The Fork in the Road

According to a noted American philosopher, “when you come to a fork in the road – take it”.

For those of you following Jennifer’s lotsofKazblogs taxonomy, we are classified into the “Did it Once and Doin' it Again” category – or something resembling that definition – and have been for quite some time. While at times we have shared very selected portions of our somewhat disjointed innermost plans with assorted members of our “inner circle”, we now accept that it is time to “come clean” with respect to the current state of our situation since several people have been prodding us for updates (thank you Susan for the most recent prompt).

So how should we actually convey this message appropriately to our diverse community of Kazakh friends and acquaintances? Where on earth do we begin? Let alone end?

As many of you know, we returned from Almaty in April 2008 with effectively immediate plans to return there for “number 2” – a brother or a sister for our beautiful, brilliant daughter Zoe. And here is where the paths between our plans and our actions essentially began to diverge. Our goal all along has been to return to Kazakhstan, but… but…but…?

You might be aware that in international adoption there is a plethora of requisite paperwork that can be described euphemistically as national, international and intranational. This paper mountain is a huge burden to overcome (Sisyphus anyone?). Consequently, due to emotional inertia, we delayed a full year prior to resuming any action on the adoption front. Justifiably so since we were new parents to a 1-year-old and required a period of time to adjust to our new state of equilibrium. But our plans were still truly for number 2.

Finally after a year, we restarted the paperwork process – home study renewal, etc., etc., etc… Except now we had a daughter – in the bottom percentiles for height and weight yet in the top percentiles for intelligence and vocalization. Have we ever mentioned that she talks and talks and talks…starting when she wakes in the morning up until 10 minutes after she has fallen asleep at night? And that we are both (rapidly) approaching 50? Anyhow, the upshot is that neither of us is particularly young, which has really become one of the compounding factors in much of the subsequent analysis. But we were still truly planning for a Kazakh number 2 (no humourous reference to squat toilets need be inserted here).

But then we procrastinated. And delayed. And procrastinated. And delayed. And before we knew it, two years had passed since we had returned with Zoe. And do you know what? When we finally sat down for a clear-the-air discussion, we both inherently recognized something that had not explicitly been put into words – that neither of us had the heart, stomach or inclination to return to Kazakhstan for “another”.

The vagaries of the Kazakh adoption process have always been considered somewhat “fluid”. Nothing is consistent. Nobody ever experiences the same set of circumstances – they seem to vary by region, municipality within region, city within municipality, district within the city, judge within district, season, day of the week, etc.. Time windows and requirements change without warning. Or logical reason. Each step of the way is somewhat analogous to going bowling with somebody holding a blanket in front of the pins. After each roll, an officious bureaucrat checks the pins and proclaims that “you missed 4” (note the wording). But never tells you exactly which 4 pins you happened to have missed. The Kazakh process is definitely not for the faint of heart. It is an endurance test that could (and sometimes does) collapse at any point and the pressure is never truly released until the airplane takes off with you and your child aboard. In the grand scheme of things, we realized that we no longer possessed the requisite internal fortitude to go through this again.

There are, of course, many more facets to this decision than any one simple-minded reason can convey. But can we articulate at least some of these? Should we even attempt to justify our rationale? At the risk of offending some readers and as the length of this post will attest, we have decided to blunder forward with a partial explanation (since many must face these issues at one point or another).

During their processing (and whether they want to acknowledge it or not), international adoptive parents need to become acutely aware of their own very real limitations and prejudices. Age, race, ethnicity, religion, developmental issues, emotional issues, mental issues, physical issues, FAS, RAD, ADD, ADHD, OCD, SPD, APD – you name it, all of these come into play. For both children and parents. These issues are very real. What would make you walk away? What would enable you to see the process through? Obviously thoughts and deeds represent different courses of action and, when faced with such issues in “reality”, they can simply redirect us onto alternate coping pathways – that veritable fork in the road of parenthood. But at the start of the process, if potential adoptive parents could be “guaranteed” an “average” child (whatever that means) they would leap at the opportunity. After all, in the grand scheme of the uncertainties of parenthood (biological or adoptive) average is pretty damned good. Perhaps the nature of this rationalization sounds somewhat callous. Yet there really must be a period of torturous self-searching and turmoil required for those of us that enter this endeavour – whether one ever wants to admit this publicly or not.

