Journey to Marco Part 3: Bonding

The afternoon we brought home Marco, we ventured out with our umbrella stroller, oxygen tank, and three kids. Erin gave Marco a bottle near a playground where Silas and Lucy played. The older kids took out all their familial confusion with some hard play. Lucy did not come away without a face injury, but we all left quite content. We pushed the umbrella stroller across the craggy sidewalks of Bogotá with moderate success.

When we returned to the apartment Marco had a visitor. It was Lordes. She provided his respiratory therapy at the orphanage. Lordes brought her son Carlos, who translated. The drop-in nature of things made me nostalgic for our time in Boston when urban proximity made dropping-in even more possible than our current urban living. Lordes lived just a few blocks away and loaned us her nebulizer machine (is that right medical people)?

She was clearly in love with Marco. Her face gave away her heart ache when leaving him. It took me a few days to see this, but he is a charmer. When we returned to the orphanage after a week, the little person whom I thought was just a floppy, oxygen-lacking baby, was met with fanfare by all. I am told by every women in the world this is because of his eye lashes.

We had a week between bringing home Marco and returning to the orphanage for an evaluation of our bond. It was an interesting, beautiful, and anxious week. From the start Marco has been a stellar sleeper. Unfortunately this is probably something conditioned in him. The first few days felt like spinning plates as we balanced Marco’s regimen of inhalers, nebulizer, antibiotics, and on, and on, and on.

On Saturday, our third day with Marco, Silas got sick with what looked like altitude sickness. He was weak and throwing up, but he bounced back in the afternoon. He was able to watch a lot of football (American) in bed, so I helped with that. This same morning a pediatrician visited our apartment to examine Marco and she thought his respiratory issues were improving greatly. She encouraged us to try a few hours on, a few hours off the oxygen. This revolutionized our exploration of Bogotá.

We spent the week checking out public parks, one of which features a British double-decker bus turned café. We found a surprising amount of good coffee. Many coffee growing countries export their best product, but that is changing and we were the beneficiaries of some wonderful coffees that were 100% Colombian. We walked the city, Silas bringing a soccer ball colored like the Colombian flag to each park.

We have learned we overlooked an opportunity for funding our adoption. Bringing a ginger to a country where people mostly share the same dark hair coloring draws widespread fanfare. I also learned it is legal in Colombia to hand out Smirnoff Ice samples the same way energy drink companies do so on street corners in the States.

At night, my bond with Silas and Lucy really grew. Marco still required a lot of attention for feeding and treatment. Erin’s intentionality with Marco is no doubt the cause for his vitality. She
has helped him work on sitting up, holding things, stretching his stiff limbs. She administers most medicines, though I do have to do the dreaded nebulizer, hold him for vaccinations, and do the night feeding.

Silas, champ that he is, was easy. We would put him down first. He and I began a new tradition where I tell him stories about songs by artists I love. I would tell him about a Gillian Welch song or a Bright Eyes song and let him pick based on my synopsis. We would just listen to music until he fell asleep.

By the time Silas would be slumbering, Lucy would be melting from Marco jealousy. As you may know, Lucy is my kindred spirit in the family. We are night owls and we are expressive, deep feelers. So my little night owl thespian and I would grab an Ergo and hit the night streets of Bogotá. We would watch motorcycles, pedestrians, and we often visited a modern art interpretation of a dog made out of plastic. Upon our return the boys would be resting and Erin would put Lucy down.