The Wait

I can’t help but think of that song by The Band. Although, it’s called The Weight. But this waiting definitely weighs on us. It’s been really tough for us lately. We are only waiting on her passport now and it should have already been issued according to the timeline (max 30 days). The latest email from the agency is “the passport should be dispatched by February 5.” And, don’t get your hopes up or buy plane tickets because we want to make sure the passport is actually in Mrs. Roy’s hands. (Mrs. Roy runs the children’s center.)

I’m starting to wonder if Henry believes there actually is a Tess. Or that we are actually ever going to India. We keep talking about her and our trip but nothing ever happens.

Henry-isms: 1) He asked me the other day, “Where did you pick me up from?” 2) This morning he commented on Luke and I talking about India. I told him that we were talking about it because it was going to be a long trip and a hard trip, and we wanted to be prepared. “I’m prepared,” he said. “I’m prepared to feed her a bottle.”

P.S. Check out our photo albums (click the link to the right). This is in the experimental phase. We hope to post all of our trip pictures as we take them so you can follow along on our journey. You can also take our poll.

Showered with love...

On Wednesday, January 10th, a lot of beautiful people came together to throw a shower for our little Tess. Folks from Ellen’s office, the Historic Arkansas Museum, stripped the shelves from every baby department in the tri-state area and threw us one grand party! Only a week ago we were stressed about being prepared for the trip, and now we are not only prepared for the trip, but her first year of life! It was truly a wonderful event and everyone was so generous and thoughtful.
We never really knew what to expect when we started this journey, but the love and compassion we have received from friends and family has been tremendous. I hope each one of you reading this understands how much you mean to us. When we walked into the room the other day, seeing the balloons and pink, pink, PINK, it made everything feel real. I think about her day and night, but not until this party did it hit me. Soon, she will be with us all. Soon, she will be home. Thanks, guys.

Luke's Labor

This one is Luke’s labor. From the beginning he knew it would be – he wanted it to be. Maybe he was envious of my pregnancy and three-day labor. He has definitely outdone me, though, with his three-year labor. He has tirelessly filled out, kept up with and had notarized an enormous pile of paperwork—it has overflowed from our original three-inch, three-ring binder. It’s the kind of thing that makes my head hurt. I’d much rather seize up with contractions than keep all those I-600s, I-171Hs, I-184s, visa applications, …. Straight. Just last night, he was up sitting at the dining room table (spread thick and thoroughly with papers) sorting through, checking dates and locating missing pieces while I played with Henry on the bed. He discourages me from even looking at the lists as they are all so overwhelming (I know this because I have looked but don’t tell Luke because I really think I’d just mess things up if I got involved. I mean, really, he’s doing a Great Job and it’s like having too many cooks in the kitchen, right?). Well, all this is to say that I owe him a lot and he’s certainly put in enough labor to match mine with Henry. I may even consider it enough labor to match a year of breastfeeding, too. Well, then again…

Her Name

So many people ask me about Tess’s name so I wanted to write something. First off, she has two middle names—something that always seems to throw people off a little. I guess we’re making up for my mom’s lack of a middle name. Forever she’s had to explain that she’s just Joyce. Franklin. That’s it. So Tess will have to explain that she’s Tess Amelia Starr Kramer and that yes, she knows her initials are TASK.

Henry was almost named Amelia—had he been a girl. It’s long been my chosen name for a girl. I loved the Amelia Bedelia books and that’s probably why I loved the name. There are other reasons but I had to edit as this entry was too long!

And she was ALWAYS going to have the middle name Starr. My grandmother’s stage name (yes, if you don’t know, she was a star with one r) was Florence Starr (that’s her above, and a piece of trivia here, her makeup in this picture was done be the Max Factor himself). Her given name was Flora Wolfe Scheuer. My grandmother at this writing is 96 years old and Luke and I wanted to honor her.

So, that was it. Henry and Tess both were potentially Amelia Starr Kramer. But then we got her picture. And we were already pretty open to changing our minds. My mother called every few hours and suggested a different name but the first one she came up with stuck: Tess. It just looked like her and sounded right. It was a good thing, too, because as it turns out, Henry can pronounce it! He still struggles with Amelia!

As I said, my grandmother was a star. She began working (as a singer and entertainer) when she was 17 and retired from real estate when she was 86. She’s quite a role model. In the late 1920s she went to Paris and performed at the Casino de Paris where Josephine Baker was headlining. She also worked in radio in Chicago and went to Hollywood for awhile (you can hear her singing in the black and white movie The Mystery of Edwin Drood). When she went to Paris, she had a chaperone who was only a few years older than her but was her traveling companion. Her name was Tess. They remained friends for decades. Tess lived in New York and they spoke on the phone throughout the years until Tess died a few years ago.

So that’s where she got her name.

Then there’s her name now—given to her by her caretakers in India. It is Gargi which I now know is pronounced with two hard “g”s and the i sounds like e. I looked it up on the internet and the meaning is “learned woman.” Recently, I met a woman from India (with a beautiful spirit and warm personality—I could go on about meeting Snigda but I’ll save that). I asked her how to pronounce Gargi and she told me. She also told me that it was a great name to have and that Gargi was a woman known for her intellect and her ability to win in debates against men. That IS a great name to have.

We will use Gargi at first and in combination with Tess as she learns her name. But I think, too, that it will stay with her/us as a name of endearment. Kind of like my mom at times used to call me Allanah which is my Hebrew name. Tess will have lots of names because she, like Henry, will also have a Hebrew name. Although we never call Henry Or’Chiam ben Allanah v’ Ori (his Hebrew name). We’ve stuck to Henry Penny and Boogie Shug.