Our Time Will Come

Our Time Will Come

This adoption is so much harder than my pregnancy with twins. Imagine being eight months into your pregnancy and at a check up with your doctor who walks in and says, "unfortunately, there's a shortage of labor and delivery nurses, so there's going to be a slowdown in deliveries until we can get some new ones trained. Hopefully it'll just be a couple more months, but only time will tell. Hang in there. Your turn will come." 

That's pretty much where we are right now. We've been waiting for almost 20 weeks to get approval from the Indian government to tell us we are eligible to adopt. This is a step that typically takes a week or two, but with staff turnover and retraining, the wait is up to 4-5 months. And while we're not alone, and I've "met" (through facebook) so many wonderful families who are going through the exact same thing, it's still a lonely process. 

For me.

For a bottler of emotions. In fact, I talk so little about this adoption with anyone besides my husband and my India Adoption facebook group, most people have stopped asking about it. They've either forgotten that we're going through it or figure we've just given up on it. I haven't written a post on this blog in months, not just because nothing has happened, but mostly because I don't want to remember what this feels like. I don't want to remember the disappointment of waking up every morning to check my email and see if India has given us approval to move on. I don't want to remember the holidays we're missing with our child or children who are sitting in India without a family. I don't want to remember the days I've wasted worrying about something I have absolutely no control over. 

So I pray. And for me, prayer is more like meditation. I have these long conversations with God about  what I'm doing wrong, and how I can learn patience, and how I can accept suffering with grace while knowing my suffering is nothing compared to what others are asked to endure. And how I can gain perspective of what I feel is being asked of me, and with confidence know that our family will be complete when the time is right. 

But it's so hard. And I'm so bad at this. Sometimes I actually feel jealous of other families who are being approved and matched with kids before us, and I have to force myself to remember that these are children living in orphanages who are going to be united with families, and my reactions - as human as they may be - are selfish. 

Our time will come, and the timing will be perfect. I know this. But as much as I know this, I just can't seem to get my heart to believe it. 

Is There a Religious Text From Which You Teach Your Children?

So, things are moving – at the abominable snail’s pace with which adoptions move – but, still, they’re moving. We have completed and filed our I800a with the Department of Homeland Security and have a biometrics appointment in New Orleans this week for an interview and yet another set of fingerprints. I’m pretty sure we should have CIA clearance by the time this is over. Most of our delay is coming from the Indian government at this point, which is to be expected, and since it is completely out of our control, it has allowed me to focus my spare time on reflection. Not only on how far we have come, but also on how the decisions we’ve made and the answers we’ve given will steer our future. Sometimes I flip back through the application, reread the responses I spent so much effort crafting, and wonder…

Will this answer prevent us from being matched with the   child who was meant for us?

           

Will a judge one day read this response and decide we are not fit for the child we believe is already a part of our family?

           

Will anyone even read this application? Ever?

Eventually, what brings me back to sanity and makes my plight more tolerable is the fact that I cannot change the truth. In adoption, as in life, I think we’re tempted to give the RIGHT answers. To figure out what someone is looking for and conform our responses to align with that. Even when there is no right answer. Whether it’s a job interview, or a first date, or an adoption application, we often spend so much time trying to figure out what the other person wants us to be capable of, or wants us to say, or wants us to be that we forget the most important thing: the truth of who we are. Which brings me back to the one answer that spins through my mind with a frequency and unpredictability that knows no bounds.

It was a question our social worker asked me during my individual interview with her, and while I don’t hold her responsible for the tenacity with which she tried to get a concise answer from me, I do wish she could have heard what I was really trying to say. I imagine it’s a difficult task to pull responses from family after family with a template of questions that just need black and white answers, and to be confronted with a person like me, who never fails to be an elusive and frustrating shade of gray. The question was simple enough:

Is there a specific religious text from which you teach your children?

I imagine most people could answer this without much thought or hesitation. But, of course, not me. Obviously, I can’t recall, word for word, how our conversation transpired, but this is how I remember it:

SW: Is there a specific religious text from which you teach your children?

Me: (after a seemingly interminable hesitation) I try to teach my children from all religious texts. I think they all hold important lessons in morality and kinship and blah blah blah…

SW: But is there one that you specifically teach from, like, say the bible?

Me: Yes, my children have been taught from the bible. But they have also been taught from other religious texts, which I believe all have a similar message. The basic tenet of most religions is to be a good person, right? And there are scriptures in every religious text that pretty much say the same thing.

