To Katmandu, with Love: An Adoptive Mom's Journal

In August, 2003, my husband and I created an intention of adopting a child within 18 months. We wrote a statement of our intention, lit a candle and blew it into the night wind, hoping our prayers would travel and reach the child intended for us. Because we believe that - that there is a child intended for us. We just have to find her. Or him.

It hasn't been easy. Initially, we were planning on adopting a child through the state of New Jersey, but as we got deeper into the process and started talking to more people, we realized there were too many uncertainties about the birth parents' rights. Now we are planning on adopting from Nepal. But plans, we know now, are fickle.

for California

Since the beginning, I've kept a journal. I'm sharing it with you because I know how important it is to hear what others are going through. And it's important for me to write about. I've spoken with many parents who have gone through this process, and it keeps me going, remembering that there is a child on the other end, waiting. I know she is looking for us - her mommy and daddy - just as we are looking for her. I wish you strength for your own journeys.

December 9, 2003

I sent off my I-600 today. The orphan's petition. I cried all the way home from the Fed-Ex office. I'm elated and relieved that we are on the home stretch of getting our home study paperwork completed. And at the same time, it feels like my heart is breaking open like a vase. I never knew adopting a child would be like this. And then I remembered: I felt this way when I was pregnant with our son Gabriel. Wondering what changes will be coming our way. What he would teach me. Wondering if I was up to the task.

Now, since we hope to adopt a pre-schooler, we know we'll be receiving a child with her own language, her own culture, her own comfort foods, her own particular way of doing things. I wonder: will she remember the orphanage when she's older, the scent of it? The sounds? Will she recall the other children's faces? Will she remember the plane ride home? Simultaneously, I want her to remember and I want her to forget. I pray that she won't have to leave a brother or sister behind.

We have been taking our application slowly. My husband Jonathan put the brakes on a few months ago, and he was right to. We had to be sure that our own relationship is so rock solid, we'll be able to open our home to a second child with grace. We've been seeing a personal coach, Michael, and his advice to us was this: for 30 seconds a day, stand face to face, embracing, and imagine a beam of light connecting your hearts. Once we did it often enough that we didn't feel awkward anymore, he suggested doing it with Gabriel, who is six. Gabriel still thinks it's strange. I like it. It's unifying. And I look forward to sharing it with our daughter when she is here. In the meantime, I send her beams of light, wherever she is --beams of love from my heart to hers.

Does she feel it? I wonder. Does she know I'm here, thinking of her?
Becoming American
December 16, 2003

Last evening, we put up our Christmas tree, and I read books with Gabriel by the light of it. Growing up Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite, a tree wasn't part of my tradition, but I like how festive it looks. Sometimes I think I'm trying to become so American. I powder my face and highlight my hair, I let our son, Gabriel, watch Bugs Bunny, and I talk sometimes about my Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite heritage as if it were in the past. As if it weren't in my bones, all the way to the marrow.... But then I remember - I am American! Even though I grew up in a subculture, isn't that what much of America is? An amalgam of subcultures? The great melting pot? Why not melt all the way down to the essence? All the way down so that you can build what you want for your life? Who says you have to do anything the way you did it last year, or the year before - let alone the way you did it when you were three! I love how our own family will be a melting pot: Jonathan, who grew up as a missionary kid in Kenya and Somalia, me, who grew up Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite, Gabriel, who is growing up very American in New Jersey, and our daughter, who will bring Katmandu with her to the opposite end of the globe.

Last Friday, I met a woman named Patricia, who created a meditation center in one of the rooms of her 18th century farmhouse. To one side of the room, she has an alter full of candles, silk flowers, and pictures. It was created by a Hindu visitor to the center, and since we're adopting through Nepal, I paid special attention. I wonder: will our child be Hindu? Buddhist? We spoke of doing a meditation group for children, drawing from many traditions. Our child will expand our hearts in so many ways...

Already we are eating differently. I downloaded some Nepalese recipes from the Internet, so that we can start making food that our new daughter will like to eat. It's spicy, and so I thought this wouldn't fly with our son Gabriel, but he liked the sweet potato bread and the saucy chicken.

I want our new daughter to remember her culture in these ways. I want to sing songs to her in her language, read folk stories from her country, talk about life's Mystery in whatever terms she has learned, if she has learned language for this yet. When I think of her, I keep remembering the words of Christ, "Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

And I'm so humbled, thinking of our daughter, Gabriel's sister, the light of heaven between us all.

