Asides

short adoption update

Paperwork is in full swing. Other than that, nothing much to report on the adoption front. In the past week (along with many other forms) both Tammy and I had to spend well over 4 hours filling out one particularly long form. Paperwork was one of the things that had most kept me from being willing to adopt again…

Last week we mailed our first “overnight” package back to the U.S. It actually takes a week. $50. We had to use DHL because even though FedEx has an office in our city, they don’t, go figure, do international shipments.

Nuts & Bolts:

Right after posting this I’ll be jumping over to Facebook to see if my new “auto-post to Facebook” plug-in installed correctly…

Also—thank you for the request, Chaney—it is now possible to sign up to receive notification of new posts by email. Make things easy on yourself! Signup form is over in the right left!-hand column.

The same option (as well as the option to sign up for new comments) also now appears at the bottom of every comment section.

 

As to our soon-to-be son, we haven’t heard if he’s been told he has a family yet or not. We don’t think so. He has no idea the turn his story is about to take. No idea that Someone sees him, and has always seen him. No clue that that same Someone is writing a story for him. A story in which he becomes Son again, seven years after losing his parents.

Loved and wanted.

Isn’t that what you crave most?

Oh, we’ve also  settled on his new names. I’ll tell that story soon. It’s a good one.

 

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.