SW: So, you don’t have a religious text you teach from?

Me: Yes, I teach from many of them. I guess you could say they’ve been exposed to the bible more than any others, since they’ve gone to Christian schools in the past. And they’ve learned the ten commandments from the bible, but aren’t the ten commandments just a basic set of rules from which most people – religious or not – try to live their lives? Be good people, don’t steal, don’t cheat, be respectful to your parents. I think you’d be hard pressed to NOT find the same set of rules in other religious texts. Spirituality is a very important part of my life. And a very personal part of my life. I’d like for my children to develop their own relationships with God in their own ways. I can only show them the foundations of different religions and ways of thinking, but who am I to force upon them Christianity or Sikhism or Buddhism or Islam?

SW: (With a pleading look of please just answer this yes or no question) So, if you had to answer yes or no, would you say there’s a specific religious text from which you teach your children?

Me: (Sigh) No

And there it is. The answer that will go in my home study but doesn’t in the least bit describe who I am or how I teach my children. Again, in no way do I hold our social worker responsible for this response. The magnitude of the information she’s had to gather from us is dizzying and I certainly didn’t make it easy for her, but I often picture the readers of this response – the government officials or orphanage workers, if they’ll even see it – and try to imagine what it might mean to them.

Is there a religious text from which you teach your children?

No.

And the Wait Goes On...

If there's one thing that can be said about international adoption, and probably domestic as well, it's that it is predictably unpredictable. Timelines mean nothing. And one person's experience is as likely to match another's as much as socks from the dryer are likely to match each other. Which is why I feel like a little miracle happened today. 

Our home study was approved. Signed, sealed, stamped, and delivered to my door. We now have two copies of a fifteen page document meant to convince the Indian government that we are suitable parents. It only took four months, and while I hate to complain (that's not entirely true) I was done with my part in three weeks. The agony of having a type-A personality and going through an international adoption ranks up there with racing an Ironman. And I haven't even gotten halfway through the adoption yet. 

But it's done. Baby steps. And I think that calls for a glass of wine. But just one, because that's what I put on my home study questionnaire: one glass of wine with dinner 3-4 times per week. I just never said how big the glass was.

Who Am I To Decide?

I can't really say when it started.

Shortly after Sati and I were married we talked about adopting, but life was chaotic. We were both students about to embark on 8 years of residency and fellowship, and after our daughters were born four years later, it was all about work and daycare and mortgages and laundry and just trying to keep our heads above water. Until it wasn't. Until it was sixteen years later and when we looked around we saw some of our friends sending their kids off to college or planning weddings for their children or welcoming grandchildren into their lives, and we realized...we're not done.

April 20th, 2018, the day after our 16th wedding anniversary, Sati and I signed a contract with Children of the World adoption agency in Fairhope, Alabama. Our fates taking us to India.

It's been a whirlwind two months, and since that day we have had three visits with our social worker, a background check from every state we've lived in since the age of 18 (that's 10 for each of us), FBI fingerprints, 15+ hours of adoption education (where I have had to listen to my husband's incessant insistence that he has already raised two wonderful children and he shouldn't be require to do this), buckets of paperwork requiring original signatures and notarizations, references from six separate families, and a psychological evaluation to include a 300+ question personality assessment. And there was more. But I just can't remember it all right now and it's too painful to attempt to recall. We're just waiting on two more background checks to clear (Nevada and California) so we can schedule our final visit with the social worker, and then we'll be ready to register with the Indian government and be matched with our child. Or children.

And herein lies our first emotional hurdle. Don't get me wrong; the home study was no barrel of monkeys, and there may or may not have been some bad words tossed around during the last couple of months, but what we're facing now is the very definition of heart-wrenching:

***The List of Special Needs***

Let me back up a moment and give a brief overview of the India adoption process. India prefers for its children to stay in India and be raised by Indian parents. Perfectly understandable. And in a perfect world that might even happen. But in this imperfect world of poverty and disease and stigma, this is obviously just not possible. The next best thing, according to the Indian government, would be for a family with Indian heritage living outside of India to take in the orphaned children. And the least ideal, aside from leaving the children on the streets or in orphanages, is to allow non-Indian families outside of India to adopt.

So there's a hierarchy of sorts, and if your family falls into one of the first two categories you are eligible to take the healthy-child track. That means you are eligible to adopt a normal (India's word - not mine) child under the age of two. However, the wait time for this "normal" child is typically a couple of years. With my husband's Indian heritage, we are considered an NRI, or non-resident Indian, family, falling into the healthy-child eligible track. Which, I can't deny, was tempting, but ultimately a route we chose to forego. The children who are adopted through this route are in no danger of aging out of the system or ending up on the streets, and - let's face it - we're too old to be waiting around for another two years.

