Anniversary and deadline

The date isn't exactly right, but two years ago, on the Friday of Labor Day Weekend, I made my first call to my adoption agency. Although I didn't know it at the time, that call started my journey to Owen.

I have off on Fridays in the summer, so in 2006 I was using my Fridays to do adoption research. I had contacted a bunch of agencies and received info packets or gone to open houses, when a Google search on "Vietnam adoption" turned up my future agency. I read about their Vietnam program -- Vietnam was on my list of potential countries, along with Guatemala and Taiwan -- and the agency looked good. So I gave them a call and had a great chat with the woman who would become my adoption social worker.

Two years ago, when I asked how long the wait was, she said they had waiting children at the orphanage. (This is an adoption term for children cleared for adoption when there aren't paperwork-ready parents to match them with; in general, the reserve is the case -- "waiting families" have paperwork ready and are hoping for children to enter orphanages and be cleared for adoption.) After hearing nothing but lengthy waits from every agency I'd called, to think that they had kids waiting for their new families was very encouraging.

Of course, we all know how it turned out. Nothing in international adoption is predictable, and I ended up waiting...and waiting...and waiting. But darn, was it worth it, because I got the kid I was supposed to get.

When I called my future agency, Owen's birth mother was in the final weeks of her pregnancy. It sometimes blows my mind to think of how all the planets aligned.

So two years after making that phone call, here I am, watching Owen and Ray nap on the couch and thinking I'm just about the luckiest person in the world. And that's after this morning, when Owen jammed a fork in the side of a Barq's root beer can and made a "fountain" in the kitchen.

On some not so happy news, my anniversary runs up against September 1, a sad day for many folks, as it's the day that US-Vietnam adoptions are suspended till further notice. I'm still on the waiting families email list from my agency -- they're a little slow to clean up their lists -- and from a message I received a few weeks ago, it looked like they didn't expect to make any more referrals before Sept. 1. (The US-VN agreement said that as long as you had a referral of a child by Sept. 1, you could finish your adoption, but if you didn't have a referral, your paperwork would be returned to you, good night and good luck.) My agency said waiting families could either wait out a new Vietnam-US agreement (no idea how long that will be -- the last time was a couple years), or consider switching to their Russian program.

Changing countries isn't that simple. You have to do new paperwork, pay new fees, and take your place in a new line. It's of course an option, but I really feel for the families that didn't make the deadline -- more delays, more expense, having to get your head around a different way of building your family than you'd planned.

I don't doubt that there are problems with Vietnam adoption (documented here), but not all agencies and orphanages are involved in corrupt practices, and it's so sad that the bad apples are spoiling it for those that conduct their adoptions ethically. And it's sad that months after the US Embassy report, the US government and Vietnam couldn't come to an agreement to let some adoption agencies continue to operate. We saw so many beautiful children at the orphanage and they all deserve permanent homes. And we've met some of our agency's waiting families who were far back on the line compared to us.

So I'm taking some time today to remember that phone call two years ago and be thankful that I made it when I did, and that I'm where I am today: lucky, lucky, lucky beyond words.