Operator, information please.

The application has been sitting on the table, missing only a single piece of information. But our coordinator has been on vacation and the form goes incomplete. It’s not too long before that empty line on the form begins to feel unpleasant. As long as I have waited to actually start this process such simple delays are tests of my patience. The issue is that I’m not sure of the age range Andrew and I are eligible to adopt from in China, and this lack of information feels like a missing tooth. A useless space that is raw and sensitive. While we wait part of me grows jealous. The coordinator has her daughter already, she’s enjoying the benefits of motherhood while I try to answer questions like, “Why do you want to adopt from China?” I calm down by reminding myself that I’ll get there too someday. Just like us, our coordinator had to answer those questions too. So I settle with the single email and the single voicemail and wait.

This is a taste of the waiting to come, and as I start checking the email several times a day I know I’m not handling it well. What will I be like when the waiting only gets more intense? I consider apologizing to Andrew in advance, knowing that I’ll probably be unbearable sometime in the future.

To keep myself occupied I plan on investing my energies in learning Mandarin, and in this fundraising kit I found on Etsy. It’s not that I don’t have enough to do already. I’m getting down to the wire on a digital mural work needs, and my fall semester of school has started. The homework is already piling up, but neither John Updike nor James Baldwin works relate to my present. So I have decided to involve myself in a few activities which do relate, like learning Mandarin and this writing here. There’s nothing new about expectant parents writing about their own experiences in adoption. Its part of a growing trend and in the pitifully small adoption section of any bookstore there’s always one or two books written by parents who have adopted. I will chronicle the experience as my husband and I go through the process of adoption. I hope this will help to ease to wait. Maybe this will answer questions for some of you about the process. It will also be a record for our children of their journey home. Whatever the outcome, this is our story of adoption.