year of the dragon

On Saturday night I went to the Embassy of Vietnam's Tet (lunar new year) celebration.  I met up with my single male adopting friend, and we spent the evening explaining that we are adopting....separately!  It was a good time with free-flowing wine, amazing food, and lots of nice people to meet.  The year of the cat has not been my year, maybe I can blame it on being a rat, but rats are supposed to fare well in dragon years, so will this be the one?  If there is a dragon god up there somewhere, he will not let me turn 40 or live through another Christmas without my girl.

This weekend I got a bit of much-needed reassurance about my case.  I still don't know when Vietnam will re-open for "regular" cases (under the new law, it seems that irregular is the new regular and the old regular is no more), nor do I know if mine will be regular, irregular, or both.  But I'm done my paperwork, I don't have to change anything or spend any money to do so, my request is wide open and, dragon god willing, the roller coaster will stop once my dossier finally, finally makes it to a province.

I've been learning a little about the significance of dragons in Vietnamese culture.  I came across this proverb that I love:

 

“Con rồng, cháu tiên”: “child of dragons, grandchild of immortals”.

According to legend, the Vietnamese people are descended from the union of the dragon Lạc Long Quân and the immortal Âu Cơ.  They had a hundred children together, but because they were so different (he was a dragon from the deep seas, she was an immortal and only felt at home in the mountains), they ended up separating.  Lạc Long Quân, summoned home by his mother, took half the children and went towards the sea; Âu Cơ took the other half into the mountains.

starting 2012 with Oprah

I just spent the first afternoon of the new year exactly where I needed to be: in an Oprah's Lifeclass marathon!  I love this show on the OWN network and while I had already seen all the episodes, I could watch them 100 times and get more out of them each time.  One of the episodes shown today was "everyone has a calling".  O said that being a mother is the highest calling, and that answering your calling will bring positive energy to all the other parts of your life.  It made me wonder: if this adoption is my calling, why is the universe making it so difficult to answer?  Is it supposed to be this hard to achieve what I know in my heart is my passion and my destiny?  And why do other things, like my new job, come so effortlessly, without even wanting or trying?  Maybe the universe knew that I was going crazy waiting for my family, and it also knew that the wait wasn't going to end anytime soon, so it threw me a distraction?  Or, maybe it knew that my professional calling was to do and be more than I was, but I was too emotionally exhausted to try?

In any case, it has been very hard to get through the holidays with no news or information from Vietnam.  If that hasn't been enough, I have also been stuck in mid-update the whole time.  Yesterday, with no answers to my questions about Vietnam, and the days ticking away, I made a decision about my request and sent it off.  If I have learned anything from this five-year nightmare, it's to go with my gut.  If my gut is wrong and this decision causes a mess a month or two from now, well, what's another mess at this point?  I won't be shocked.  What would shock me is if it ended up working to my advantage! 

Going back to O, she often says "This is what I know for sure."  Well, this is what I know for sure: that 2012 HAS to be better than 2011 for Vietnam adoptions.  I also know that this year can only bring me closer than the last to my girl.  Finally, I know that this is my calling and I will continue to fight as long as necessary to create my family the way I know is right for me.