photo by Jeff Harbin, Life of Riley Photography

Lesley and Louisa Metz

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When I arrived at Lesley Metz’s house, I was immediately greeted by her daughter, Louisa, in a Disney Princess nightgown.

“Come here,” commands the three year old, grabbing my hand, leading me right past her mother and into the master bedroom where “Cinderella” is on television. Within two minutes, I’ve gotten the full, albeit quick, tour of their home by the most enchanting and sociable little girl. I even got a glimpse of her miniature pink Christmas tree, which was left up past the holidays intentionally for Louisa to enjoy in her perfectly pink bedroom.

Before being pulled back into the living room for more show-and-tell, I notice atop the shelf in her bedroom a book, “When You Were Born in Vietnam,” which is undoubtedly a token commemorating Louisa’s birth and subsequent adoption just a few years prior.

“If you would’ve told me six years ago that I’d be a single mom living in Amarillo, I would’ve said you were out of your mind,” says Lesley on the couch opposite me. Louisa, after asking my name, found a spot to rest back in her mother’s bedroom. “

This life is nothing of what Lesley intended, at least, not when she lived in New York City for a spell before settling in Dallas as a flight attendant for American Airlines. Her priorities, early on, were work and travel.

That all changed on Fourth of July weekend in 2005.

Lesley was filing through security to board a flight back home to visit her parents and family in Amarillo. In the line, while waiting, a stranger tapped Lesley on the shoulder and asked if she would like to see a picture of her baby. Not wanting to be rude, she indulged the obviously proud mother and said yes. Quickly, the woman pulled out a tiny photo of a little Chinese baby and said, “I’m adopting and I’ve been waiting for my referral for two years and I just got it.”

“The funny thing is that I always said that if I won the lotto that I would adopt a baby,” she laughs. “But I never played the lotto, so I guess I wasn’t really trying, and that woman said she had always said the same thing.”

Upon arriving in Amarillo, Lesley drove to her father’s office downtown and ended up telling him about the encounter with the woman at the airport, to which he immediately responded, “You should do that.”

Later that same afternoon, Lesley heard about another family who adopted a little girl from China, and then there was a conversation about Steven Curtis Chapman, the gospel singer who has three adopted daughters from China. In a span of several hours, Lesley’s head was spinning and the seed of international adoption was planted.

She returned to Dallas the following week and told her best friend that she felt a call to adopt, even though she felt like the least possible person of choice to go on that journey. With reassurance from her parents, family and friends, Lesley started taking the first steps to adopt a child from wherever there was one available.

“I originally submitted my paperwork to El Salvador, but that process was going so slow. The agency asked me if I’d be interested in Vietnam because it had just recently been reopened,” Lesley recalls. “I said yes, and I remember it so clearly. I got the referral the day before Thanksgiving in 2006.”

By referral, she means her very own tiny photo of a baby. Like the stranger in the airport, Lesley had waited a significant amount of time to see the face of the child she would eventually call her daughter. On March 18, 2007, she flew to Vietnam. The next day, she held then-six-month-old Louisa for the first time.

“She was such a little wiggle worm,” Lesley remembers, smiling and glancing up at the ceiling. “She really was the cutest baby I’d ever seen. And I know everyone says that, but she really was.”

To make single motherhood manageable, Lesley sold her home in Dallas and bought a house two doors down from her parents’ in Amarillo. Still a flight attendant, her flexible schedule provides not only plenty of time at home with Louisa, but also sufficient income and provisions for the soon-to-be family of three.

Lesley spent most of December 2009 in Kazakhstan, a country sandwiched between Russia and China, reflected by a diverse mélange of cultures. The southern sections of Kazakhstan echo Mongolian culture, and it is there, in a little town called Shymkent, where Lesley’s second daughter, Lucy, was born.

“I knew I wanted to adopt again, and I knew I wanted another Asian girl, but Vietnam had closed,” she says. “I found another adoption agency here, which was right under my nose, and I found out about the referral right before Thanksgiving, just like Louisa’s. I was there to meet her by December 7th.”

The rules of international adoption vary from country to country, so the process of bringing Lucy home has been longer than it was with Louisa. Just after New Year’s, Lesley had to leave Lucy in Shymkent for an additional four weeks, which has been hard for her mother’s heart to bear.

“I know she’s being taken care of,” says Lesley just as Louisa finds her way back to the living room. This time, she squeezes herself on the couch next to me.

“What’s your name?” Louisa asks.

“Jennie,” I tell her for the third time. She asks for my pen and begins scribbling on the blank pages of my notebook. Lesley is quick to intervene, but I am quick to say, “No, really, it’s okay.”
She asks me to draw Frosty the Snowman and I do my best to make her proud. More buttons, she says, so I add more buttons.

Lesley brought home a handful of toys and keepsakes from each Vietnam and Kazakhstan because she believes it’s important to honor each of her daughters’ heritages. She kept part of their original native names as middle names, and when it comes to navigating the road of the adoptive parent-adopted child relationship, she says, “We’ll just work though it together.”

Louisa slurps down a Go-gurt as we continue talking and drawing circles, flowers and names in my notebook. She digs through my purse to find my cell phone and together we flip through all of the photos until she knows who everyone is. Lesley laughs, calling her precocious daughter an “old soul.”

“I know there are people who don’t get it, but I’m doing what I feel called to do. I love that God thinks out of the box,” she says. “He matches you up with the people you need to be with.”

Next: Carl Arthur and Tom Cummings, PASO

by Jennie Treadway-Miller

Jennie was a columnist for the Chattanooga Times Free Press for eight years prior to moving to Amarillo in 2008. She is an avid reader, runner and writer.