Alright, so the calls for more information have begun to roll in. So I will attempt to let you all know what is going on in one on-topic, stick-to-the-subject, sure-to-be-dry post.
You already read that I got up one night and made a totally random phone call to a woman whose number I received soon after Trace passed, but threw into a hand made solid maple file (that is so full it actually tips over when you open the drawer). The woman answered and told us that there was a pilot program "just beginning" with Rwanda and we would be one of the first families through. They were only taking something like 8 families into the program. So, I met her the following day, she was very informative and kind and happened to have a similar steam-roll-through-it personality as mine. This woman has since been described to me as a cross between Mother Theresa and a loose cannon. I liked her even more with that.
Immediately (read: next day) we were on the road to getting a homestudy (a requirement for any US adoption) completed. I was warned that this process can take on average 6 to 8 months, but we plowed through it in 3 weeks. The social worker was great and responsive, completing everything in record time.
Tomorrow we get to hand deliver (avoids all those "Woops, we never actually received that" kind of responses that tend to slow things down) our I600A along with our completed homestudy and all sorts of other official looking forms all the way to St. Albans, VT. This is the home of what used to be called the INS, now renamed the USCIS, although no one calls it that.
There we get fingerprinted for a criminal check or something... and then another wait begins. Since the Immigration load isn't really too hefty in Vermont, we are told the turn around time is actually quite fast and everything should be all set in 2 weeks to send on to the Rwandan Consulate.
Once that happens and they approve our Dossier for adoption then we will be matched with a child. After a thorough medical examination, we will be able to approve the child. Then I can travel whenever to Rwanda and meet this child...
Next everything is going to the Rwandan court system for approval and finalization. We are told that at this point it really has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with their system being sure that the child is orphaned with no known relatives, etc. I will be in Kigali at this point, hoping that paperwork is going thru quickly and smoothly so I can get home to Scott and Ri and begin life as a family. We are warned though that many Africans don't really regard time as Americans do (good luck getting me to pay attention to the calendar when I get back!), so who knows how long it could take. I see 4 weeks start to finish. Just a prayer I am putting out... Anyone who wants to join me, please do.
In order for us to get home to the States, we need to travel to Nairobi, Kenya and apply for a visa with the US Embassy. Unless things for this are up and running in Rwanda by the time i get there- which could happen, apparently and would admittedly make things a wee bit simpler.
What? Oh... where am I staying? Hmmm... I don't know yet. But I will. Soon. I am blessed to have met numbers of very warm, kind people willing to help me in Rwanda. I have no doubt that everything is as it should be and that I will be cared for well.
Oh, you want to know about the child? Boy? girl? Age? Well, in typical form, we do not know gender. We are asking for a newly born child.
As for diseases, well... yes, I have anti-malarials. And antibiotics to carry in just in case. And yes, I have insurance that travels with me. No problem. Now all I have to do is figure out how much I can take and what I can bring in... the food may be a wee tad problematic, I don't know. But I do know I was informed to not eat anything even remotely healthy like veggies or fruits... unless well fried and processed. I am thinking a few cases of Cliff bars. What would you do?
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
Solstice
I am typing here with the moon over my shoulder... a moon so very ripe and heavy, even closer to the horizon than usual as the ring around her measures an easy five times her normal circumference. Never in my 33 years here have I seen anything like it. Nothing even remotely close.
It is Solstice, and tonight the dark is present for as long as the light shines. It brings an offering to go in to the quiet still places, go into the dark shadowy crevasses within and be with what is there... so often we try to run from the dark toward the light. Away from grief toward joy.
But the grief offers immense gifts... it is only in being willing to go into those dark held places, into the grief that healing can begin. For grief cannot exist without love.
This year Ariah and I made Solstice cards by hand. The greeting read "Even on the Darkest of Nights, the Light Returns."
There has been nothing more dark than the loss of my son and womb. Nothing more dark than the brutal massacre of 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days. And yet out of both grows new life and new hope. Somehow there is forgiveness and healing.
I look at the moon this night and I have to wonder if this is the night that our child is being born on the other side of the world. Next week we go to the equivalent of the INS to file our forms. Two weeks after that everything should be all set to send our dossier to Rwanda. Our fundraising efforts are in full swing and our event is being planned for the 6th of January. We are still being told that a child will be assigned in late January and travel can commence any time afterwards.
