I have returned once again to the Mancave. “Frozen” has finished. Girls tucked. I recline in my sitting chair. Let it snow. Let it go. Let…. This night is different.
ALL are here.
The past week has been unlike any. Hours spent in the back of a truck seeking elusive documents, hours spent struggling to remain patient for any news, and hours away from my family. My home.
Often when in Haiti I am busy with patients, translators, and friends. The past week vacillated between driving repeatedly through Port au Prince to sitting impatiently, checking emails to awaiting phone calls. American urgency is foreign to Haiti. The island operates on its own time. This week forced this fact upon me.
Who could explain the feeling of a flight delay to Miami on Sunday when you had to be in Haiti at eight AM on Monday? Why did someone from the airline come looking for us to change flights and airlines so as not to miss the last flight to Port au Prince?
I struggle to convey the excitement on walking into the United States Embassy with my daughter for the first time? I fail to accurately describe the feeling of walking into the United States Embassy the last time?
The details of all required to bring me tonight to this chair are substantial. How do I explain an act of kindness yielding a sealed medical letter? How can I convey the importance of a gift of mangoes to “just the right person?” How can I possibly illustrate the work of securing necessary documents which would allow my daughter to exit the country? What do I take from my interactions with Sarah, Ralph, Etienne, Christine, Viala, Patrick, Emily, and others. Each were critical to my success this week. I simply can’t explain why the security guard at IBSER, Pastor Meus Edras, allowed us to come in sit and talk. Why did I offer to pray for him? (I’m not comfortable with that.)
Yet.
I did pray. Often, it was all I could do. I prayed in solitude, with friends (now family), with little girls and with strangers. I had John McHoul himself pray for our families upon hearing our situation standing in an outdoor restaurant. And. It helped.
I left Haiti with a tattered manilla folder and a new passport. As I consider the tattered folder covered with names and phone numbers, I exhale. It’s contents propelled me last week. They propelled Lenia northward. Homeward. Her passport is perhaps my most prized possession. She earned it. Deserved it. Perhaps, I’ll sit and think what it represents to her.
Currently, it is too much for me. I relent.
I sit tonight looking at amazing photographs of our home-coming with Lenia. She is our newborn 14 year-old Haitian-now-American daughter. Another girl. I relent.
And I say…
Thank you.
Greg
Divine.