Christmas Child December 23, 2003

As I prepare for Christmas - wrap presents, tuck them under our tree, bake gingerbread men - I feel incomplete. I don't mean to say that our daughter will complete us when we bring her home, but only that I think of her, and I wish she were here NOW. It's not like when I was pregnant, waiting for the child to form. Our daughter is HERE. She's living and breathing the Nepalese air, probably in the orphanage already, waiting. And so, I wish she were with us, so that we could surprise her with presents, watch her face light up as our son's did on his first Christmas. I want to share the cookie-batter snitching with her. Watch her pick out a gingerbread form from the pan, as Gabriel did, for breakfast the next morning. But there are first things: I'm building a business, and the pieces aren't together yet. Each morning, I tell God and the angels (to cover all the bases) that I am manifesting three things: being an awesome partner, awesome mom, and wealthy writer. Even as I say it, I know I've already achieved these things. I am deeply in love with my husband; our son is my super star; and as we do Secret Santa's at our church for children at the Trenton Soup Kitchen, I know I'm wealthy beyond other's imaginings.

Still, there is an element of struggle to our wealth. It has become our mode to struggle over finances, and this is one remaining hitch to our lives that we both are taking steps to resolve. I'm beginning to think more in terms of what our children will inherit -not the money but the attitudes toward money that they'll inherit. And ours has been one of struggle. We thought that it came with the territory - Jonathan's a minister; I'm a writer. But I'm learning -- following one's passions shouldn't be a struggle.

I've been reading books by Suzie Orman and Robert Allen and realizing that I have attitudes about money that are self-defeating. Such as: I find money on the one hand desirable and on the other hand, suspect. So how can I attract money if I find it suspect? Money is simply a tool, I'm telling myself, and now you, the reader of my journal. There is nothing suspect about it. It is really greed that I find despicable, and a person doesn't need to have money in order to be greedy. I think of my uncle Laverne, who has kept working as a doctor, well beyond his retirement years, so that he has more money to give away to those who need it. This is the premise of One Minute Millionaire - to create wealth, so that it can be shared. I love that. It fits into the philosophy that I was raised with: it's better to give than receive. But even better - abundance for everyone.

But even as I'm transforming my views of wealth, I know deep in my heart that love is life's true wealth. As I put my energies into my business, I know my soul's true desire that trumps all desires right now in my life: to hold the child I'm already loving from afar, even though I don't even know her name yet. To expand our family into a constellation of four loving, dancing, passionate individuals, living out our dreams on this planet while we're given the chance. In comparison to this love, all concerns pale, like the other stars in that night sky above Bethlehem, two millennia ago.

Nesting December 29, 2003

This week, I began nesting. I cleaned out our basement, sending about fifty pounds of empty boxes into recycling and about just as many pounds of junk into the landfill. I'm changing my pack-rat ways. But why? You might ask, horrified. Will your child be sleeping in your basement? No, but she WILL be sleeping in the room that is now my office. So I'm working backwards. I can now send my files to the basement without fear that they'll be swallowed up by the dragon of Super Junk. Once all my files are dungeoned, I can move what is left in my office to a corner of the family room.

This planning all sounds like Martha Stewart, and if you could see my office, you would know that she and I don't have anything in common. But I've been talking with a woman named Willy, who has sensed - even though she's on the opposite coast in Vancouver - that it would be a huge job to move my office right now.

"What do you see when you walk in your office?" she asks.

"Piles," I answer. I don't mention the bad choice of grasshopper green wall paint that the former owner had chosen and which has probably been there for some ten years.

And so, at Willy's urging, I am becoming a de-cluttering queen. I've got my busting-open filing cabinet slimmed down to one file drawer. And not all of it's going to the basement, either. Most of it is in the recycle bin. On Saturday, I'm going to plop it all in the green barrel and sit and wait until the Recycle truck comes. And then I'm going to sing "sayonara" to it all.

Today, Jonathan and I counted the months until summer, which is when we hope to bring our Nepalese daughter home. Six. Six! That's hardly anything. I REALLY want to get this room another color before she gets here. And get furniture -- a cute little children's bed that we'll cover with a colorful cloth from Nepal, and a little chest of drawers. But then the question arises -- how little?

