By Terry R. Cassreino
HATTIESBURG – The cardboard, letter-sized FedEx envelope quivered in Pam’s hands as she delicately handled the documents inside – which included the first glimpse of our new daughter.
As we stood in the dining room of our new Lamar County home, Pam’s expression quickly turned from nervous shock to stunned disbelief. Her trembling hands held three color photos of Cao Ai Hua.
It was 11:45 a.m. Friday, Jan. 27. A day I replay in my mind over and over again. A day we thought would never happen. A day when we realized our dream of raising our own family actually will happen.We were matched with an orphan baby girl in China.
FedEx delivered the envelope from Holt International Children’s Services shortly before 10 a.m. that day. Pam asked me to call her as soon as it arrived so she could drive home to open it.
But Pam’s cell phone wouldn’t work; my calls immediately went into her voice mail. So I waited and waited and waited – until she called just after 11 to see if the letter had arrived.
As soon I told her, Pam rushed from Thames Elementary School where she teaches, jumped in her Toyota Camry and raced 10 miles along Lincoln and Oak Grove roads to our home.
Nothing was going to stop her from seeing our daughter for the first time or enjoying the photos of Ai Hua, including one of her sitting among toys and another of her in a walker.
Momentous trip
Today, Pam and I leave for Beijing on a nearly three-week-long trip that will forever change our lives, both individually and together. We leave as two and will return as three.
Pam and I married on May 15, 1999, at the Catholic church in Madison, Miss., where we met two years earlier. I, a New Orleans native, was 38; Pam, a Madison resident, was 30.
We were older than most first-time married couples, but we shared many of their same hopes. We wanted a strong, lasting marriage. We wanted to keep God at the center. And we wanted children.
My own desire for a family has deep, personal roots. I cherish long-ago memories of what seemed like weekly gatherings of my large, extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins.
We had all-day barbecues in the spring and summer. We watched the New Orleans Saints on television every Sunday at my cousin’s house. We celebrated every holiday together.
And we spent many a week each summer living in a wood-frame fishing camp over Lake Pontchartrain, swimming, fishing and crabbing in the brackish waters while enjoying each other’s company.
I wanted to do some of those same things with our own children and create lasting memories for them. But after five years of attempts – and untold hundreds of dollars on fertility treatments – we failed.
Adoption decision
Fast-forward to Labor Day 2004.
After a lengthy discussion that afternoon with a social worker at Catholic Charities in Jackson, we decided to adopt. And after learning that baby girls are often abandoned in China because of its one-child policy, we knew what to do.
The next month we began a lengthy, complicated and sometimes intimidating process of assembling documents, completing applications and waiting. Then, 16 months after we began, we were matched.
Cao Ai Hua’s story is typical of most abandoned baby girls in China.
Ai Hua is from Jiujiang City in Jiangxi Province. A narrative the China Center for Adoption Affairs sent to us said that Ai Hua was found by residents and brought to the Sanlijie Police Station.
Officials estimated that Ai Hua was born April 5, one day before she was abandoned by her mother. She’s been at The Social Welfare Institution of Jiujiang City in Jiangxi Province ever since.
That will soon change.
On Good Friday, April 14, Pam and I are scheduled to arrive at the Jackson International Airport after nearly 24 hours in the air and capping a trip that will take us to Beijing, Nanchang, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
With us will be Ai Hua, no longer an abandoned orphan and, instead, safe in the arms of a loving mother and father.
Until then, we continue to wait anxiously. And every time I see Pam pick up our only photos of Ai Hua – copies she framed and placed on the bar in our house – I continue to replay in my mind that fateful day in January.
