Hiawatha

One of the things that make international adoption such a gas is the myriad of forms, documents and exams that you have to complete in order to qualify for parenthood. One of the things my beloved Ruth at the SW agency "forgot" to tell me I needed in the state of Georgia is an online parenting course that is worth 8 credit hours. I have no idea how much all of the other paperwork I've filled out is worth or who sets the standards for these credits. I think I could probably qualify for a doctorate at this stage. I'm sure I could find out about the standards and committees in charge of these things if I dug deep enough, but at this point, they tell me to fill out a form, take a course, get a shot or drop my drawers for this adoption and I pretty much do it. I don't care if it's interesting, meaningful, or educational. I'm an automaton now. I may weep tears of frustration while doing it, but I will sit down and hammer it out. The bloom is off the rose.

So Justin and I have to take this online course which is about 19 different chapters and a slide show on each chapter with homework questions that you must turn in to your social worker. So, once informed that this is another necessity in the obtaining of B the G, I diligently sat down at the computer to tackle it. I knew I was in trouble when the first instruction given to me in Chapter 1, The Image of Your Child is to draw a picture of your future baby. I do believe I said out loud, "That is the stupidest thing ever." and skipped ahead onto Question 2, which asks you question about your drawing. Peeking ahead, I realize all of the question in Chapter 1 are about this picture of your future baby and different aspects of your feelings about what your child will look like. Now I'm no dummy. You can't be to apply for international adoption. In fact they should offer a degree in it. Perhaps a doctorate.... I know they are trying to prepare you for the fact that your future child is probably not going to resemble you in any way. If you have made it this far in international adoption, and you haven't considered this possibility, you really shouldn't be allowed to go any further.

I'm going to brag a little here and tell you there are a lot of things I can be rated as marginally good to pretty competant in doing. I'm quite good at training my neurotic pound puppy who already knows how to come, sit, roll over and high five. I can change all the locks in my house and key them the same. I can make a banana bread that will make you smack your lips and I can recommend a wine to go with pretty much anything you're eating. But I can't draw. Even my stick figures look like I did them with my left-hand. I'm right-handed. But here I am stuck with my credit hours to fulfill so I am forced to draw a picture of my future baby. If I could figue out how to scan and post something one day, I will because what I drew was...a papoose. I drew a face and then the head sort or went all the way around the baby. I stuck in a little comma-like chin to differentiate between the head and the body - clever that - and there was my baby. And strangely, I recognized this baby. It looked just like a little black-eyed papoose from my Hiawatha book I read as a kid, albeit much, much more poorly illustrated. I put a feather coming out of the head part, just to go along with the theme. I spent a lot of time on the feather. It was much easier for me to draw as I know what feathers look like.

Now I have to answer questions about the drawing. Questions like "What part of the drawing did you spend the most time on?" That one was easy. But then it asks me "Why?' And "What does this tell you?" I sepnt a lot of time on the feather coming out of B the G's head because it's the only thing I was comfortable drawing. It's a really lame answer. It tells me that I'm a rotten drawr-er. I am failing already.

Next question - "Is it what you want?" No! I wish I could draw a beautiful chubba wubba baby with spit bubbles in a Gymboree onesie giving me the thumbs up. But if somebody stuck this little Hiawatha in my arms and said "Here's your baby." I know I would smooth his little feather, change his leather diapers and saddle up my pinto pony for the long flight home. And then I think A-Ha! Maybe I actually have passed the test, even with my body-deprived picture of B the G. I am thinking about the faceless baby of my future and know that I'll be ok not having any clue or concern with what the child looks like. I am open to the glorious mystery of it, and I am thinking exactly as an adoptive mother should be. At least for Chapter 1.

Damn you, Ruth!

God, she's like Lex Luthor to my Superman. I get the following from her today after I have pestered her only once about when my homestudy will be ready.

Sue is working on your study. We need some paperwork. We need a copy
of your birth certificates, marriage license and divorce decrees and
your certificate you took the online training course "Eyes Wide Open".
In the China adoption we did not need these because we were just
updating your move here but for this one we have to have those.

Now I called this woman in early August to inquire about my update and what I would need. Why, Ruth, why couldn't you have pulled my files then and told me I would need to get these documents to you? It just makes me hate you more and feel like you are even less qualified than I originally thought to do your job. Are other adopting parents working with this agency having as much trouble with this waterhead as I am? I tried to call the director today after I received the email to complain and ask that my case be transferred to someone else within the agency. But of course she is on vacation and her pleasant-voiced message referred all callers to her administrative assistant Ruth if they needed immediate assistance. Is Ruth vastly overworked and the agency underfunded to hire someone to help her? Probably. But here I have to project my inner Peter Parker and say "Not my problem." Yes, I know this attitude got his Uncle Ben killed blah, blah, blah. It's going to kill me if I keep having to deal with this ridiculously incompetant woman.

