Cards

Last winter I sat in the parking lot of the West Seattle Taco Time, preparing to inhale the Natural Soft Taco Chicken No Cheese (320 calories) and Medium Diet Coke that I buy after every Saturday morning workout at the gym. Despite my ravenous hunger, I sat in the car for twenty minutes before going inside. I wanted to finish listening to This American Life on NPR. Ira Glass was interviewing a woman who adopted a little boy because she and her husband couldn't have a biological child. This alone was not too interesting to me. What was compelling was the fact that the little boy this couple adopted suffered from an attachment disorder so profound that at one point he tried to kill his adoptive mother with a butcher knife.

"Attachment Disorder" very generally a psychological disorder developed in children who have not bonded to a caregiver in the first few years of life. It can be corrected, but sometimes it can't. A psychologist named John Bowlby did experiments with rhesus monkeys in the 1940's and 1950's and found that the baby monkeys who were either ignored or neglected often died early. The theory translated to humans is that infants and babies require the experience of bonding to a caregiver or they may never be able to form "normal" human attachments.

The woman in the interview endured many years of abuse from this adopted boy and at one point her husband nearly left her because he couldn't live with the violence and hatred they endured every day. But for some mysterious reason she soldiered on, visiting therapists, doctors, and experts until she found a program that seemed to work. Exactly what that program was I don't recall because what the parents endured and why they chose to endure it was far more significant to me than the cure. Mostly I thought "how can I make sure that doesn't happen to us?"

Clearly many - if not most - children available for adoption internationally are healthy and well cared-for. However, the longer a child remains in an institutional setting without the one-on-one love and attention to which he is entitled, the chances that such neglect will manifest itself in some negative way increase. The child that was the subject of the NPR interview was the victim of severe abuse and neglect. He was also the product of the American foster care system, where often the most tenacious foster parents can't save these innocent casualties, compelling a conclusion that a foster child who grows up to be a happy, successful adult should be the subject of further research and study.

At the time I heard the interview, we were interested in adopting a little boy from Russia would be nearly three when he came to live with us. He had a small genetic abnormality that caused a smaller lower jaw but that usually corrects itself by puberty. After initially deciding this child should be ours, I suddenly started losing sleep and panicking, which in my experience means that I'm making decisions simply to move in a forward direction but without considering all the implications. My husband and I had a lot of unanswered questions about this child's background and overall health; while with biological children, parents play the hand they're dealt, we certainly did not want the deck stacked against us. We decided to continue on in the hopes that we would find a child with as few mysteries as possible under the circumstances.

A year later I believe the little Russian boy has been adopted. I'm definitely sleeping better now.

Promise Children

We arrived at the introductory meeting - a mandatory meeting held by the agency we would use to adopt - late. The only seats available were in the front of the room, which was filled with about twenty folding chairs, four across and five deep. The staff person leading the introductory meeting began by welcoming us and politely acknowledging that all of us are probably here to adopt a healthy infant. She asked us to take home the booklet that was placed on each of our chairs, a booklet full of "Promise Children."

Promise Children are those who have physical or mental abnormalities, delays, injuries, or something else that renders them not otherwise "perfect" according to their country of birth. I flipped through the booklet. Big mistake - first, because I was in the very front, which means that every one saw my shoulders shudder up and down as I sobbed, and second - because most of these children have Downs Syndrome, in addition to cerebral palsy and other sever forms of mental retardation. My older sister and only sibling has Downs Syndrome. I'm a goner. My husband lovingly took the booklet out of my hands and said, "You know you shouldn't be looking at that now," and I realize what comfort it is to be married to someone who knows me better than I do.

The staff person asked us to please consider for adoption one of the Promise Children inside the booklet. She apologized for the somewhat impersonal method of placing such children inside a booklet, but she explained that it is nearly impossible to persuade people to adopt such a child were it not for such a catalogue. This seems illogical to me. If a person wanted to adopt a child with special needs, wouldn't they already know it? If a decision to adopt a child with special needs is based solely upon viewing a picture in a booklet, then is it wise to let an adoptive parent, so easily and naively led, become the parent in such a situation? Probably not. But I know I am not going to adopt one of these children, so I let it lie.

