Countdown - Eight

Eight days until we head to Guangzhou to take custody of Song Song. Because we will lose a day traveling East, we have to leave on Friday June 9th in order to arrive on Sunday, June 11th. We will fly from Seattle to Tokyo, from Tokyo to Guangzhou. Right now in Guangzhou it is 90 degrees with 90 % humidity.

Our passports have not been returned from wherever they go to have the Visas processed (the passport accompanies a visa application because an entry visa is simply a stamp of approval on the passport) and I'm hoping they arrive in the next few days.

I am assembling the many legal documents I have to take with us and I feel like Radar on M.A.S.H. because following is but a sampling of the documents we have completed or have to take with us:

• I-600A approval - Notice of Favorable Determination for Advanced Processing of Orphan Petition;
• I-171H Approval - Proof of Valid Fingerprinting;
• Medical Examination for Immigrant or Refugee Applicant;
• I-604 Request for the Report on Overseas Orphan Investigation;
• Form 230 Petition to Classify Orphan as Immediate Relative
• I-864W Petition to Classify Orphan as Immediate Relative

I consider myself somewhat capable of finding my way through red tape. I managed to get a law degree and to keep it, but I don't think I would have ever been able to crash my way through this process without an agency telling me where to go and what to do.

Next there is the issue of cash. The day after we arrive in China, the orphanage will transport Song Song to the Civil Affairs office in the province where we will be staying. We will take custody of her on that day, but only after handing the orphanage $4,500 in U.S. currency. Since the largest denomination of U.S. currency is a $100 bill, this means I will be traveling with a bankroll. No travelers checks or any other form of exchange are accepted. This feels like we are planning a transaction with a South American drug lord. Apparently, this is the routine. The $4,500 is but the tip of the iceberg. When this adoption is complete, we will have spent approximately $25,000. Fortunately, we have paid this over time, not all at once. It has therefore not been too difficult. I'm not complaining, Song Song is a price beyond rubies. I'm just sayin.

Next there is the matter of names. A few weeks ago I posted a list of possibilities. That list has shortened, because Eliott and Georgia don't like Alex. (Sorry Mr. Hamilton, I tried, I really tried). Expat and MCS like Sarah, but for some inexplicable reason, the name Sarah brings to mind a rather matronly woman with large sagging breasts stuffed into a Gunny Sax dress. Sorry to offend any Sarahs out there.

Maiya is still a leading contender, although I ran a list of the top 100 girl names from 2006 and Maiya, including many variations of the spelling, were in the top twenty or so. I'm not too keen on extremely popular names.

We'd like to find something not too ethnic, as we want Song Song to have a name that meshes well with those of the rest of her family. That said, I don't want to give her a name that implies she wishes to have high tea with the Queen.

Why not leave her name Song Song? We will keep it, but I'd like to give her an American name to go with it.

Your assistance is appreciated.

Xanax

It's 3:31 a.m. and I'm wide awake. Probably because I've got so much on my mind. We are supposed to be in China on June 11th, our house is for sale, and we found the house we want but we can't buy it because we have to sell ours first. And then there's the issue of money, which I won't discuss because then I'll never get to sleep.

But I digress. We have to be in China June 11th. Did I say that already? We fly to Shenzhen a week before the official ceremony at the Consulate in which Song Song becomes an American citizen. I'm still not sure of the itinerary, when we meet her and how long she's with us before the ceremony, but presumably we'll know soon.

We have to take a stack of documents with us, most of which I have copies, but the matter of going through them all and applying for our visas and gathering the hoards of money we need to accomplish this daunting task is staggering.

Xanax is a tranquilizer. I will be thankful if I can get through the next month sans prescription medication.

Shots. Names.

We got our shots Monday. Hepatitis A for me and my husband, none for our daughter. We'll take a series of typhoid (pills) before we go, and take along antibiotics for stomach ailments, if any, and insect repellent. I have an inhaler for allergies to the dense pollution.

We're thinking of names. Here are the leading contenders:

Alex
Maiya (pronounced "my-yuh")
Anna
Ellie
Minnie (just kidding)
Ann
Meredith
Celery (kidding again.)

Your thoughts?

Fingerprints

According to Wikipedia, that font of veracity, the Koala is the only mammal, other than the primate, who share fingerprints as a distinguishing characteristic unique to each individual of the species. To my knowledge, the Koala can't sew on a button or play Chopin on the piano, so I still feel superior.

