The Long Wait

The Long Wait (TLW) as of May 2007

Well, for those of you out of the loop of China Adoptions, the wait times (from Log-In Date to Match) have been extending and extending far beyond our initial ideals.

When we first started the process, we were told it was 8-12 months til match. Then the official paperwork from our chosen agency was indicating 12-14 months. We were okay with that, so we started on the application and dossier process, which in itself could take 3-5 months (ha! It took us what? 7? 8 months? It's a blur.)

While we built our dossier, the waits started creeping upward. I was hearing rumors of two years fairly early (18-24 months), so I started telling people the wait could take up to two years, although that didn't stop some people from dancing about with glee and proclaiming it would take us "hardly any time at all" and that "the wait goes quicker than you think." ha! ha! Yes! They said that! hahhah

Okay, seriously, with times creeping further and further out, we are now hearing of possibly *three* years wait! I am trying to not feel too depressed about that. We have our spot in line and I'm holding on to that.

I do start worrying that the wait will extend to even longer and weird things will happen to the situation before we have our daughter matched and home. I have a dread of having to explain the situation to others. It's painful to have to somehow justify the long wait to others when we are even more frustrated and pained by the slow down. I am even more glad now that we haven't made any general announcements and having to deal with remarks from a larger pool of uninformed people. It's hard enough already with the people I keep in the loop asking "how the adoption is going." Well, I say, our paperwork is still sitting in a stack somewhere in China... Like, excuse me, it's not "going" anywhere; it's sitting there in line!!!!

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On a related note, I have found out in the last couple of months that some of our friends who wrote us reference letters have not been keeping it quiet as I had originally requested. We have random people offering us "help" and even our car mechanic (!!!? WTF?!) remarking that they had mentioned it to him... They even mentioned something in front of another acquaintance that we would never go out of our way to share personal information with. This is very disconcerting. Do they not think that our information is worthy of discretion, especially since we asked them to be discrete? I start feeling very irritable and a little panic-y that the info is being flung willy-nilly around the area.

On top of that (being confronted with people we don't know being privy to our private lives), I don't know how to bring this up with our friends. I am baffled that perhaps, somehow, they did not understand that we were not sharing this at random and would prefer they NOT share this with other people. !!!! For God's Sake! Even if someone is pregnant, they don't usually (often) immediately share the news with the entire god-d*mned world. Wait, there was that one acquaintance who had to share to the ENTIRE world when she was merely a month pregnant--you can imagine my self-restraint at that announcement-- But anyway! :) hehehe

Anyway, we hardly see these folks in private... and our shared couple time has shrunk. So when do I have a spare quiet moment to say something to them?? I also don't want to hit them over the head with it. I just want to inquire about what they thought we wanted them to do with that personal information, and ask them, politely, to restrain themselves...

*sigh* It's not as if my mother doesn't also talk to her friends. It's not as if I don't also make my own decisions about who to share this with. It's partly that I *am* private about my life. I have had too much of people talking about my life as if it belonged to them. It's also that we will wait two to three friggin' *years* and I don't feel like putting up with sh*t from nosy people while we wait and wait and wait and ...

It makes me sympathize with all those famous people about whom it's said," they are a deeply private person." Yeah, I get it. Just because somebody knows who you are or thinks they know you does not give the right to every last iota of personal information about you. If you have been reading, you know I hit on this topic a lot. I'm sure this won't be my last. :)

But how to redirect my well-meaning but apparently clueless friends? Maybe they didn't get the memo I thought they did? Maybe by "not sharing it with everyone," they thought, like, we meant every last person on the earth. Only a few hundred or so... Okay, I know my secrets are *not* safe with *them*...


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Surprised by Expectations

Interesting how I'm just going along, living my life in my post-LID, pre-adoption days, and run suddenly into those nefarious (or perhaps insidious) expectations of Bay-bee making.

Two different incidences:

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I was hanging out with some acquaintances before a regular event we all enjoy, chatting and eating a bite of dinner.

Suddenly, Ms. Therapist turned to me and asks: Can I ask you a personal question?

Well, now, that's a big tip-off that something rude and intrusive is coming down the pike, right? I should said No, God! Spare Me The Nosy Questions, right then and there. Instead I grimaced wryly and said: People ask me personal questions all the time. Thinking to myself: But I may not chose to answer.

But I was truly surprised at her question: Do you and M ever think about having children?

LOLOL Well, I was so taken aback that I muttered: Well, that IS a personal question.

Pushing ahead obliviously, she continued: Because some couples decide to not have children...

I am surprised that this woman is a therapist or counselor of any sort. Where is her sensitivity? It's not like we are remotely close. She just seemed avidly curious. And if she was asking for herself rather than for her need to root around in our business, she could have asked me in private rather than in front of several of our acquaintances.

