Waiting

Hiking in the Adirondacks while waiting for our referral

In late July last year, shortly after receiving word that we had officially been placed on the wait list for a referral, I sent out an email to family and friends letting them know of our milestone. In that email I wrote, "...somewhere in Ethiopia there's a little boy making his way to us as we are making our way to him." I had no way of knowing then how sadly prophetic my words were. The details of Teshale's story are not ours to share at this time, but I can say that our lives so neatly dovetailed that one might be tempted to say it was fate, karma, God's will, coincidence, a force of the universe, or whatever one wants to name it. I can't help but recoil from the realization that our hope and delight in finally getting to the status of "officially waiting" were so aligned with our son's loss.

I waited patiently for the first six weeks or so. It was summer -- there was a garden to tend, trails to be hiked, races to run, and at work a client had just gone live on a software implementation project. I had plenty to do, plus I didn't expect to hear anything before two months gone by, since typical wait times for a boy aged two to four was up to six months. But once we hit the two-month mark, I became agitated, especially since I knew that recently the wait time hadn't been more than three months for families requesting little boys the age we had requested.

It wasn't so much a "I can't wait to find out who my child is and to be a Mom" thing as it was my type A "I need to know what's what so I can plan my life" personality kicking in. Also, I hadn't been permitting myself any excitement until we felt we had a sure thing. Infertility does that to people. You learn not to trust the process. So until we had the referral, my rule was that we couldn't jinx anything by doing things like eating at an Ethiopian restaurant or reading books about Ethiopia or learning Amharic. But, I wanted to do all those things, so I began to eagerly anticipate that wonderful phone call from the adoption agency.

Then one day it hit me. Our joy was going to mean a terrible tragedy for a mother and a small child in Ethiopia. We didn't know at the time whether it would be that our son's mother passed away or that she relinquished him for adoption out of desperation to feed and educate him. Either way, it was going to be a profoundly sad event. Suddenly, waiting was no big deal. As much as I wanted a child of my own, I did not want to wish sorrow upon him.

The day did come when we got the news that we had a referral for our Teshale. People often speak of their referral phone call as their "good news" call. I still feel a lot of ambivalence -- good news that our son lost so much at such a young age? It brings me so much joy and delight that we made our way to each other -- but I also grieve for the losses my precious little boy has suffered. Waiting is no picnic, but losing one's family is a tragedy.