About a year ago we received a notice from Homeland Security that we were scheduled to be fingerprinted on a particular day. We were to arrive at the Homeland Security offices in Seatac, Washington at 8:00 a.m. sharp. Unfortunately, we had already made plans to be in Mexico that week. Curiously enough, the office that mailed the notice was located in Yakima, Washington. All scheduling inquiries were to be made through that office.

For those of you unfamiliar with Washington State, Yakima is in Eastern Washington, and it is nothing but farm land. The Western half of the state is wet and green, and the Eastern half of the state is arid and brown. Except where irrigation has been constructed. The Western and the Eastern halves of the state are divided by the Cascade Mountains. Calling Yakima to arrange a fingerprinting appointment to take place near Seattle seemed like calling your great aunt Noreen who you haven't seen in thirty years to ask her where your husband put the scissors. But I phoned the number as instructed. A nice lady changed our appointment time no problem.

The Homeland Security building is clearly constructed and designed for people for whom English is not their first language. After entering the double doors, nothing was in view except a bank teller-type of window where a security guard directed people to the correct line. Several lines were positioned throughout the building, and each person received a ticket depending upon the type of fingerprinting or authorization that person was receiving.

We waited in uncomfortable chairs for about twenty minutes and my husband's number was called first. Mine was called about ten minutes later, and my then five-year old went with me into a large, sterile looking room containing the fingerprinting equipment. I expected my fingertips to be inked black and rolled on a piece of card stock, but apparently that method of fingerprinting hasn't been used for awhile. Rather, state of the art digital imaging equipment is used.

A nice lady cleaned off the fingers and thumbs of each hand with rubbing alcohol, then she grabbed the thumb of my right hand first, rolling it around on piece of glass that looks just like the scanner in a supermarket. My thumbprint showed up on a screen at eye-level, but the word,"match" kept popping onto the screen until, apparently she scanned my thumbprint in such a way as to not illicit the "match" prompt. This process she repeated for eight fingers and two thumbs. While it took my husband only a few minutes to be fingerprinted, it took me about twenty. The nice lady fingerprinting me finally brought someone over and they mumbled something to one another about "A-12" or "Piece-image" or something, but I have no idea what they were talking about.

I remain concerned that all the "match" prompts might inconvenience me in some way. For example, what if I am minding my own business, chopping firewood in my knickers in front of Safeway, when I am suddenly whisked away by federal authorities because they suspect I am the master mind in the latest round of casino heists? Should I be concerned about this? I think so too.

Flow

I have four stones on my desk at work, each etched with a Chinese symbol. The first is the symbol for courage, the second is the symbol for beauty, the third is the symbol for change, and the fourth is the symbol for river.

The symbol for river is three parallel lines etched in black ink on a white polished rock. It is my favorite of the four. It reminds me that life possesses a current, and while it's possible to direct one's course, fighting against the current is fruitless. It's best to let the current assist in one's course.

When we discovered that adopting a healthy infant from China would take two years, my husband and I asked our agency to supply us with information about any children who are older but who haven't been adopted yet due to minor medical issues (such as needing glasses or having a birth mark, for example. Depending on the country, these children are sometimes considered an embarrassment because they are "imperfect.") We explained to the agency that we hoped that the gap in our children's ages are not too wide, so that they might share some of the same interests and activities. So the agency started sending us information about older children.

Several of the children had cleft palates. I didn't realize that correction of a cleft palate requires several surgeries throughout the child's life. As the jaw and face grows, more surgeries are needed. Often speech therapy is necessary, and children with this condition may be more susceptible to certain infections. Depending upon insurance, some - but not all - medical intervention may be covered.

Another child we considered had a large port wine stain on her upper lip. The doctors we consulted thought it might fade over time, but that was speculation. We told the agency we would like to be adopt her, but another family was chosen. Fortunately for this child, she was wanted by more than one family.

Song Song's medical records arrived along with medical records for a little girl with a cleft lip and palate that was corrected. Song Song's medical condition was a kidney problem that was corrected. We sent both sets of medical records to the University of Washington Center for Adoption Medicine for review. A few weeks after the doctors had a chance to look at both sets of records, we had a meeting with them. My initial impression of each medical profile was that Song Song's condition involved more unknowns, and the other little girl had no outstanding issues. In fact, the opposite was the case. The little girl with the cleft palate would require a lot of medical care in the future, while Song Song appears to have no outstanding medical issues.