I have spent a lifetime as the sibling of a mentally disabled sister beating myself up over the fact that I am NOT the best person to take care of a special needs child. And my sister, relatively speaking, was an easy special needs child. I could go into the countless hours of therapy and self-loathing I have endured over this fact, but it is a fact that remains unshakable to my core. I am impatient, physically active, quick, and I need a lot of feedback. Parents of special needs kids must live in a world where they are patient, often (but not always) physically inactive, where the world moves excruciatingly slow, and where feedback or gratifying events are parceled out differently than in the world of "normal" kids. I decided long ago to leave the special needs kids to those who are equipped to raise them, and I'll do my best to make the most of who I am.

So I moved away from the Promise Children booklet and devoured an hour full of questions and answers about the adoption process. We knew we wanted to adopt internationally, rather than adopt an American child.

In the American system, there are non-private and private adoptions. Non-private adoptions seldom involve infants, and most of the time only older children are available for adoption. Tragically, these older children have often been the victims of physical and sexual abuse and require parents who are able to deal with such a background. And the parents must become legal foster parents before they can adopt children. We knew we are not the right parents for such troubled kids, especially because we have a six year-old biological child.

Private adoptions typically involve unwed mothers who are looking for families to adopt their children. I have a friend going through this process right now. It is, more or less, a beauty contest. When the mother "picks" the family to adopt her child, she has a window of opportunity after the birth in which she can change her mind. My friend has been told that she should expect "at least one" adoption to fall through after the mother gives birth. The expense is staggering, as the adoptive parents are often paying for the birth mother's medical and living expenses. I quickly dismissed this type of adoption as a possibility. I couldn't imagine outfitting a nursery, paying for the mother's boyfriend's car and stereo repair, or whatever, only to have her change her mind. Infuriating. But it happens. In my view, these kind of adoptions are nothing more than emotional extortion.

So we settled on the international adoption system. Now we would have to decide which country we were comfortable adopting from.

Learning in the Valleys

How did this all start? When we decided to have children several years ago, I discovered that all the money I spent on birth control over the years probably hadn't been necessary. After over two years of trying to get pregnant, without any diagnosis whatsoever as to why we could not conceive, I accepted my infertile-state as the universe's punishment for deigning to compete in a man's world and under a man's biological schedule. I had been through college and law school, and worked for several years before hearing the tick-tock of my biological clock. So, at thirty-five, we prepared mentally and physically for the addition of a child to our family. But nothing happened.

As the months and years wore on, I became increasingly depressed at the loss of something I took for granted - the ability to reproduce. The grief I endured was not simply over a fruitless struggle, but over the belief that I would leave nothing of any value behind to show that I was here long after I was gone. This emptiness had nothing to do with a lack of love in my life. I was loved. It was an existential angst that was impossible to articulate. So we did what any self-respecting childless couple in their thirties does - we stopped trying to conceive, we sold our house, put all our stuff in storage and moved to the beach.

We spent ten months living like college students - college students with money. We roller-bladed, jogged, dined out, shopped, and lived the high life until the novelty of it wore off. Then we considered our options. My husband desperately wanted a biological child. I wanted to adopt. I had travelled through my angst to the other side. I knew that parenthood was much more than nine months of pregnancy. I knew that I wanted to be a parent, and that adoption was simply another way to do just that. Adoption wasn't "settling," or "the next best thing;" it was something I was excited to pursue.

But I respected my husband's wishes to have a biological child. So we saw a specialist who put me through more tests (I thought I had been through all of them and had tried everything). I agreed to try for six months to conceive - no more, no less. Our agreement was that if I was not pregnant in six months, we would pursue adoption. I was pregnant the following month. Apparently, looking the demon (infertility) in the eyes and laughing at him makes one incredibly fertile. Our daughter, Georgia, is now six and she is an angel from heaven.

We agreed that our second child would be an adopted child. We had been blessed with a biological child and we felt -feel - that we are the right family to provide a home to a child who would otherwise be lost in an impersonal and cruel system. So began the paperwork, evaluations, fingerprinting, and reports - and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here, I hope to chronicle the manual side of adoption - the nuts and bolts from a lay-person's perspective - as well as the emotional journey we have undertaken. We have been "assigned" a beautiful two-year old girl named Song Song. We plan to travel to Shenzhen in June or July to bring her home. We are excited beyond words.