The Long-awaited (first part of the) Adoption Story (pull up a chair, grab something to drink - it's a long one)

Well, here's what's been going on the past two years or so...

Katrina and I decided we were open to adopting children before we were even married. Her cousin, Christina, was adopted by her Aunt Barb and Uncle Lee when Katrina was a freshman in high school, and it made a huge impression on her - the idea of being able to take someone else's negative situation and turn it into a positive one resonated through her as she watched Chrissy grow up. My own feelings about having children were that I wanted them, and wasn't (and still am not) particularly concerned about exactly *how* we go about getting them.

A lot of it has to do with my conception of what "family" means. My own family was a little weird, because my two brothers were in their teens when I was born, so they often functioned sort of like uncles more than siblings. Bob joined the Navy when I was four; Pat moved out on his own when I was eight, so I was kind of an only child in some ways. The fact that generational boundaries were all screwy has made for some strange relationships. For example, my cousin Phyllis and her husband Teddy are both in their early sixties; their kids, who are (I guess) my second cousins, are all around my age. (Posts on cousins Allen, Shawn and Shasta coming at a later date). Anyway, all this means that my concept of family has been, if nothing else, rather fluid. After my mother died in 1987, my notion of who made up my family was expanded even further, to include close friends as well. There are men and women literally around the world whom I consider like brothers and sisters (some of whom read this blog!) in my own extended concept of family.

All that to say it really doesn't matter to me if I share my DNA with my children, only that I get to be their Dad. Or, in the case of children from Ukraine, their Papa.

Our adoption adventure began, as I said earlier, about two years ago. Katrina, research goddess that she is, spent several months finding out exactly what it would mean to adopt a child. We decided early on to go internationally, for an number of reasons. First of all, children up for adoption in the US stand a pretty good chance of finding homes, and those homes will be, well, here, in the US, thus (hopefully) affording them the opportunity succeed, at least more so than many other countries. Secondly, the possibility of a birth mother tracking down and finding a child (even in a closed adoption) is frighteningly real - let's just say we've seen the results of that first hand, and it isn't pretty. Thirdly, the incidence of drug exposure (and the resulting effects upon the children) is far too common among American babies up for adoption, and that is something that we, after a great deal of introspection, have decided we simply cannot do. Lastly, we are suckers for traveling, and the idea of going off to some exotic locale and coming back with a child was simply irresistible to us.

Our first country of choice was the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). RMI was an American protectorate during and after World War II, and now, even though they were granted their independence sometime in the 1970s, the US still maintains a military base on the island of Majuro. RMI appealed to me because of my family history - my father served in the Navy during the War, and I often heard him mention the islands he spent a lot of time on and between: Kwajelein, Eniwetok, Truk...the concept of visiting a place my father had been to during wartime and bringing home a baby from there seemed far too cool.

Adopting from RMI had a lot going for it. Marshallese laws allowed for babies as young as several weeks to be adopted out. The babies are generally very healthy, because the mothers don't really have access to the kind of crap people eat here - their diets consist mostly of fish and rice. And, as an extra cultural bonus, we would be participating in a sort of international open adoption - Marshallese custom doesn't allow for non-family members to adopt, so we would be "adopted" by the birth mother's extended family.

We chose a local adoption agency that seemed to have a good reputation, and began The Process.

We first got a little worried when we found that the agency in question began to make demands of adoptive parents that just didn't sit with us. For example, they told us that we would be *required* to keep the child's Marshallese name. Their rationale was that adopted children, once they reach adolescence, begin to have problems regarding identity, and by keeping their original name as part of their new name, this would help to alleviate the problem. Our feelings about it were twofold: first of all, we, both working in public schools, have seen firsthand what happens to children who have "weird" names - it is a simple fact of life that children can be unspeakably cruel to their peers sometimes, and we wanted to avoid that, if possible. (One tenable solution we came up with that the agency generally agreed with was to make the child's Marshallese name her middle name, then give her the name that we chose as her first name). Secondly, we really didn't cotton to the notion of having someone else tell us what we had to do with *our* child - this would be *our* baby, not Journeys of the Heart's (oops - did I actually mention their name?)

