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3P Start
12.24.04 / 02:31PM / Joe
I've been waiting a long time to write this one, and the time finally feels right. Rhonda and I are adopting a baby! We're adopting from Korea; most likely it will be a boy. He will be in our loving arms sometime between June to August of 2005 (we guess; timetables are fluid). Babies adopted through the Korea program of our agency, Welcome House, typically "come home" aged 6 to 8 months. So that means our boy could be born right now, which is an awesome but bizarre feeling... knowing he is already out there, already a little screaming bundle, being fawned over by nurses and foster families. And very much in the mind of one Korean woman who just made the most difficult decision of her life, which is a sobering and important thought.
The adoption process is a long one, easily two to three times as long as an average human gestation period. We first attended an informational meeting in April of this year, submitted our first big application (where you must surrender hundreds of details about yourselves, your families, your income, your life, your personal philosophy, even a thorough autobiography) in October. You have to secure all sorts of official government documents, go to meetings, present yourself for introspective interview and home inspection... and all of that takes time to organize and prepare. Right now, our completed document is on a desk at the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration awaiting approval so it can be sent to Korea. The eager pain of waiting for events to move forward is a special burden, now that, in effect, our control over them is gone. Once our info gets to Korea, in a few months we will receive a picture of the infant we have been matched with... and a few months after that, we will travel to Korea ourselves to bring him home.
It's not all paperwork drudgery. We have met many other local couples at different places in the adoption timeline, met children who have already come home, been to parties and homes to talk and play. You can't underestimate the psychological importance of being with families who have been through this, who now have one, two, three beautiful children... from Korea, from China. It is healing and inspiring to look into their little faces and watch them look back, an unspoken covenant that awaits a lifetime of unique challenges for these children from another culture. We will be a multi-ethnic family, and we must be prepared for what that truly means.
We're expecting. And we've waited a long time to be able to say that. |