It is true, the dark has much to offer. Without this particular dark loss of Trace there would be no light of this child who awaits us in Rwanda.
Tonight I celebrate the return of the light, shown to me at this moment as the ring around the moon.
It is Solstice, and tonight the dark is present for as long as the light shines. It brings an offering to go in to the quiet still places, go into the dark shadowy crevasses within and be with what is there... so often we try to run from the dark toward the light. Away from grief toward joy.
But the grief offers immense gifts... it is only in being willing to go into those dark held places, into the grief that healing can begin. For grief cannot exist without love.
This year Ariah and I made Solstice cards by hand. The greeting read "Even on the Darkest of Nights, the Light Returns."
There has been nothing more dark than the loss of my son and womb. Nothing more dark than the brutal massacre of 800,000 Tutsis in 100 days. And yet out of both grows new life and new hope. Somehow there is forgiveness and healing.
I look at the moon this night and I have to wonder if this is the night that our child is being born on the other side of the world. Next week we go to the equivalent of the INS to file our forms. Two weeks after that everything should be all set to send our dossier to Rwanda. Our fundraising efforts are in full swing and our event is being planned for the 6th of January. We are still being told that a child will be assigned in late January and travel can commence any time afterwards.
It is true, the dark has much to offer. Without this particular dark loss of Trace there would be no light of this child who awaits us in Rwanda.
Tonight I celebrate the return of the light, shown to me at this moment as the ring around the moon.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
It's True What They Say...
A child grows in your heart. I guess my lifelong marvel at the process of conception, pregnancy, and birth led me to always discount this claim from those who were adopting. I honestly thought that people who said this were saying it to make themselves feel better. In my mind, there was no way an idea, an imagining, could measure up to the mysterious miracle of life swelling within a woman's body.
That is what it is for me at this point, right? Just an idea? Heck, we do not even know if this child has been born yet. There is a soul out there, incubating within a womb, or perhaps just recently placed in an orphanage crib, that is making its way to us, but right now although it may be a real child, it is just an idea to me.
Or is it? Maybe not. How can a real child be only an idea?
To think that one process of gestating can't compare to another way of gestating was shortsighted. I am just discovering how unbelievably spiritual and completely mysterious this process is. When I sit still in the silence and close my eyes and clear my thoughts, I find I can feel this baby. I didn't try to do this, I just discovered it. It is as if I can travel to where this child exists on a spirit-level and meet it there, even begin to get to know it. I remarked to Scott the other night just how surprisingly similar this is to what I have experienced with getting to know my last two children who in fact did gestate within my womb. I did not get to know them by feeling an elbow jabbing my side, or a head grinding and turning repetitively under my rib. While I loved the physicality of gestation, if I wanted to truly tune into my child and feel who they were, even communicate with them, I had to meet the baby on a spirit-energetic level.
I guess it makes sense that I can communicate with this baby who is making his/her way to our home and hearts. I don't know why I am so surprised with it... I have long known that people communicate with each other even when they are not in proximity. We accept it as fact that animals know when their owner is coming home long before the owner arrives. Mystery, but fact just the same. We know a mother can drop everything she is in the middle of and bolt upstairs without thinking, to save her child from some perilous activity, all from just an unexplainable "feeling." Of course then, I can get to know this baby in some mysterious way that is beyond what we can explain.
And so, as I unfold to this child in my mind and in my being, I can feel this child also unfolding in my heart. When I walk into the orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda and the Sister takes me over to where our baby lies, I know without a doubt that I will recognize him. The mother who has just pushed the last shoulder of her baby from between her legs will pull her baby up to her bosom and talk gently to him, looking into his eyes. And she will know him, will not be surprised with him in the least. In awe, yes. Sky high, yes. Exhausted to be sure. And she will say, "It is as if I have known him forever." And in many ways, I will have.
That is what it is for me at this point, right? Just an idea? Heck, we do not even know if this child has been born yet. There is a soul out there, incubating within a womb, or perhaps just recently placed in an orphanage crib, that is making its way to us, but right now although it may be a real child, it is just an idea to me.
Or is it? Maybe not. How can a real child be only an idea?