Through this review, we felt as though we were studying the teeth of a racehorse. It was necessary to evaluate the impact this child's health will have on our family. Because Song Song's health appears to be optimal, we chose her.

That said, I knew she was ours the moment I saw her picture. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just the current, carrying me along.

Race

This is a picture of my maternal grandfather in his WW I uniform. His eyes were the color of water. He was a first generation American; his parents were born in Sweden, and left that country poor and hungry at the turn of the century. They came through Ellis Island with thousands of other Swedes with the last name Swanson. I tried to locate them in the Ellis Island registry but gave up when, after an hour, I was only on first names beginning with "A."

When I was in law school I spent an evening riding in a patrol car with a City of Seattle police officer as extra credit for Criminal Procedure. The officer was Asian, and offered that it bothered him when people asked him where his family is "from." He explained that his ancestors were Chinese, but came to America in the early 1800's to build the railroads. The officer was born in the U.S., as had been five or six generations before him. No one has ever asked me where my family is "from."

The adoption agency we're using requires that families adopting a child of another race - in our case, Chinese - consider the child's feelings when others ask about the child's ancestry and when the child is old enough to inquire about it. We had to attend workshops and read materials about how a black or Asian child may likely feel growing up with people who don't look anything like the rest of the family. The agency required us to sign a statement to the effect that we promise to expose our Chinese daughter to her heritage, and the statement required us to enumerate exactly what resources in our community we might help us with this. Fortunately, Seattle has a huge Chinese population and there are many ways to celebrate Chinese holidays, to take classes in Mandarin, and to participate in the arts so that our daughter will know what her culture is like.

There are no guarantees, however, that she'll be interested in her culture. The agency related a story about one family who adopted a boy from Korea. They dutifully enrolled the little boy in all things Korean: marital arts, language, cooking, etc. The adopted child could not care less about the Korean culture, yet their biological child became obsessed with anything Korean. We don't intend to make our home a Mandarin home. We will wait until our adopted daughter expresses an interest in her culture before we become immersed in it. What we wish for her, fundamentally, is that she knows she is loved, and that she is an American.

Kate

Many aspects of the adoption process inspired in me a certain amount of apprehension, chief among them was the Homestudy. The Homestudy is exactly that - the study of one's home. In anticipation of this event, I scoured my house and quizzed my daughter on manners; any deviation from a healthy, happy household, I feared, would be tantamount to lying on a bed of red velvet pillows in a sequined bra and harem pants with a hookah hanging from my lips, opium clouds swirling toward the ceiling.

The social worker from the agency, Kate, called ahead of time to "assuage any concerns" about the Homestudy, explaining that the meeting shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, and that the purpose was to give the agency an idea of what our home looked like, to talk to any other members of the household about the adoption process, and to "answer any questions." I said I understood. Still, I thought, they need to make sure we don't keep yak in the basement or a have pit twenty feet deep from which bamboo spears are positioned skyward, camouflaged by a grassy cover.

Any anxiety I felt quickly evaporated when I met Kate. She called a few hours before we were supposed to meet and apologized for forgetting the appointment time, "but," she explained, "my car was broken into inside my garage and my laptop stolen, which contained all my scheduling information." She, too, wanted to make a good impression. And she did. She arrived on time, blond, blue-eyed, and very warm and friendly. She spent about an hour with us going over adoption basics - the type of child we felt would be a good fit with our family, whether we preferred a boy or a girl, how old we preferred the child to be. She also explained why she was asking these questions at our home, rather than asking that we meet at the agency: she needed to look at our surroundings. She explained that many people who haven't had any children adopt a toddler, but are unaware of safety issues in the home or of the type of stuff they need. She also wanted to talk to our daughter about her thoughts, which took about two minutes because our daughter, who was four years old at the time of the Homestudy, was able to see only about five minutes into the future. Accordingly, she said she felt "fine" about adopting a sister, and thought it would be "fun." Check.

Kate walked through our house, stating that we ought to put a baby gate at the top of the stairs, (duh), and asking where the baby's room would be. She also went over information that is stressed over and over again with adoptions - that the baby or child might have separation anxiety when they are first brought home. Kate was right. The meeting took only an hour and a half, and she had no "concerns" after going through our home and talking with us. (After she left I let the yak back into the kitchen).