Tag: adoption

Tammy’s Beginning

My wife has a soft heart. She always has.

Adopting parentless children has been just one expression of the empathetic response to life I see flowing out of her all the time. When Tammy sees need, she wants to do something about it.

And often does.

She never even ruled out adopting again, though we’ve done it twice, and everyone who knows us has probably secretly concluded that the five kids we already have are probably a tad more than we can handle as it is. Still, “never” didn’t live in her mind like it did in mine. She knew it would take some kind of miraculous something, and even then she was only open to it if for some odd reason the whole family got on board.

Our oldest wasn’t on board, that’s for sure.

“If you guys ever adopt someone else,” Enoch said, “I’m leaving.” That was his standard and oft-repeated position. Sadly, we knew why. Adoption three years ago, our second, couldn’t have come at a worse stage of life for him. The attention that a new little three-year old stole away from that seventh-grader just when he most desperately needed us will be a major part of his story for the rest of his life. As to leaving, fourteen-year old American kids in China—no cash, no ATM card, no passport (cause wise-ol’-Dad would have hidden it away)—have no real way of making good on such threats even if they wanted to. But in his mind he was serious, so it was serious to us.

“Of course, son, if that’s the way you feel about it, I’d never dream of having us adopt again,” Tammy assured him.

I had a better answer: “Duh, people, of course we’re never adopting again.”

 

Tammy has always dreamed about opportunities to get involved with orphans wherever we’ve lived. When an entire semester had passed by after moving and still no chances to get involved in our new city materializing, it was discouraging. Then, in March, a friend was in our living room late one night giving me opinions about a couple of query letters I’d written to literary agents. She’s an adoptive parent, a writer herself, and a social worker, and she was telling Tammy about seven special-needs children’s files she was responsible for updating. A full, informative, picture- and video-laden file can make all the difference for a waiting kid, many of whom are aware there are families out there somewhere; dare they hope one will choose them?

The seven files all got new videos shortly afterwards, and Tammy sat down one day with Enoch to watch them. When they got to the one of the kid who said he wanted “a big family,” Enoch turned to Tammy and said, “We should adopt that one.”

You could have knocked Tammy over with a panda’s tail.

What on earth could have made her son say something so opposite to all he’d said before, including serious threats about leaving made not six months earlier?

That God might be speaking through her son was a thought Tammy couldn’t shake. Days turned to weeks. Enoch, to our amazement, stood by his comment.

Tammy’s heart began to burn.

 

 

another aside…

The Dossier Begins

 

For those who don’t know what “the Dossier” is, I’ll let this rather silly passage from my upcoming not-silly book enlighten you:

Into the life of every prospective adopter comes a word, a word striking fear, a fear so real and so near, that unless a drop of water to wet the mouth, or piece of hankie to wipe the brow, may be found immediately, the will to proceed just might be vanquished before one’s even begun. Some speak the word only in a whisper:

Dossier.

Okay, it’s not quite as sinister as all that. The dossier is the initial paperwork packet that gets sent to China and enrolls a family on the master list of families awaiting matches. The dossier experience must be lived in order to be appreciated, although “appreciate” is almost certainly the wrong word. The dossier is taxing in the extreme, culling data from every extrasolar corner of paternal and maternal universes alike, no era too remote, no historical connection too dim. However, as many adoption memoirs before this have masterfully chronicled the chilling particulars of the clerical black hole that is the adoption dossier, the reader of this one shall be spared the terror.

Completing the dossier requires more stamina than brilliance, and many who would struggle to define, yea, spell bureaucratic acuity have passed through its gauntlet with flying colors. But the faint of heart would do better to give up before starting. I myself was ill-suited to beginning such a monumental endeavor, but my chipper wife cheered me on, and I got moving. The agency provided a task list so long as to almost be beyond all cognitive grasp: letters, documents, notarizations, state seals, and embassy authentications ad nauseam. Our mad hope was to figure everything out and be finished, working on it full-time, in two months.

That was our first dossier in 2007. Today began #3 with Health Checks at the hospital. Hope (who is always a challenge to drag along to strange, noisy places) obliged us with the snapshot, no photo credit needed.

“Why is Tammy looking down at her leg like that?” 

Ah. The lady behind her (everyone there but us was a pregnant woman) in the pee line dropped her open cup all over the back of Tammy’s jeans.

Let the adventures begin.