To think that one process of gestating can't compare to another way of gestating was shortsighted. I am just discovering how unbelievably spiritual and completely mysterious this process is. When I sit still in the silence and close my eyes and clear my thoughts, I find I can feel this baby. I didn't try to do this, I just discovered it. It is as if I can travel to where this child exists on a spirit-level and meet it there, even begin to get to know it. I remarked to Scott the other night just how surprisingly similar this is to what I have experienced with getting to know my last two children who in fact did gestate within my womb. I did not get to know them by feeling an elbow jabbing my side, or a head grinding and turning repetitively under my rib. While I loved the physicality of gestation, if I wanted to truly tune into my child and feel who they were, even communicate with them, I had to meet the baby on a spirit-energetic level.
I guess it makes sense that I can communicate with this baby who is making his/her way to our home and hearts. I don't know why I am so surprised with it... I have long known that people communicate with each other even when they are not in proximity. We accept it as fact that animals know when their owner is coming home long before the owner arrives. Mystery, but fact just the same. We know a mother can drop everything she is in the middle of and bolt upstairs without thinking, to save her child from some perilous activity, all from just an unexplainable "feeling." Of course then, I can get to know this baby in some mysterious way that is beyond what we can explain.
And so, as I unfold to this child in my mind and in my being, I can feel this child also unfolding in my heart. When I walk into the orphanage in Kigali, Rwanda and the Sister takes me over to where our baby lies, I know without a doubt that I will recognize him. The mother who has just pushed the last shoulder of her baby from between her legs will pull her baby up to her bosom and talk gently to him, looking into his eyes. And she will know him, will not be surprised with him in the least. In awe, yes. Sky high, yes. Exhausted to be sure. And she will say, "It is as if I have known him forever." And in many ways, I will have.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Things that go bump in the night
Okay, okay... I realize I have yet to fill in the details of what the heck we are doing with this adoption thing. I am finding that backtracking is hard to do though- to write journal entires in such a way that doesn't really chronicle a day, but rather writing an entry telling a story that has already happened... it is just sorta... well... counter-intuitive. Do I even make sense? I'm talking about writing, for example,
"June 19, 1985: Dear Diary,
On May 3rd, 1985 here is what happened....." Makes no sense, right?
Well speaking of sense... I don't know that I do anymore (make sense). I am on so many hormone pills, what with trying to induce lactation and all... plus I gotta admit I'm kinda punchy after homeschooling all day and then swigging down a cocktail of caffeine and mate (read "mah-tay") in hopes of keeping my eyes open long enough to dig out from under the heap of sticky notes on my desk. I can't read half of them, and the ones I can make out don't tell me a thing about what I am supposed to be doing...
Anyway, I will get back to the more serious job of explaining our journey at some point, but for now I had to just had to report in with some musings on the things that swirl around in the vortex I once thought of as my head.
We are planning this fund-raiser to help with adoption costs, and as if I have nothing better to think about (like preparing my home and heart for a baby) I lie awake at night thinking fund-raiser stuff... the stuff Lizzy is supposed to be worrying about, not me.. The "coordinator" as I call her, Lizzy, asked that I send her the list of things I can't stop contemplating in the wee hours. See below:
Things that go "bump" in the night: For Lizzy:
"June 19, 1985: Dear Diary,
On May 3rd, 1985 here is what happened....." Makes no sense, right?
Well speaking of sense... I don't know that I do anymore (make sense). I am on so many hormone pills, what with trying to induce lactation and all... plus I gotta admit I'm kinda punchy after homeschooling all day and then swigging down a cocktail of caffeine and mate (read "mah-tay") in hopes of keeping my eyes open long enough to dig out from under the heap of sticky notes on my desk. I can't read half of them, and the ones I can make out don't tell me a thing about what I am supposed to be doing...
Anyway, I will get back to the more serious job of explaining our journey at some point, but for now I had to just had to report in with some musings on the things that swirl around in the vortex I once thought of as my head.
We are planning this fund-raiser to help with adoption costs, and as if I have nothing better to think about (like preparing my home and heart for a baby) I lie awake at night thinking fund-raiser stuff... the stuff Lizzy is supposed to be worrying about, not me.. The "coordinator" as I call her, Lizzy, asked that I send her the list of things I can't stop contemplating in the wee hours. See below:
Things that go "bump" in the night: For Lizzy:
who's gonna set up the place?
who's gonna clean up the place?
is fred really gonna decorate?
who's gonna magistrate?
what about signage?
what about wattage?
who's doing silent auction?
this is real, this adoption?
when do I do email invites?
should we put up christmas lights?
how on earth do we get people there?
my god... I forgot to change my underwear.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
How did we get here?
