There are probably a couple folks here who should hear this update, so here we go.
Remember when I posted, many years ago, about how the cosmos was messing with me? A summary: we went through in vitro fertilization, it didn’t work, so we started looking into adoption and ultimately decided to adopt from China. We gathered up all the paperwork we’d need. And then, on the very day the last document we needed arrived in the mail, my wife took a pregnancy test, and it was positive. At the time, we were flabbergasted, because we’d been so mentally prepared to adopt a girl, and what if the pregnancy resulted in a boy? What if the adopted second child was older than our first child? So many questions, but so much happiness.
That was in 2006.
The wait for adoption kept getting pushed farther and farther back. What used to take a year took 15 months, then 2 years, then three, then they threw up their hands and said, “we have no idea.” The little Torqueling was born, and grew, and finally got old enough to ask about her sister. She would talk on her play phone, and say, “It’s Baby Rachel’s momma, she says we can come get her.” We kept filling out new paperwork, since it expires every 18 months, and every time we had to pay to update it, we asked ourselves the gut-wrenching questions: should we really stick with it? We only ever expected one child in the first place, should we give up? It was painful. We cried over it a lot. It came down to feelings: to me, Baby Rachel was a real person, a baby who actually existed somewhere. I would only give up on the adoption if I could write a letter to her, telling her that we weren’t coming to get her. And I could never do that. Never even tried.
And so, time marched on. The little Torqueling is now six years old. And finally, yesterday, our dossier was matched with a child in China. She is 18 months old. She has never been in foster care; she was found on the steps of the orphanage when she was one day old, and she has stayed there ever since, which just breaks my heart. I want so badly to rush over there, scoop her up, sing to her, blow zurburts in her tummy and whiskerwhisker her nose. I want her to know that she has been loved every minute of her life, even before we knew her. I want her to be able to touch her sister’s face. I want to give her a big crazy family with cousins and aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas. And I want to feel her sleep on my chest full of contentment and relief that she is finally, at long last, home.
We have a kid, half a world away. It’s crazy. But for seven years, it’s been meant to be
I assume you will be heading over there to pick her up? When is the big trip?