Yesterday, I asked to get a sense of our daughter's age in a dream. Adoption is strange that way - you get to play God and pick the age. Last night, I dreamt of a six or seven-year old girl. Hmm, I thought, upon waking. Our son Gabe is only six. That could be pretty tricky. Should I ask again? Tonight I'll probably dream of file folders and dusty basement steps. Maybe I'll ask for the age again, but this time in Arabic numerals, in bold black marker, the kind I use to label my boxes.

ew Year's Revolutions January 6, 2004

I prayed that I could dream an actual number - a numeral that would represent the age of the girl we will adopt. Because we've been considering an older child, after realizing that adopting a preschooler might not mesh with our heavy workdays. So, what do you know, I dreamt '6.' But is that our sign? I don't like this numbers game very much. I feel like telling the orphanage what our son, Gabriel said, "Just tell them to pick a child from zero to six!"

"Maybe you got Gabriel's age," Jonathan said, when I told him what I'd dreamt. He could be right. I'd asked for the age of our child. And our child - the one sleeping in the bedroom down the hall -- is six.

"Okay, God, show me the age of our Nepalese child!"

All of this asking for signs is starting to feel abnormal. Trust! Trust! I keep e-mailing people who have adopted children, and they all say, Trust! I suppose it's like being pregnant, when I went through those awful tests to determine the health of our child. Trust! Wanting to clobber the scientist who came up with these tests - and at the same time, taking them and wringing hands until the results were in. Maybe I should be happy for this one chance to play God. All we have to do is select an age. Or a range. Or, hey, maybe we could leave it open and just say, "Send us one of your children." And hoping they'll intuitively select the right One, like how the Tibetan priests choose the next Dalai Lama.

Maybe it's like the Zen saying, "A monk asked Master Haryo, 'What is the way?' Haryo said, 'An open-eyed man falling into the well.'" And here's me, holding on to the brim with white knuckles going, Is it cold? Will I break an appendage? Gabriel was talking about his "New Year's revolutions" tonight at bedtime. He said he wanted to keep track of his toys better, so he's not constantly looking for something he lost. I know what my revolution is - to jump into the well. Trust that everything will work out and that we will know, when it's time, how to arrange our lives to create the best scenario for our daughter.

I remember when we asked for a sign about adopting from New Jersey, which was sounding more and more stressful as we went along. As we drove home from one of the state adoption meetings, we got a full, gorgeous rainbow over the highway. "Maybe that's our Big Sign," I told Jonathan.

"A sign for what?"

He was right. We'd just asked for "a sign." If we'd then passed a road sign that read, "Adopt a child from New Jersey," we would've seen that as the way. But I guess it was a sign to follow our hearts. Three days later, we decided to can the state adoption and look further into Nepal.

The Present 1/13/04

I've gotten rid of so much stuff, I'm starting to believe I could fit back into a New York City apartment again. I cleared out not only boxes and boxes of office files but also a closet that was so full, the stuff was starting to knock on the door to get some air. So now when our daughter arrives from Nepal, she will have a room and a closet, and a mother who will no longer be mistaken for a hurricane. (Okay, no looking in the attic.)

The next step is to become internally organized. I started reading, "The Hard Questions for an Authentic Life," by Susan Piver. She's the author of the original "Hard Questions" for marriage partners. The subtitle of her new book is "100 Essential Questions for Designing Your Life from the Inside Out." I like the idea of being an interior designer of my life. After reading her chapter on money, I made a 20-year plan on how to bring in a substantial income. The problem is, that means I have to start working.

That was a joke about the working. It seems sometimes that work is all I do. And I keep remembering that a man on his deathbed never says, "I wish I'd spent more time at the office." I keep wondering if a slower life could be had, perhaps in New Mexico or Tahiti. Susan Piver says in her book that she used to wonder when her "real" life would begin. Elaborate plans led to more elaborate plans. It sounds so disturbingly familiar. But Piver says her "real life" started when she began noticing what was occurring in each day. She stopped future-tripping.

I remember our son Gabriel, at age three, getting "yesterday" and "tomorrow" mixed up. Today is good. My nephew Niko called an hour ago and invited me over for pie. It was my sister Juanita's homemade butternut squash pie. Forget that Gabriel asked me after school if he could really trade me in for another mother. Forget the fact that it's 9 p.m. and I have a pile of research papers to read. The pie still feels warm in my belly. My house is quiet, and I'm writing out my journal, sending our daughter- to-be love and prayers. Later tonight, my elaborate plans and I will slumber under a heavy quilt.