Nearly two years ago now, my husband Scott and I conceived a very wanted and welcomed child. Sadly, our dear son Trace Oak was born still after a catastrophic uterine rupture took his life at term. I also lost my womb on that same day... leaving us with the question of how and when our next child would come.
We had contemplated adoption- both domestic and international- but we had a few kind women offer to do a gestational surrogacy for us and over the year since Trace's death and we had agreed to stay open to what presented itself, to not push the river so-to-speak, and to watch for the doors to open. We were led to believe that was a surrogacy....
One night just a few weeks ago, though, I was in our bed reading a story to our soon-to-be-six year old daughter Ariah. Even at this age, she still depends on us to put her to sleep (a current frustration of mine, but perhaps a different blog) and it was quite late on a Sunday. But you know how somehow it is possible to have your lips move and eject sound that forms the words to a story all while your mind goes over the details of more adult topics? Well, my mouth was moving, my mind drifting, and out of nowhere came this voice, "Go call Hope."
Now I had never spoken to Hope; a midwife friend had passed me her number in the wake of Trace's death some 10 months prior. As soon as I registered this strange command, I resisted it. "This is a Sunday night. I am reading a story to my daughter. I cannot call some woman I do not know in the middle of a story on Sunday night! I will call later."
"Call her NOW." The voice responded.
"That is ludicrous," I argued. "Nothing is going to change between now and tomorrow."
On and on this futile process went (still while moving my lips to form the book's words) until finally I paused the story and moved into the dark of the bathroom to make the call.
We had contemplated adoption- both domestic and international- but we had a few kind women offer to do a gestational surrogacy for us and over the year since Trace's death and we had agreed to stay open to what presented itself, to not push the river so-to-speak, and to watch for the doors to open. We were led to believe that was a surrogacy....
One night just a few weeks ago, though, I was in our bed reading a story to our soon-to-be-six year old daughter Ariah. Even at this age, she still depends on us to put her to sleep (a current frustration of mine, but perhaps a different blog) and it was quite late on a Sunday. But you know how somehow it is possible to have your lips move and eject sound that forms the words to a story all while your mind goes over the details of more adult topics? Well, my mouth was moving, my mind drifting, and out of nowhere came this voice, "Go call Hope."
Now I had never spoken to Hope; a midwife friend had passed me her number in the wake of Trace's death some 10 months prior. As soon as I registered this strange command, I resisted it. "This is a Sunday night. I am reading a story to my daughter. I cannot call some woman I do not know in the middle of a story on Sunday night! I will call later."
"Call her NOW." The voice responded.
"That is ludicrous," I argued. "Nothing is going to change between now and tomorrow."
On and on this futile process went (still while moving my lips to form the book's words) until finally I paused the story and moved into the dark of the bathroom to make the call.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Practicing
Well, I see how this blog thing is... I am supposed to be sleeping, or at the very least crossing things off from the seemingly unending "to-do-for-adoption" list. Sigh. Instead I am lurking around my own blog spot trying to figure out how things work, and deciding that I am decidely elderly since I can't figure out all these bells and whistles...
I was warned that a blog can eat up all your time, but I want to be able to update everyone, so I'll give it a whirl. Just know I am not trying to win any awards with my writing style, lol.
Tomorrow's to do list:
create real blog entry
pick up supplemental feeder for breastfeeding from adoption agency
call travel clinic to schedule meeting
research vaccines (again)
plan music for fundraiser
send paperwork to homestudy social worker
get going on dossier for Rwanda!
Oh, and take Ariah to homeschool meet-up, pick up play date, take puppy for a walk, get kids to chorus, make dinner, clean up, and do Christmas cards. Phew!
I was warned that a blog can eat up all your time, but I want to be able to update everyone, so I'll give it a whirl. Just know I am not trying to win any awards with my writing style, lol.
Tomorrow's to do list:
create real blog entry
pick up supplemental feeder for breastfeeding from adoption agency
call travel clinic to schedule meeting
research vaccines (again)
plan music for fundraiser
send paperwork to homestudy social worker
get going on dossier for Rwanda!
Oh, and take Ariah to homeschool meet-up, pick up play date, take puppy for a walk, get kids to chorus, make dinner, clean up, and do Christmas cards. Phew!
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