We walked the tightropes, we jumped the hoops, we scaled the walls, we earned our stripes.

And things, well...started to suck. Some of them were the fault of the agency, some of them were just plain circumstance, some were people-based, plain and simple.

Ever had one of those days when you go to Disneyland, and it seems like all your favorite rides break down just as you get on them, or they're closed for refurbishment? It was kind of like that, in terms of the emotional buildups and letdowns, over and over again:

"Ooh, a teen mother just had a baby last week - it looks like she's going to put the child up for adoption! Get ready to travel!"

REMAIN SEATED, PLEASE. PERMANESER SENTADOS, POR FAVOR.

"...oh, man, Scott and Katrina, we're so sorry...the baby born was a boy."

WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR BOBSLED, AND YOUR MATTERHORN ADVENTURE WILL BEGIN IN A MOMENT."

"Katrina! There's a three-month-old, a girl for sure, and we've gotten approval of every family member except the grandfather! It looks like a done deal! Look into getting airline tickets!"

DON'T PULL DOWN ON THE LAP BAR...*I* WILL LOWER IT FOR YOU.

"Oh, gosh...I'm so sorry...Marshallese custom requires *every* *single* *blood* *relative* to approve the adoption...her 83-year-old grandfather nixed it."

UNRULY SPIRTIS HAVE TEMPORARILY INTERRUPTED OUR TOUR. PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR......DOOM BUGGY, AND WE WILL RESTART THE TOUR MOMENTARILY.

"Okay, this is really it. Two-month-old girl, family approves, everything is set. We need you to fax the name you want to give to the child to this number, so it can be put on the birth certificate."

"INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF THE FORBIDDEN EYE..."

"I can't believe it. The mother changed her mind. This never happens."

"...IS CLOSED FOR REFURBISHMENT. EXPECTED TO REOPEN SUMMER OF 2067."

This deal went on for something like four to six months, at least once every three weeks or so. At the end of that time, things began to get *really* wonky.

We were actually told that we could possibly expedite what was happening if we were to wire money to the lawyer in RMI directly, paying him *double* what we were originally supposed to pay. Of course, this wouldn't necessarily give us the results we were looking for; indeed, we stood a small chance of actually losing the (extra) money.

Now, the examples I gave (all of which we actually experienced) really *do* fall into the category of circumstance. Sucky circumstance, but circumstance nonetheless. They weren't really the fault of our agency. The paying the lawyer twice deal, though, sent up red flags.

The final straw came when we received the call (actually an e-mail) telling us to fax the name we wanted on the birth certificate over to the islands. The director of the agency was going to be in Chicago for an entire week, right after this had occurred - basically leaving us hanging big time. She promised (in writing, no less) that she would keep in constant contact with us the time she was gone, so she could apprise us of any changes in the situation.

We laughed, we sang, we cried, we prayed, we danced around in circles. The dog and cats thought we'd gone, as George Bailey says in "It's a Wonderful Life," "off our nut." (I so dig that phrase, but would never actually use it in spoken conversations. It's too weird sounding said out loud, unless you're George Bailey having your life minus yourself replayed before you by a rather dubious-looking Angel Second Class. But, as I often do, I digress...

We knew the director was leaving for Chicago that night, so we knew we wouldn't hear anything until the next afternoon or possibly night.

The first night came and went, but no e-mail from her.

The second night was the same.

By the third night, we were getting worried.

By the fourth night, we were getting pissed.

By the fifth night, we were getting despondent.

By the sixth night, we were at our wits end.

By the seventh night


we found out we weren't getting that child after all.


Words cannot express the disappointment. We had already started to love that little girl. We had named her, for crying out loud - she was going to be Morgan Rainey, because Morgan is Welsh for "taken from the sea," and we spent our honeymoon in a cottage in northern Wales during July of 2000. Also, both of my parents were natives of Morgan County, Tennessee, and we thought it would be a fitting tribute to my family heritage.

But it wasn't to be.



Stay tuned for Part II: Life from the Ashes of the Soviet Union