How Low Can You Go?

Skating rinks everywhere play the peppy music. A pole is hoisted between two supports. The skaters line up and try to roll under the pole without letting anything but their wheels touch the parquet floor lit up by the mirror ball and colored spotlights. Eliminated by a misplaced hand, elbow or rump the number of skaters dwindles with each round. Finally the most agile are left. They contort and flex their bodies into inhuman positions. The last one always makes it look so easy as she (for it is usually a girl) glides under the pole, her teeth shining purple through a huge smile under the effects of a black-light hung haphazardly from the ceiling. This is Limbo.

I don’t recall ever winning a game of Limbo. Usually the second or third round found me on the sidelines gah-gahing over the finalists in amazement wondering how they were able to do it. Was there a sci-fi force field under them that they leaned on? Was it slight of hand or an illusion? How could they really do that? Was it painful? Were they really having fun? Their moment of glory was usually short-lived because the rest of the people in the skating rink were bored from watching all the others finish getting eliminated. By the end it was like, “Yay. You won. Now can we please get back to skating.” What a relief it was when the D.J. turned off the Limbo music and went back to the late 70s / early 80s tunes so that we could all continue rolling around.

Over two decades have passed since I have stepped skate-shod foot in a roller rink. Though this morning I find myself asking myself, “Just how low can you go?” This is an attempt at an upbeat adoption update. (Try saying that five times fast, since we are on the topic of juvenile allegories.) I feel like I am playing a game of Limbo that is lasting way too long. I feel like the bar keeps on going lower and I have to stare at it and wonder if I am going to be able to make it under. It feels like I am having to put myself in a position that is unnatural just to do all the things that have to be done so that I can adopt my child. I feel like I am changing.

[Some people tell me that I do not need to apologize for a long post. So I am not going to apologize - I will just warn you that this post is long. If you read it all you should be commended. If you don't read it all I completely understand. Let the details begin...]

- o -

I really don’t want to be cynical. I don’t want to be critical. I don’t want to dis the country I call home. Just around the corner might be some great news. Wearied would be a good way to describe what I am feeling right now. It is just hard to continue justifying the run around that I feel like we are doing. The double, triple, quadruple paper work is tiring. The lines, and stamps, and fees, and signatures, and copies, and forms… all the bureaucracy is shoved up against the undeniable poverty, corruption, and socially struggling status of a third world country. Then I am in the middle choosing to physically make myself do what they say and pay what they say with no clear guarantee of what the outcome is.

- o -

Evidently I misunderstood, or was misinformed, or just things are different now than they were before. As I communicated, I was under the impression that the step we were in now was to wait for the judge to assign us a child. Sounds simple enough.

Well, there are a few more things that need to happen before that happens.

For one thing the social service department waited three weeks to turn in our reports. I asked the lawyer to follow up on them three weeks ago to make sure they sent it over. She said she would. When I called her Monday to follow up on her to see if she followed up on them she said she was doing it that very morning. I called her back in the evening and found out that they just sent it over that day. Maybe it is for the better. Maybe she wanted it to be fresh in the judge’s office for when she got back from vacation. For whatever reason it is, the reports were not sent over until Monday: three weeks later than they could have been sent.

Then it got fuzzy. The lawyer said I needed to come pick up a paper from her office to present to the judge’s office requesting permission to request an assignment to adopt. Didn’t we do this already when we had to present a request to request social services begin picking apart our life with a fine toothed comb for a month?

So this morning DaRonn and I went to the lawyers office to pick up the paper. I signed it and we took it across the street to the judge’s office. At the judge’s office the clerk tells us that we need to buy stamps and a form from the court as well as photocopy the document four times. DaRonn goes off to get the stamps and the form while I get the photocopies. Good thing the court is just two blocks away. I am not up to walking much so that is why he did that part. The photocopies were right next door to the judge’s office. DaRonn gets back and tells me that they made him buy a mask (like the doctors wear) in order to buy the stamps (lots of sickness scare right now). The stamps and the form ended up costing the equivalent of 75 U.S. cents. Less than a dollar! We present all the papers to the clerk and I sign something after showing my i.d. card. We are told that the lawyer can come get the paper on Monday.

We just spent an hour essentially carrying a paper across the street. Does anyone else not find this excruciatingly ridiculous?!

So what happens next? Great question! I wish I had that answer.

Before, I thought: after the judge makes the assignment then we will finish presenting our paper work.

Now, if I understand right: the judge will see DaRonn and I in person next week at which time we will present all our paperwork and tell her we would like a girl of 3 or 4 years old. Then she will look at her list and assign us a child in that very instant. ????????????

It sounds fishy. It sound different from what the lawyer explained before. It sounds unbelievable. It makes my head spin.

So I have made a decision. I am just going to do what they tell me to do. (I know, novel idea, right?) They told me to take a paper across the street so I took a paper across the street. I will get up the gumption to call my lawyer and tell her to follow up on it Monday.

Then when Monday comes I will call my lawyer in the afternoon and ask her (with much fear and trembling) what we are supposed to do now. And we will do it.

That is where I am at now. My insides are all grumbling so much that I don’t even know how to ask you how to pray. Maybe we will have the assignment next week. Maybe it will take us another month. I don’t even know. I wish I knew. I just don’t.

- o -

How low can I go? If I look way down deep I still have a bit of bend left in me. I will end this rant on a good note. The lawyer said that on Monday she looked over the reports social serviced prepared. They were all super positive and favorable. That is a good thing.

Tagged as: adoption