Now the adoption time windows for many countries can be quite narrow (as is their absolute prerogative) and, from our perspective, Kazakhstan’s has been rapidly closing. There have simply been more complexities to overcome. And more and more “issues” have been introduced into the fray. For us, Kazakhstan had slowly ruled itself out for numerous, disparate reasons that we will not mention here. But we still treasure the people and the country of our daughter’s birth even if we have issues with the adoptive process there.

We absolutely cherish our daughter and recognize that she would dearly love to be a big sister. She is a brilliant, engaged daughter who comfortably shares our passion for travel and adventure. There are no mental, emotional or physical delays – she is so advanced and well adjusted that we consider ourselves exceptionally privileged. We have been able to resume our “normal lives” (well a new normal) with her as an enthusiastic partner. She accompanies us on all of our trips abroad, starting with Armenia just 4 months after she came to Canada and continuing ever since. If we could somehow be guaranteed to find a clone of her “younger self”, we would happily pursue that pathway. But could we be that lucky again? How would we react to a child with more complicated special needs? Of any kind? Would it be fair to her? To us? The answers would likely change if we were 20 years younger but we are what we are. What if…if… if…? Why would we want to risk having our newfound contented stasis revert to a state of disequilibrium? Would it be different if this disequilibrium was temporary or permanent? Are we being selfish or just simplistic? And so on.

Thus, in our turmoil, we encountered our own inner limitations and misgivings head on – selfishly realizing that we no longer wished to accept the consequences of such a change, irrespective of potential contingencies. Most likely we could cope, but why would we want to? Hence, we concluded that under our own very specific circumstances and criteria, there would not now, nor ever would be, a second international adoption (from anywhere) in our lives. And given our ages and stages of life, that was “it” – we would remain a very very fortunate one-child family. We were both at peace accepting this decision and very comfortable with this eventuality now able to look forward as a definite family of three.

And then. And then? And then…

As we have shared with only a very few, out-of-the-blue we received an opportunity that we could not so easily forego – a private domestic adoption of a newborn (very rare in Canada) with us as the parents. How often does such an unsolicited opportunity present itself to prospective adoptive parents? Certainly not often in this country where the more common public adoptions face an indefinite timeline usually in the 7-10 year range. And yet here we were…presented with an opportunity of a newborn infant explicitly for us, due in September. In spite of our previous trepidations above, we jumped headlong into this opportunity with renewed vigour. All paperwork was quickly updated and submitted – all systems go!

But then…but then?

This initial enthusiasm waned. Our desire cooled. Once again, our ages became a major factor in our rationalization process. A newborn infant? Nap schedules ruling the entire household? Diapers revisited? Sleep deprivation? Our lives “on hold” for 3-4 years until our new child could travel as well as Zoe does now. Could we really readjust our lifestyles to cope with an infant? Could we cope? Could we cope even if there were no emotional/mental/physical challenges? What if there were? Were we up to the task? Could we cope physically? Could we cope mentally? Would it be fair to Zoe? Would it be fair to us? At least one of us would be 65 (retirement age) when this child graduated from high school – assuming that we were even still around. Would this be fair to our potential child? Our current child? Us? So our suppressed inner conflicts and turmoils had resurfaced.

And then we received word that the birth mother was waivering due to some confusion with the requirements. Should she go with the more normal and easier public process rather than private? The misunderstandings on her part would have been very easy to rectify. We could have quickly advocated our relative positions under the circumstances and corrected her stated misconception. But we waivered in responding – 1 day, 2 days, a week, more than a week…. Why did we waiver? Subconsciously we now had an “out”. After a subsequent tête-à-tête we both acknowledged that neither of our hearts were truly “in it”. While we could have “coped” with a second child, we again both recognized our own very real misgivings. Coping is certainly not enough.

While we wish everyone the best of life’s branches with respect to their own decisions as to which direction on the road-of-life that they would have taken under these circumstances, we have selected our own path. We chose not to continue to pursue this opportunity. And we have decided quite definitely now to remain a one-child family. And are very, very happy with respect to this decision. We have reached our proverbial fork in the road. And we have taken it.