Get a Cup O' Joe . . . . this is a long one.

I know how the Gub’ment works . . . I’ve seen them in action. MANY times. When they threaten you with a big fat DENIED across ANYTHING you need from them, they mean it! I think they get bonuses based on how many things they can deny. So . . . . cut to Camera 1: Saturday, October 20, 2007. We are off to Charlotte to USCIS-Land. We are to be fingerprinted by the Feds. Yeah. With much anxiety, I recall my letter of appointment for these fingerprints. They are clear. VERY clear. If you cannot make this appointment, you must reschedule AHEAD of time. If you do not reschedule via email AHEAD of time and you do not appear, your I600A will automatically be denied. If you do not show up at your designated appointed time, your I600A will be denied. I know people who have worked with USCIS on other issues and they assure me that this is no joke. I believe them. It took me almost 3 months just to get a stupid appointment with them after they received my I600A. According to their processing times and notice in my letter, it will probably take them another 3 months to make a determination. Fine.

From my house to Charlotte is approximately a 3 hour drive. Our appointment is at 3pm. Not a problem. But oops! Our agency has scheduled a seminar titled “First Months Home” led by a panel of parents who are in various stages of the “being at home” phase. More about this later. That class was from10am to noon. I let the agency know that we might pull out a little early but we will still have plenty of time because the class is in Chapel Hill which is only a little over 2 hours from Charlotte. I figure if we left by 11:30 like I planned, we would have a 1.5 hour comfort zone in case the flying monkeys (think Wizard of Oz and the witch) were turned loose on the Interstate. For those of you lucky souls who have never had to travel between Greensboro and Charlotte on I85, you won’t understand the flying monkeys. And you won’t understand why I needed a 1.5 hour comfort zone. For those of you that HAVE made that trek, you already know what is coming.

Well, we didn’t leave the class when I wanted but were on the road at noon after cutting out a tiny bit early. That’s ok . . . an hour is plenty of time since everything else has gone so well in this adoption process so far (note to self: IT’S A TRAP!). I decided I could stop being Paranoid Patty. We zoom along on our journey until we both are hungry at the same time (this RARELY happens!). Daddy thinks it would be a good idea to sit down and eat inside Wendy’s rather than eating on the road. Hmm. . . . my gut check says no, but my brain is feeling pretty smart so I agree that we have plenty of time still. Leaving Wendy’s we have 30 minutes of comfort zone time and this is a little too close for comfort for me. Not to worry . . . no flying monkeys yet.

*SCREACHING TO A HALT* A few miles from Spencer North Carolina, my worst fears come to fruition. Traffic is at a dead stop. NOOOOOOO, not on I85! The entire interstate is stalled. This is not good. Not good at all. And no, we do not have GPS. Traffic starts to inch. Perhaps it was a wreck that they are clearing as we speak. No need to panic, but what the hell. I panic anyway because I’m long overdue for a demonic possession. Traffic is running at 8mph. I panic more. I start to cry. Daddy is getting noticeably uncomfortable. Good . . . now we match. I start leering at him. It is all his fault. I can’t blame the poor people who had the wreck. That would be rude. But wait . . . traffic is being detoured. WE ARE SAVED! But wait . . . it is through the tiny town of Spencer with stop lights at every other block. The speed limit is 35mph, thanks for the warning, but given that the entire interstate is being routed through this tiny town, we are not moving AGAIN! I start beating the steering wheel. The profanity is getting worse. I’m pretty sure I even growled a few times at the stupid other drivers that were in between me and becoming a mom. I think I scared a few. Turns out, I reckon I became their flying monkey! Daddy has enough of dealing with me and gets in the back of the truck. How stupid was that!? If by some act of God we start moving, then I have this dude in a leg brace (he just had knee surgery, more about that later) in the bed of a truck going 80mph down the interstate. Now he is really on my doo doo list. I screech louder. I purposefully keep hitting the brake to signify how unhappy I am with him. He gets the message. He orders me out of the driver’s side. I vomit some choice words at him and get in the passenger’s side because as luck would have it, cars started to move. Not sure if they were trying to get away from us or not. Suffice it to say, we won’t be including that on our “family videos” to Viet Nam. In defense of me (and God knows I need one) I was dealing with emotions and illogical thought processes that were the root of my behavior and reactions. More about those later. Daddy takes charge. He flies by about 15 or so cars and cuts in front of an Semi that was not turning at the green light for no logical reason. We are back on I85. We get about 2-3 miles and see the junction of business 85 and I 85 where the wreck was. THAT part of the traffic flow was at a dead stop and people were out of their cars. It must have been bad. My only saving grace was that I at least had the presence of mind to say a little prayer for those poor people involved because I knew back when traffic was rerouted that it must have been bad enough for someone to die. We were 45 minutes from USCIS. Still dealing with some of the slower traffic due to the accident, I knew we wouldn’t even be close. It was 2:40pm. We would never make it. We didn’t give up though. I decided I was desperate enough to grab someone’s ankles and beg if I had to for them to let us in. Daddy would vouch for the fact that I would spew green stuff and spin my head around if they didn’t take my prints. We arrive at 3:30pm. They were closing at 4pm.