Meanwhile, it's flashing through my brain: Don't get upset, don't cry, don't get huffy, don't make a self-deprecating remark, don't tell them about any plans, don't give them anything to gossip over later... Don't you *dare* give *anything* to her!

And she continued: ... So I wondered if you all have thought about it...

I paused. I looked over at her with a controlled seethe, fluttered my lashes and said: All the time.

Dead silence.

This woman found a sudden interest in a completely different topic. No back pedaling, no apology. Maybe a sudden awareness that she was in deep shit and had to Get Out Now. Pretended like she had never asked.

Now she won't look at me any time I run into her in our regular group settings. I started wondering if I had been rude in my response. M reassured me that I had *not* been rude and had in fact handled it beautifully. I guess my semi-infamous "look" that is said to stop people in their tracks leaving wisps of smoke rising off their hair comes in handy now and again.

God knows I have had my share of asinine remarks and rude questions. I guess I should be happy that I didn't get any *more* pissy about it or start running my mouth leading to kicking myself later.

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And then there's a conversation I had with a Korean woman from one of my classes, which had a completely different outcome.

We've always been friendly to each other. She's one of those people with whom you instantly feel a kinship with, although we have never had much time to talk on a personal level, given the nature of our evenings and days.

But leaving class one week, we walk out together chatting. She says she has to hurry home because her husband is taking care of their children and finds it hard work. I joke that it's good for men to sometimes experience how much work caring for children can be! Maybe they'll appreciate a mother's work more! haha!

Then, of course, she asks me if I am married and have children. Yes but Nooo, I say. Oh! You are still in the honeymoon stage! She says impishly. I don't have the heart to tell her we have been married for 5 years and together for 9 and have long passed out of the honeymoon stage.

But the hallway is clear, and I give in to the urge to confide in her (matter of factly )that we are adopting... Oohh, She says, nodding. I can't tell her reaction, really, and I don't know if she will start asking more or even if she approves, given some Asian attitudes towards adoption. We pause to mull this over as we continue down the hall.

I tell her my husband is picking me up to go out for a dinner date. Her eyes get big. It's like your honeymoon, she repeats with some humor. We never get to go out to eat any more...

She tells me that she and her husband get married, then three months later (she holds up three fingers), she got pregnant, and she was sooo sick... (shaking her head with the memory). So, they didn't have much time with just the two of them, she says. She's smiling, but wistful. I just nod and make wry sympathetic noises of acknowledgment, because what else can I really say? I'd trade my honeymoon for your children? No, I don't think that's the answer even if it were remotely true. Sometimes it's enough to be witness to somebody else's reality. Or to exchange respectful sharings.

Which is why this did not rub me the wrong way, I think. We each shared some personal detail of our lives and trusted that the other would be sensitive about it.

Then her other friend comes to pick her up, and we leave waving our good byes.

* * * * *

Later I was musing that there's something about the married state that implies child-bearing/child-rearing.

Rhetorical question: why do people automatically assume that when you get married you either have children or you are making some choice to not have children, or just, "you can't."

One way or another, the Bay-bee issue is right there in your face. Perhaps it's that the membership in the Bay-bee club can stunt or cement relationships or give or withhold the supposed worthiness or "belonging" of a given person. Like one of my sisters suddenly became buddy-buddy with many of our cousins again after she joined that club and learned the secret Bay-bee handshake sealed with bay-bee spit up. How freakin annoying. The club atmosphere, not the spit up.

For myself, I really wanted children. From the beginning with M, it was part of our conversations about our visions of our life together. It was important enough to both of us that we wanted to make sure we were in agreement about life goals and grand ambitions. Some of those grand visions have not come to pass, but our values are still in alignment. And we still want children.

But given that children, whether one has them or not, is such a personal decision (okay, we will ignore for the moment the countless relatives who have had oops Bay-bees which involved decisions of a different sort), what justification does one ever owe to others to justify any of those choices? Like about any other life choice. It's not decided by a blue-ribbon panel; it's your own life, yes?

I am a privacy freak, yes. People's private decisions are their own business and don't need commentary from others. I'm sure there are exceptions, but it drives me nuts to hear people talk about somebody else's choices as if they know all about them. If they did know all about it, they shouldn't be blabbing it.

And then there's the assumed right to *know* about other people's personal lives. Just because you are curious or "just wondering" does not give you a right to anybody's stuff. This always seems so much clearer when you've been on the receiving end of that assumption, naturally. I can't even stand it when some of our "friends" say they've been "wondering" about us. Eh, madam, git yer grubby mind off our business! It feels so invasive.

But a sharing, now, that can be appropriate. Not for passing judgement, but getting acknowledgment and witnesses to the challenges and joys of our flawed lives. It's all a work of art. Don't let the critics get you down. But I don't see the point in giving the critics anything to work with, either.

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Over and out...