The Interminable Fog

There's no choice but to keep moving forward...slowly.

In what will come as little shock to most of you reading this, I don’t relinquish control all that well. I do even worse in situations where I don’t have control to begin with and am subject entirely to outside forces. To that end, the entire adoption process has been an exercise in personal growth. I’ve had to really embrace the Serenity Prayer, though my brain ends up distorting it a bit along the way.

In my first post, I had declared we were done waiting. It was so forcefully declarative! The hope was that putting it out in the world would manifest some progress, but we’ve had some mixed results (and messages so far). We’re in a heavy fog of process, politics, and personal vendettas¹ that doesn’t show signs of lifting any time soon.

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I’ve buried the lede a bit here: we got to meet our daughter² for the first time on Tuesday, May 23, 2023! After meeting the social worker who is responsible for the program and is the main liaison for us in processing applications and paperwork, we met with the CEO of the hospital/orphanage where our daughter is. We exchanged some pleasantries before being taken to where our baby girl lives. More specifically, we were taken to what amounts to a large multi-purpose room just outside a series of other rooms where all the kids are, where a caregiver was waiting, holding her. As much as we had prepared for the moment, we still couldn’t anticipate all the nuances and logistics of that first encounter. We didn’t have any grand illusions of a Hollywood style scene where she’d come running to us with open arms…but seeing her scream in abject terror for about an hour-and-a-half straight was still pretty heartbreaking. We are so heartened by the fact that she is so clearly connected to her caregivers because it means that a) she’s really being cared for and b) we know she can attach…but this transition is going to be hard. The silver lining for Day 1 was that she seemed to connect immediately with Akila, going to her repeatedly for comfort. At one point, as she was crawling away from me and Nishi, she circled Akila a few times and just buried her head in Akila’s lap. Day 2 went a little better, as we got the staff to actually facilitate some trust building with a gradual transition. She was still (rightfully) terrified of the strangers taking her from the people responsible for feeding her, bathing her, and keeping her safe…but we got moments of calm and some cuddles out of desperation for some comfort and soothing.³ Ayana served as comic relief, running around the room and occasionally coming over to tickle Anika’s feet. Akila continued her role as Anika whisperer. Overall, it showed us enough of a path forward. Day 3 felt like a little bit of a step back, but partially because her caregivers seemed to stick around longer. I think they were saying their own goodbyes because we had agreed that tomorrow would be the day that we take custody.

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I have to remind myself that milestone is ultimately what we’ve been aiming toward and not get stuck in everything that comes after, but it’s been hard. We’re still getting so many mixed signals about processes, who can do what, what documents we actually need that it’s hard to even know where to exert some pressure. On that first day, the social worker - the person primarily responsible for our case and someone who is supposed to be our advocate - estimated it would take another 25 days to get a passport here, even though regulations require it taking no longer than 10. When we said as much, he just laughed at us. That’s just the way things are here, and they are so afraid of risking their long term viability that they were spooked at even the suggestion that we call to move appointments up since we’re actually here in person. We’re doing a bit of a tightrope walk right now as we follow protocols while advocating for ourselves via third parties. The thing about fog is that there isn’t anything you can do to clear it on the outside.⁴ So we continue to put one foot in front of the other with our arms extended out hoping we’re still moving in the right direction without crashing into anything. Either way, we become a family of 5 tomorrow and we will figure all the rest of it out later.

1. I’m saving the details of all this for a retrospective in a few days.

2. I promise, a formal introduction is coming soon.

3. It was hard enough trying to do this transition/bonding in a room that is directly next to where she lives and where she knows her caregivers are. It was so much harder because every time we’d get her calm, someone she recognized would open the door and the screaming would begin anew.

4. …unless you’re the Beijing Weather Modification Office.