But WAIT . . . .what is this? There is NO ONE in line. There were about 6 workers and no “customers”! It was obvious to the lady covering the desk that I had been crying. I had my letters in hand telling her I knew about the rules and we left in plenty of time but there was this horrible accident. She knew all about it. It was breaking news. People died in that accident. She told me to relax, it wasn’t a problem. So I asked about all the verbiage and the horror stories about DENIALS, being on time, etc. She laughed. Said they just put that in there and she didn’t know why! I wasn’t laughing. It wasn’t funny at all to me. I was horrible to my husband, we drove at dangerous speeds, and I lost a few EQ points just to do what I was told so that I wasn’t one of those victims of the Feds that people have shared morbid tales about. So that I wouldn’t lose another baby. It wasn’t funny. I get my prints taken. Daddy gets his prints taken. I feel hungover. I feel angry. I feel like I need to get off government premises immediately.

On the drive back, Daddy is fine and tries to distract me by chatting about inconsequential matters. It isn’t working well. I am in an emotional process and I can’t be interrupted. It is like taking clothing from the washer after the agitation cycle but before the rinse and spin cycle. I think back to the class from that morning. No one asked about attachment issues until I did. You know . . . the ones that everyone is writing about. The ones that have books written about them. The ones that make adopting a child from an orphanage a little scary even though you are going to do it anyway and pray that you have what it takes to raise a healthy, happy child that knows who mommy and daddy are and are capable of receiving the love the mommy and daddy want to give him/her. The attachment issues that keep coming up in blog after blog and book after book and website after website? Those issues. I needed to know about them so I could help my child when she gets home. So I could be the mom she deserves. THOSE are the issues I need to hear about. NOW! Without exception, the people on the panel said “What attachment issues?” They all adopted from different countries and were at different phases of being at home. One lady adopted a 2 yo and 4yo from Russia that had been in an orphanage since they were born. She said the 4 yo had some issues, but she felt they were largely language barriers. She said at age 9, she is showing some behavior that may be related to attachment, but were not certain. Regardless, none of what they dealt with would fall into the attachment issues category. I was told by all of them that if I am looking for something, I will surely find a smidge of behavior and swear it is attachment issue related. Then the director of our agency spoke up. She is the mother of 4 adopted children. She agreed 100%. She said that we don’t hear about the families that go smoothly because they don’t sell books on those. I think back to the emails I have exchanged with some loverly families who are home with their children from VN. NOT ONE OF THEM had attachment issues to work through. I know other PAPs are like me and only want to arm themselves with all the information to be the best parents they can be. I have read their blogs. They are loverly people. They must be a bit scared too. I don’t blame them. There is so much hype about these children from orphanages that for those of us who do not even know who our children are yet, we want to start protecting them now. I get it. Then there were the NOIDS I wrote about a few posts ago. Do you want to know how many hits I got from google searches from poor PAPs absolutely terrified about those? I did it too. I don’t blame them a bit. It is soul shredding to read those words when you are adopting a child from another part of the world. To go through what we go through only to be turned away by our own government and not allowed to bring our children home? It takes my breath away to think about it. But that isn’t the norm. It is very rare. And now, I trust that it is very rare.

