social worker we decided we wanted to adopt a white, healthy, newborn baby from the United States. She told us we might have to wait seven years. Her agency specialized in foreign adoptions. If we were in a hurry, it would really be up to us to find the child.

Find a baby. How?

[Violin music begins and continues under the narrative.]

We soon learned there were a lot of ways. You could advertise in a paper. You could work through a lawyer. You could ask all your friends. We also learned that whatever the source, most of the babies fell through.

[Now we view scenes of a quiet room. We hear a piano lullaby, and then the phone rings.]

A friend told us of a woman who was due in two weeks. Three days later she rejected us because of our religion.

Some acquaintances found a baby in Louisville they decided not to adopt. They left the country before giving us the number to call.

[Telephone rings, and we view the hands of someone answering followed by her taking notes.]

An agency in Massachusetts offered us a little girl fathered by the guard of a mental institution where the mother was a patient under heavy medication. This time we said no. Another agency in Miami wanted a picture of what the child’s room would look like, and Harriet redid her office in wicker and lace, for a baby girl. We found out later the agency had gone bankrupt and taken our deposit of over $1,000.

[We view the empty baby carriage again.]

Harriet Reisen:

I wrote to everybody I knew. I just gathered my address books. . .

[Harriet’s voice is heard under the following narration]

Tony Kahn:

That fall, Harriet made plans for a three-week vacation in India. Before she left, she cast one last net for a child. She felt hopeful.

Harriet Reisen:

...and I think I did have a feeling that kid is coming and that kid is coming sometime in the fall, probably, just because there’s so many feelers out there. One way or another, you know, I was going to be celebrating Christmas and the New Year as a parent.

[Telephone rings, and we again view the hands of someone taking notes. In the next segment, we see Tony as he is now, talking to us directly.]

Tony Kahn:

A few weeks later she got a call from a friend in New York who had just heard of a possibility in Mexico and gave us a number in Guadalajara to call. A woman named Denise answered. She told us she was taking care of a young unmarried woman from Oaxaca, who had decided to give her child up for adoption when it was born in six weeks. It was a contact like many we’d had – exciting, but uncertain. Denise told us there were other people interested too and we had no idea whom she would choose or who she really was.

[The phone rings, and we see more paperwork being filled out. A long telephone cord reaches across the room.]

But the calls continued. Nearly every other day there was some question Harriet needed to ask Denise, or some fact Denise needed to discuss with Harriet. No connection we had ever had had lasted as long as this link to an unborn baby 2500 miles away. I started referring to it as our umbilical cord to Mexico.

It was odd. Since the beginning, we’d been expecting to find a white, domestic child. Instead we’d found a baby of another culture, another country, and another race. A chill went down my spine. Was it the fear of the unknown, or after three years of looking had I finally felt the touch of a child?

[We see a two-story white frame house, an empty park bench, and empty swings in the snow. Then we hear airport loudspeaker sounds. In the next segment, we see a drawer opened, full of old documents. A file drawer is also open, also full of documents. We see someone being finger printed, a copy machine spitting out copies, and a document being notarized and sealed.]

Denise had told us that if we were interested in this baby we’d have to hurry. By the time it was born, we’d need over fifteen documents required by Mexico and the United States. We’d have to supply official copies of our birth certificates, our marriage license, the agency home study, our medical exams, our tax returns for the last three years. We would need statements from bankers, friends, doctors and the FBI that we were not criminals or paupers or bigamists, or secretly fertile and planning to have a baby of our own. We’d have to have each document copied three times, each copy translated into Spanish and notarized, each notarization stamped with the state seal of Massachusetts, and certified by the Consulate of Mexico. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that beneath all the paperwork lay a child. But would the child be ours? Denise had given us no assurances.

[Next we view some suitcases sitting by a door, along with a baby blanket on knitting needles.]

In the beginning of October, Harriet left on her three-week trip to India. The baby wasn’t due for a month, and we’d stopped talking about our chances...but I noticed she’d started a baby blanket.

[Sound of car honking, followed by a scene with a tower of documents a foot high.]

The next two weeks went quickly. Several documents still had to be translated into Spanish, and all the documents had to be certified and sealed. Then ... it was done. A tower of paperwork ninety documents tall and as heavy as any baby ever born rose from the middle of my desk. There was nothing left to do but wait.

[Soft, Mexican guitar music begins playing softly. Next we see Tony’s hands as he looks through a number of photos of his childhood years. After this, Tony as he is now looks at us again.]

That evening I looked at some pictures of my childhood. By coincidence it had been spent in Mexico. For five years we’d lived there as American aliens, forced to petition the state for the right to rent a house, or go to school, or board a bus, and to experience almost daily mistrust for how we looked or where we came from. The prospect of adopting a Mexican child had reminded me of those times and of the strength I had drawn from my family.

Little by little, I let myself feel for this unborn child what I think Harriet had felt for every child we’d come across, the longing to give it love and a welcome in this world. I wondered what I would do if this, too, turned out to be one more baby that faded away.

[After more looking through old family photos, the light is turned out. It fades away slowly.]

The following night Denise called from Mexico. “Congratulations,” she said. “You are the father of a baby boy.” He had been born a week early, but was in perfect health. The sooner we could get to Guadalajara, she said, the sooner the adoption could begin. Tentatively, we set a date three days after Harriet returned from India.

It was only after I hung up that it hit me: she picked us after all! Somewhere in this world, I had a son.

I wanted to celebrate, but with whom? Harriet was out of reach, 7,000 miles to the east and my boy was 2500 miles to the south. Some friends took me to dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

[We find ourselves looking into a dark house. Then we see a lovely lighted room with a table on which sit two wine glasses and a little paper cup full of red wine. A bouquet of fresh flowers complements the wine.]

When I got back that night, I looked at a clock. It would be 9 p.m. in Guadalajara and 10 a.m. in India. Not too late for a little toast.

“To my family,” I thought. “Be safe. Be well. Be careful. Tonight, you cover the world.”

[To be continued . . . ]

[End of recording]

Transcribed by: Bev Sykes