Remember when I said that the universe has a way of balancing itself out and that if you put in the effort and the patience it will all work out in the end?
No? Well, I did. You'll just have to catch up on my previous posts.
I also said that we've been told time and again that when the right child comes along we'll know. Well...I am really starting to believe that now.
A lot has happened in recent weeks. So much so that I've had little time to write. So, here's the update:
We are now in our second match. A week from today will be what is called a pre-placement conference during which adoption and social workers look at us as a family and the prospective child and come to a consensus that together we would make a terrific family. Soon after that we will have the opportunity to learn more details about the case, ask questions and make a final determination whether we're willing to move forward (we will say yes).
Then, we can start setting up official visits with the child. Day visits turn into might visits, which turn into weekend visits, when turn into his moving in with us, and then after six months in our home, we can petition for adoption.
But, before I say any more, let me take you back a couple of months...
Not long after we became certified resource parents (qualified to take in foster youth and even adopt from the foster system in California), we went to our first-ever event in which prospective parents get to mingle with prospective 'adoptable' children. These are kids in the foster system who tend to be older and who have little to no hope of ever returning to their birth parents. On that day we met a 10-year-old boy who we now realize is our dream child. I'll call him "DC."
I'll never forget pulling my husband aside and asking, 'What is he doing here? He's so ridiculously adorable, how could somebody have not already have snatched him up?'
Turns out his case was very complicated. Yeah, his past has a lot of dark spots, and he's been through some very ugly rough patches in his life that I dare not get into here. He has a sibling, and the sibling's past is even more dark. Both are doing their best to cope, but their cases are so severe, they live in separate homes receiving intensive services to help them deal with their loss and grief over having been torn from their biological family years ago.
We were ready to adopt both children on the spot. 'Siblings should always be together,' I said. 'Always. No exceptions.'
Well, we soon learned that some time there are exceptions that make sense. As we found out more about their cases as the weeks went on, we came to understand that trying to adopt both these children all at once was something that inexperienced newbies like us would probably not be able to take on and survive. So, we came to grips with the fact that these two would likely find a home with some other family, maybe a couple of experienced psychiatrists with skills in wizardry or something giving them the power to alter time and space.
Well, while all this was going on, we found out that there were some rather magical things happening in the background that were unbeknownst to us.
You see... at the end of each of these mingling events, the adults and kids retreat to opposite ends of the room and complete 'evaluation forms' on which they indicate anyone they met that day they'd be interested in spending more time with. If the adult picks a particular kid and the same kid picks those same adults, then they will invite you to a follow-up meeting where you can spend more time and see if you still 'connect' in the same way. If you do that leads to another meeting, and so forth.
Eventually, you will have the opportunity to become a 'host family' for this kid (or kids) and commit to spending time with them a couple times a month for a year. You also commit to advocate for those kids and help them find what they need most: a permanent family. Sometimes, that may just happen to be you. Other times it may be someone else, but that's how it works.
Well, guess who put whose name down and visa versa resulting in an initial match and thus a follow-up event where we got to spend time together. Any idea? Us and DC of course!
So, we spent another day with him and continued to be head over heels in love with him but also grounded in the reality that we would probably never be able to adopt him.
Then something amazing happened.
At about that time, the county was starting to realize that they were having difficulty finding a permanent home for both siblings due to the complexity of their cases, let alone the complexity of having them live under the same roof. So, they decided to try another strategy... make them available for adoption separately as individual cases. We talked to our adoption worker about this, and she said she believed that moving to adopt him on his own without his sibling would be advisable.
So, we threw our hat in the ring. We found out -- of course -- that there were other families interested. So again, we knew there was a good possibility that we would not be the chosen ones. I mean, how could we be? This child is so amazing, anybody who meets him falls instantly in love.
Well...guess who was chosen. Guess who is now officially in a match. Well, yes. Us of course. Oh my god, so amazing, right?
Hubby and I are on cloud 9. We were invited to yet a third event with our organization, which I will be sure to plug in another post at some point, and this was the first time we had the opportunity to spend time with him alone on a car ride and spending the day at an event knowing we were being matched with him. We told everyone that the day will go down in history (along with our wedding day) as one of the most amazing days of our lives.
Once again, there were evaluation forms. And, once again, DC listed us with enthusiasm as adults he would like to spend more time with.
We're over joyed. And, now, once again, we are dying of anticipation. Only this time it's different. Rather than waiting and waiting for nothing to happen, we're waiting for something to happen. We're making plans. We're daydreaming about all the ways we can spend time with DC as soon as we have the chance: professional ball games, the beach, aquariums, the zoo, road trips, movie studios, camping, hiking, seeing, the Grand Canyon.
The list doesn't end.
And, last night I had a dream that DC was already our son. And, I am not the first. Hubby had a similar dream several weeks ago that he was in family court signing the adoption papers. And, in his dream he was crying tears of joy uncontrollably. So was I in my dream.
So, you see. Dream Child has quite literally become a Dream Child.
Now, at the risk of sounding cheesy, the dream begins. And, hopefully we will never wake up.
