T minus seven!

I'm leaving in a week this morning to get my girl! For soooo many years, I doubted that this would ever happen. Even last week I was wondering if I would ever make it to Vietnam (it's a long, cold swim and my suitcases are heavy). Now I have flights, a hotel, a passport and a visa, so I've got one week to finish packing, work on my house, and freak out about everything coming in my life. It's over-the-moon thrilling that my dream is coming true, but I've also had 6.5 years to think about all the ways I can mess up and things can go wrong! I just have to breathe and believe. Nothing matters except that Mai feels safe and loved.

"Tell me again about the first time you held me in your arms and called me your baby sweet. Tell me again how you cried happy tears."

- Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born, Jamie Lee Curtis

a bad day, then a good book

I thought I had flights for Vietnam, but was I wrong.  The travel agent reserved my round trip and I got the itinerary, but he didn't process my credit card so I don't actually have a ticket. He said he reserved Mai's trip, but I didn't get the itinerary and it wasn't charged either. Before I knew that we didn't have tickets, I received an itinerary change. But the itinerary and the change were sent to me in some application called Tripcase, which I don't understand how to use. The "new" flights I got looked exactly the same as the first ones. But then when I looked at my updated itinerary screen, my flight from Vancouver to Guangzhou was gone! The agent had all day today to fix this; he did reserve Mai's ticket and charged it, but I guess that's it. I asked him contact me before he closed today, but he didn't. So right now I am planning to swim to Vietnam, because there are barely any seats left to Asia in August. Oh, and Mai the 5-year-old is flying to Canada on her own.

Next, I though I had confirmed with the Vietnamese embassy by phone that I could get a 2- or 3-month visitor visa. My trip (for which I don't have a ticket) is only 3 weeks, but the Canadian foreign service workers at missions around the world are in a legal strike position, and they are doing rolling strikes. If the workers in Singapore or Ho Chi Minh City strike while we're waiting for Mai's Canadian documents, our trip home could be delayed. When I applied for my visa on Monday, I enclosed a letter explaining the situation and the phone call. When I got my passport back today, it contained .... wait for it .... a 1-month visa. The chances of needing more than a month are slim, but my problem is this: don't offer me something if you're not going to come through. I have spent the past 6 and a half years of my life dealing with lies, fraud, broken trust, and enough frustration and disappointment for a lifetime. While I realize that officials at the Vietnamese embassy have no idea what my travel agent did, and he has no idea what my agency did, and they have no idea what my doctor did, and on and on, all of it is ridiculous. Why is it unacceptable for me to treat my clients this way, but pretty much everyone associated with adoption can treat people this way and still have a job?

It's days like today that fuel my passion for helping other adopters, so I'll do a bit of that now and cool my jets before bed. Here are some useful things I've learned while preparing for my trip/swim:

- Part 2 of the direct citizenship application and the citizenship certificate application cost a total of CAN$175, which you pay on the CIC website before you leave.
- The passport process for children adopted in Vietnam now costs CAN$260 (temporary passport, regular passport, and notarization of something or other). You can pay by credit card, but you have to fill out a form and pay a 3% surcharge.
- The recommended total to bring as gifts for the orphanage and staff is US$200.  In the case of my agency, the representative deals with the gifts for you.
- Green taxis in Vietnam are more expensive than green and white ones.
- My agency is charging a file administration fee again this year. Nobody knew this for sure, despite many people asking multiple times over the past several months. My friend got the letter today, four months after it was expected, and the money is due on Wednesday. I'm too tired to even add a comment here, but you can imagine.

I'll end on a happy note. I found the perfect single mama (or papa) adoption book: God Found Us You, by Lisa T. Bergren. I ordered it online, figuring that "us" was mom and dad, as usual, and thinking I would just tell Mai that in our family, "us" means me, Nana and Poppa and Auntie's household. But surprise! In this book, Mama Fox always knew that she was part of an "us", but she had to wait for God to find Little Fox. It's such a beautifully written adoption story that single Mama Fox is just the cherry on top!

"I started seeing you everywhere, in the leaves of the giant oak and in the bark of the pine. Even in the stars! Oh, how I longed for the day that you would arrive, when God would find us you."