Hence the list of special needs.

If you ever want to feel like a total jerk, there's nothing that will take you there faster than putting Xs on a special needs list to indicate which children you would NOT be willing to adopt. After half a dozen times of poring over that list, and researching medical diagnoses with more fervor than we showed in four years of medical school, Sati and are really no closer to done. On a good day, we might be open to a sibling group of five with developmental delays and missing limbs and seizure disorders and thalassemias and Down syndrome. But on a not-so-good day, we can't remember why we even started this, and just one more healthy child in our home seems overwhelming in itself.

I think the first time we went over the list, it was decidedly easy. There were a lot of big Xs under the NO column, because we were approaching it with the mentality of new parents. If we were pregnant, which of these would we be okay parenting? Cleft lip - no problem. Premature birth - both of our kids had that. Poor eyesight - we all have that. We can totally do this.

But the more you play this game the more you realize this isn't about what you WANT your child to come into the world with. These children are already here. Whether we adopt a child with HIV or not, our decision will not erase that illness from that child. There are thousands of children sitting in orphanages with illness and disabilities that won't go away just because we don't wish for our children to suffer from them.

Unfortunately, the more we go over that list, the worse the guilt becomes. Because we're getting close now. And it's getting real. And the things we have to take into consideration are painful to address. When we're gone, will we be burdening our current children with the care of their sibling? It's one thing to birth a child with a major medical condition and to expect your other children to step up, but it's another to knowingly and willingly take in a child who will one day become their burden. And I know the negative connotation of the word burden. And I understand that the "burdens" we bear become the guiding forces in our lives, and many times make us stronger and more compassionate people.

But who am I to make that decision?

S. No.	Type of Special Needs	Yes	No	May be
1.	Low birth weight
2.	Premature birth
3.	Birthmark : On visible part of body, not disfiguring
4.	Heart defect: a)     Minor: (Murmur, etc.) (No surgery required) b)    Major: (requires open heart surgery)
5.	Hepatitis B. carrier
6.	Blood disorders: a)     Thalassemia b)    Sickle cell anemia c)     Hemophilia (bleeder)
7.	Child needing sex change due to injury of birth defect
8.	Child requiring wheel chair
9.	Spina Bifida-walk with help, crutches braces, etc.
10.	Cerebral Palsy: a)     Mild b)    Moderate c)     Severe
11.	Orthopedic problem Correctable (now using braces or crutches or future ability)
12.	Rickets
13.	Congenital hip defect
14.	Malformations: a)     Webbing of fingers and or toss (operable) b)     Partially formed fingers and or toes c)     Club foot or feet (correctable) d)     Missing or malformed ear Missing or e)     malformed fingers and or toes f)      Missing limb(s) g)     Malformed limb(s)
15.	Vision a)     Child with vision in one eye b)     Child with poor vision, unstable eyesight c)      Child with crossed or wandering eyes (squint) d)     Totally Blind
16.	Hearing: a)     Partial hearing, stable b)     Partial hearing, unstable c)      Totally deaf
17.	Diabetes
18.	Seizure disorders (Epilepsy) a)     Mild b)     Severe c)      Controlled with medication (does not include frequent convulsion which are common)
19.	a)     Cleft lip b)     Cleft palate c)      Cleft lip & palate d)     Facial clefts
20.	Malnutrition a)     Mild b)     Severe
21.	Kidney malfunction: a)     Mild b)     Severe
22.	Burns (needing plastic surgery) a)     On arms & legs b)     On face c)      Mild d)     Severe
23.	Developmental delay (child who is behind emotionally, physically, and or socially) a)     Mild b)     Severe
24.	Emotional problems
25.	Abuse: a)     Physical b)     Sexual
26.	Hyperactivity: a)     Mild b)     Severe
27.	Learning disability: a)     Mild or b)     Moderate
28.	Speech stuttering: a)     Delayed speech b)     No speech
29.	Positive VDRL (Congenital Syphilis)
30.	Family background: Family history of medical problems a)     Alcoholism b)     Drug usage c)      Parent who is mentally ill d)     One parent mentally retarded
31.	Multiple birth defects
32.	Dwarfism
33.	Twins or Sibling groups older children above 6 years
34.	Requires some corrective surgery of a minor nature