I’m sitting in the truck on the way home thinking of how upset and anxious I have been through this process of becoming a mom. I am forced to look at the facts. Those facts include that I believe we have chosen the best agency for us. I absolutely trust them 1000%. They have been true from the very beginning. I have moved through the very beginning stage of adoption to dossier submission at lightening speed (well, in adoption world anyway) because I am driven and I’m with an agency that held my hand the entire way, coaching me on what to do next and how to get it done when I wanted it done. I have “met” some awesome people so far and I’m positive I will meet tons more. My agency’s ethics are beyond reproach. The other adopted families have been honest and forthcoming with info. They have no reason to lie to me. Those are the facts. So why was I so upset? Because I believed all the hype and propaganda. I’m pissed at the Feds for making statements they did not intend to back up. I’m pissed at the Feds because they have phones in buildings that I have been told for 2 months had no way to be contacted. How much anxiety could have been mitigated if only I had a way to call them and let them know what was going on? Why did they get to distribute communication that essentially had me convinced that I would be denied my child if I was a millisecond late? I’m furious with them for that. I’m angry about the horror stories I’ve been told about them. I’m upset that I have put so much focus on how to deal with my child’s attachment issues because from what I hear, I’d do better reading up on the country of VN. From what I understand, I’d do better focusing on preparing the nursery. From what I hear, I’d enjoy my husband more until the baby comes home. But what am I doing? I’m reacting to the REACTORS of the world. I’m reacting to the people that only share part of the information. I’m reacting to anticipatory anxiety brought on by feeding into the doomsday side of me that is connected to the doomsday side in others. And I am pissed off about that. For those of you starting on your adoption journey, please do yourselves a favor . . . . focus on why you are doing all the work you are doing and trust your instincts. It is ok to believe that it will work out. It is ok to believe in your agency. It is ok to believe you have what it takes to be a good parent. It is ok to decorate the nursery. It is ok to look at the baby section in Target. It is ok to think about names. It is ok to be happy after having lost a baby that you once carried. It is ok to believe that life ISN’T out to get you. It is ok to believe that other people want to see you with a child of your own just as much as you do. And it is ok to ignore all the negative people in and out of the adoption world who are raining on your parade. Which is what I am going to start doing. For four years I worked harder that I have for anything in my whole life to become a mom. Now . . .motherhood isn’t far from my doorstep. Instead of worrying about what attachment issues my child might have, I think I shall focus on getting mommy squared away emotionally to stop expecting the worst to happen. I think that would be a better gift to my daughter. I am a very intense person, not prone to frivolity. Well, at age 42, I think I am entitled and require a little frivolity, dammit! It is long overdue! I’ll fix the world later!

Thank you for reading, if you have made it this far. Those of you insightful creatures have probably figured out that my meltdown was only triggered by the backed up traffic on the way to the FBI and that I have been carrying a lot of baggage that I didn’t even realize. I feel like I just went to therapy. Good! I needed it.
Now . . . . how about those cute little hair bows I got for my girl!

P.S. I’d like to give a Shout Out to my friend whose child is in Guatemala. I feel silly carrying on about my stuff when she is in knots over two governments who can’t seem to get their doo doo together on the precious children in that country and let them get home to their parents. I think a revolution might be in order, my dear! I’m in!