He Learned To Walk While I Was Away

Well, they got through.  That was almost two weeks ago, now.  I've been meaning since that day to write a final post in this blog, summing everything up.  I guess the main lesson here is that having a jetlagged toddler in your house makes it hard to get things done.

INS gave us a scare as Io was coming through immigration.  I was waiting at LAX for Io and Gabe to arrive.  INS said it would take from 1 to 4 hours for them to get processed through, assuming they were let into the country.  If for some reason the INS people at the border decided she wasn't allowed in, they would turn her around and put her on the next flight back to Bucharest.

So they way it works is, you show up at the exit point in the airport at the flight's arrival time.  Then you sit there for hours hoping that they come through the door.  You're not allowed to go into the INS area to see what is going on and there's nobody from INS there that you can talk to.  You just have to wait.  You find yourself humming that to yourself, that song about how you can't hurry love.  You wonder if you've gone insane.  Every minute that goes by, every person who comes out that isn't them, your anxiety ratchets up a little bit.

A couple hours into this process, my phone rang.  It was Ioana calling me from a payphone inside the INS area.  "They're recalculating my months," she said.  "They're telling me I have to go talk to someone at another room."  I told her I was glad she called, asked if she was OK, if Gabe was OK, she said she's fine and he's sleeping -- and then the call got cut off, because her 25 cents was up.  I sat staring at my phone wondering what was going on in there.  Recalculating her months?  Having to talk to someone else?  I started to freak out.

About 45 minutes later -- and let me give thanks here to my friend Jason, who talked me down when I said I was going to storm the INS room -- Io and Gabe came out.  It's over.  We never have to deal with any of this stuff again.

Gabe was asleep (it was 3am Bucharest time by the time they got out).  I bundled them into the car and we headed off home.  Io reacquainted herself with our cats (who she hasn't seen other than on Skype for two years) and the condo in general (ditto).

She requested my world-famous hamburgers -- the Burger of Kings, it used to be called, until I got a nasty cease & desist letter from a certain fast-food chain that I won't name because if I do they will probably sue me again -- so I made those as her welcome-home meal.

Watching Gabe pick up an X-Box controller, I felt like
Obi-Wan Kenobi handing Luke a lightsaber for the first time

Gabe had a lot of adjusting to do.  It's a ten-hour time difference, which is hell on your body because the sun is almost exactly the opposite of where your body expects it to be.  On top of that it's an all-new living space, an all-new crib in an all-new bedroom, two cats to get used to, no Grandma Tania anymore, no babysitter Stela, etc etc.  Big big change.  Luckily, babies are adaptable and can hardly remember anything to begin with, so he adapted like a champion.








One thing I had been really worried about was that Gabe wouldn't really remember me that well or be happy to be around me.  Luckily that turned out not to be true at all.  All that daily Skyping paid off, I guess, because Gabe was 100% fine with me right from the get-go, and even knew who I was ("Dada" is one-third of his current vocabulary).  Whew!

We had a couple of days there on our own, and then on Thursday my mom and dad came into town, to help us prepare for Io's big welcome-home party scheduled for that Saturday.  Throwing a giant party within a week of everyone getting back was kind of crazy, but there were so many people who wanted to see Io and Gabe that putting it off any longer would have made it pointless.

So they were super-helpful in terms of getting the party ready (especially because I went basically right back to work, for the mornings at least).  My brother and his wife came in the next day as well.  We had a few days of prep time, and then it was time to PAR-TAY!

We had about 30 people over for swimming and barbecue, a mix of Romanian and American food, and 100% American music because Romanian music sucks.  At least, as far as I'm concerned.  Don't tell Io I said so.  Thanks to the help of my family and some of the guests, the party was a smashing success and went off literally without a single hitch.  Everyone had a great time and some great food, Gabe got showered in gifts, and a bunch of people who haven't seen Io in two years got to reunite with her and meet her son for the first time.  Tears were shed, hugs were exchanged, some of us came up with entirely new curse words to describe the INS.  All was love.

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Once the party was over, my professional-chef brother made a special dinner that was all Io requests.  We ate like kings (which, in Gabriel's case, is only appropriate) and then all collapsed into bed.

What a crazy week it had been.  We had breakfast together the next morning, and then my brother and sister-in-law headed back to Texas (thanks for flying out just for a weekend!  You guys are the best!).  My parents headed back to Arizona the day after that.  

Since then, Io and Gabe and I have been basically trying to settle into / adjust to a new routine for all of us.  Gabe and Io got adjusted to the time-change about halfway through last week (a blessing, since Gabe was no longer up all night).  We've started to hit a fairly regular rhythm: during the week I go to work, and then I come home for going to the park (although Io and Gabe went without me today, hence this blog entry), dinner, bath time, and bed.  On the weekends we run around like crazy people.  It's fun.  Challenging and exhausting, but fun.

And there you go.  Our long, two-year odyssey has ended.  I lived in Bucharest for six months, and we did 18 months and 10 days apart, other than a couple of three-week visits scattered here and there.  Other people have certainly gone through a lot worse and we're concentrating on all the good things that came of it: Io reconnected with her mom and with Gagi in a way she probably never would have otherwise, and before Gagi died; I got to know her mom and Gagi, and Romania, in a way I never would have otherwise; and hopefully, it will serve as a life-long reminder of everything that we have.  Sometimes I get angry or bitter thinking about how the INS set back Io's nursing school plans by two years, or made us cancel the Alaskan motorcycle tour that we had planned and booked for my 40th birthday.  But then I think about all the people who would change places with us if they could, I look at Io and Gabe here and healthy and I thank the random chaos of the universe for all that I have.

This is it for the blog.  We've toyed with the idea of firing it up again whenever we go on vacation anywhere, but I don't think we're going to.  We're going to leave it as a final record and memory of our wacky adventure life the last two years.  Hopefully one day Gabriel will be able to read it on the holographic quantum-state bionic computers of the future, and see all the craziness that attended his nine months of pre-existence and first 16 months of life.  I love you, Gabe!

When fans of Jonathan Coulton dedicate a song to their first child, I imagine it's always "You Ruined Everything."  But I'm going to go a different route and dedicate "A Talk With George"

Always remember: life is to be lived.

One Final Moment of Zen:

This is Vampire Hunter Ryan Williams,

signing off, from America.  

O Clouds Unfold

The worst part: waiting for the plane and not knowing whether they will let her through immigration.