I'm calming down now, but I was so filled up with frustration when I got this email that tears literally popped out of my eyes. Not the rolling down the cheek kind, but the angry kind that seem to leap out of your face. I called everyone I could think of to talk me down and no one is available. Dear old blog, you will have to play therapist for now.

Does encountering numerous brick walls and hurdles in the quest to get to the thing you want signal that maybe you should proceed with caution in obtaining your goal, that maybe this thing isn't right for you and the universe is giving you plenty of opportunity to back out? Or does it mean that nothing worth getting is easy and if you want it that bad, you are going to have to chew glass to get it? I know this is just a very minor issue in finishing my homestudy, and of course I will complete the course, whatever it is, and get the paperwork to Rrrruth, but all of these bumps, little and big crop up at every corner. Is that the lesson? That it's never smooth sailing in getting a kid, having a kid, raising a kid? I'm trying to find the lesson in these bumps to make sense of it all, the difficulty, the frustration, the hurt and the anger that patches my road to starting my family. Because if I don't look for the lesson, let alone consider the possible answers, I will cave in emotionally. There HAS to be a reason. To persevere with this, I'm forced to be philosophical about it. Oh, man the next person that tells me how easy their adoption process or pregnancy was is going to get a sharp stick in the eye from me....

Time to chew more glass....

The Dark Worry

We had the last homestudy for our Russia update completed on September 14 and now I get to bounce in my seat for awhile until I receive the final notarized copy in the mail. I have to be very patient with this part. The last time I went through this with my social work agency, I was really under the gun and trying to submit my updated homestudy before May of 2006 (!) to meet the new China deadlines which placed more restrictions on who can and can't adopt from their country. People of a certain age, income or those with more than one marriage were in this newly despicable group and I would have had to get right in line with them with my second marriage on record.

I went around and around with my agency trying to get them to speed it up. Eventually, I cc'd the director on an email to Ruth, the AA in charge of my file. I got it toute suite after that, but of course in the process, made an eternal nemesis of dear, pokey Ruth. At the time, thinking I'd never need her services again, I thought good riddance and carried on with the rest of my day. Doesn' t the universe work in mysterious ways to jam a good lesson back in your face when you haven't learned it? So of course, three months later, I'm back in touch with Ruth trying to get her to help me transfer my information to Russia. Needless to say, Ruth isn't very warm, fuzzy or fast in anything she does with me now and I'll just bite my knuckles until it gets to the ridiculous point. I am paying her and she is providing a service for me so eventually she has to pony up. But I should have stayed on her good side.

That's the dark worry for adopting parents with this whole process. You have so many questions and concerns and you are paying dearly for every step of this adoption and it never seems to be as 1-2-3 easy as they first lay out to you when you are shopping agencies. So there are times when you want to explode and raise hell and ask why no one has gotten back to you with an answer about immigration forms or you ask two people in the agency the same question and they each give you a different answer. This is where I start to get a little crazy and the customer service part of me begs to be...serviced. But I dare not get short, snippy or curt with this group because in the back of my mind, I know that they hold the key to the door that's going to get me to Baby the Great. They could lose my file, never receive my email, or worst of all...the dark worry - assign me a colicky, two-headed monster that is not going to come anywhere near to my vision of Baby the Great. I can just see them holding the phone two feet away from their ear while I am hollering at the other end about why it's taking so long to get an answer. "Oh yes, Ms. Burdash we have the perfect baby for you...Hah aha haahah." I've voiced it, we all think it. I want a darling baby, a cute baby, a healthy baby. And if I have to suck up my temper and treat people whose service I think is lousy like they are the bees knees, then suck up I must.

Again, it's all part of the bigger lesson I am learning here as I shorten the distance between me and B the G. You would think, reading this, that I have some sort of Medusa like demeanor, but honestly I don't. It's a stressful process, made worse by the possibility of the rug being pulled out from under you at any time. And honestly some people I've encountered are truly slack about doing their jobs, and unfortunately for me they are tied in with my progress in adopting a child. Which is not to say there aren't also some truly heroic people in this business who have provided the best service I could have asked for. I guess it's like all aspects of daily life I guess, you deal with winners and losers, slackers and professionals. heroes and hangers on. I just want it all smooth and easy for MY adoption. And by god I should know by now it never will work that way.