Is Today the Day?

I wake up every morning with this question: will she find us today?

My apologies for the lack of entries since, well, my last one.  This blog served its purpose, to allow me to relate and explain and reason out loud (so to speak) all the various ideas chasing one another's tails inside my head in regards to our adoption.  Having gotten them out, I didn't have anything to say for awhile.

Since then, things have moved right along.  Long story short, we went "live" on April 5th.  For anyone interested, here's the link to our profile:

http://www.iheartadoption.org/users/ericandchris

Spread it far and wide, friends.  Don't be shy.  Don't feel like you're invading or protecting our privacy.  When in doubt, give it out.  (I totally stole that line from an employee of the Sacramento Food Bank.)

The whole thing, the adoption, feels completely different now.  The process leading up to going live, the background checks, the home study, writing that gosh darn letter, it all seems so far away, though just a month ago we were thoroughly wrapped in it.  In its midst, we were surprised and frustrated, we were elated and we got angry, we got excited and we felt disappointed, the whole gamut of emotions.

Then it's over and I realize it's only just begun.  While challenging, having overcome that challenge, it seems like small fry now.  Of course we got through it.  We can totally handle that stuff.

Or so we say now!

So now we wait.  We have our profile on two sites.  We have paper versions of those profiles in circulation with our agency's six offices and a few already among family and friends.  We have an 800 number and an e-mail address.  For now, that's enough.

For those families who wind up waiting a long time, I often hear about the difference between passive and active waiting.  Active waiting means continually searching out ways to be more visible.  It is sometimes effective (sometimes not) and often exhausting.  In an attempt to learn from the trials of others, we've decided passive waiting is our modus operandi for the moment.  Our agency is already doing its job to make us visible.  For so many families, this works, so we decided to start there.  We don't want to exhaust ourselves in incessant efforts to be noticed that might not work.  This could take a long time.  Best not to burn ourselves out so quickly.

Best not to run out of ideas, either.  I sense in those long-waiting families a feeling of helplessness.  They've tried everything and no baby, so what else can they do?  They've already tried everything.  We've decided to hold back on everything.  Instead, once a month, on the 5th, we're planning to do one thing to make ourselves more visible, send our profile to one more place that might have dealings with women considering adoption.

This way, if it turns out we have a short wait, we don't make it unnecessarily painful or tiring.  If it turns out we have a long wait, we build up our strategy to get noticed a little at a time, always leaving us more to do and gradually introducing us to the increased effort and anxiety of active waiting.

Believe me, every time I read the stringent words of an adoptive parent still waiting after many months, I wonder if that will be me.  What could I do differently?  Even with identical circumstances, how could I handle that differently?  Can I?

I hear the stories of families with short waits, too.  Like it or not, half the families with our agency wait less than a year.  It puts me into an outright panic to think it could be so soon, though I know we're ready and am anxious to meet my son or daughter.

Which will be us?

Is today the day?

Is she dialing the phone right now?

I suppose this is something like what expectant parents go through.  After all, there's no telling exactly when Junior will decide to make his entrance.  Well, within a certain range.

For me, I wake every morning acutely aware that today could be an incredibly important day.  Every evening closes with a tinge of disappointment that it wasn't today.

For anyone considering adoption themselves, when you hear that waiting will be anticlimactic after the hustle and bustle of preparation to get you there, believe it.  Don't get me wrong, I feel really good and I still feel very lucky that this is just the beginning of our emotional wait and that we are not a family whose wait began years ago when they expected to get pregnant without any trouble.  It's just a little surreal to know that the difference between this day and The Day is so very, very small.

Though I don't suppose most folks will read this, thank you to all who've been so supportive on Facebook.  It really is heartwarming to post an update and see so many people wishing us well.  Hopefully we'll have more to share soon.