"I think she prayed like crazy that you would be safe, Little Fox. I think she prayed for me as much as I prayed for her." -LTB

"

appointment with the stork!

Our Giving and Receiving Ceremony is on August 9, 2013!  There is a family from Montreal with my agency who have the same date, so it's nice that we'll share that special moment with some new Canadian friends. My plan right now is to stop working on July 31st, travel around the 4th, take a mini Vietnamese beach vacation in Mui Ne while we wait for paperwork, and head home with my girl around the 23rd. It's a long trip across the date line (in economy class, anyway), so I think we'll stop for a day and night in Vancouver. What better place to introduce Mai to beautiful Canada?

After a week of illness caused by the typhoid shot, this news today was just what the doctor ordered (well, actually my doctor wouldn't see me until August, even though I said I would be gone most of August and needed an appointment before I left). I have so many things to do, but travel trumps everything in my world, so hotel and flight reservations are next! Time to empty the bank account and get really, truly JOYful that it's happening...in 23 days!!!!!

In other good news, my parcel was delivered to Vietnam and I woke up one morning during "Typhoid Week" to the most precious, miraculous photos of Mai looking at my picture for the first time, seeing her forever family, and hugging her new dolly.  I was told that she was "extremely happy", and her smile said it all. I have no words for how I felt looking at her that morning. But it made me think about how life can change in an instant.

There are horrible ones that we don't expect, like when your family abandons you, or your adoption agency steals your child and goes bankrupt. There will always be that kind, in one form or another, and it's devastating and seemingly impossible to make sense of. But if you dig deep and carry on, life will inevitably send you the other kind. It's the miracle, and it has the power to turn your life around, make sense of every moment that came before it, and confirm that everything in your heart was true all along the way.

July 13th was the 4th anniversary of the Imagine bankruptcy. This year, I didn't even realize until I read it a few days later.

"'Tis but the work of a moment."
-Love Actually

a gift and a LONO!!!!!

Yesterday, a family from Ottawa left to complete their adoption in Vietnam, and they are delivering a parcel for Mai! They are so kind to do this when they have so much to carry and think about, and I am eternally grateful.  I kept it as small as possible--a compact photo album, a mini doll and some fairy princess stickers. They will give it to the representative for my agency, and somehow it will be delivered to my daughter. I have no idea if anyone has told her about me yet; in any case, this will be the first time she sees me. Given Mai's age and what she has already been through in her life, I hope and pray that the people who play a part in her transition do so with sensitivity and care.  I wrote in the front of the album "I have loved you for a thousand years, I love you for a thousand more", from the song A Thousand Years by Christina Perri. I don't expect anyone at the orphanage to read English or to translate that. I just hope one day she will read it and understand that we were always meant to be, and I will never leave.

This morning I received my letter of no objection from the Government of Ontario. My social worker sent the request on June 14 (she said it was the fastest LONO request she's ever made, because after so many years of obstacles she's not going to get in my way!). Then I was eating lunch at an outdoor concert downtown with a friend, and a dragonfly came out of nowhere (you don't see them much in concrete jungles with no water anywhere in sight) and landed right beside me! In Vietnam, the dragonfly is a popular cultural image, and on this side of the planet it's a symbol of rebirth or a renewal after a great hardship or loss, so I took this little guy as another sign on another very happy day on the journey to Mai!

Now I'm waiting for a letter of invitation from Vietnam. My agency says that I will travel in about a month. My heart is overflowing with love, my head is spinning with everything I have to do, and the countdown (of the good kind, finally) is ON!

BLOOM!!!!!

After 6 years, 5 months and 11 days of heartache and longing, my life flipped in a moment on June 11, when I got the official news that a beautiful, incredible little girl would finally, FI-NA-LLY be my daughter!!!!! I got the unofficial news on June 5 around 5 a.m., at the airport, by myself (!!), on the way to meet a friend in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I wanted to shout the news into the microphone for all the strangers waiting at the gate, but nobody would have understood everything that went into that moment, nor would they have cared! Nonetheless, I had the most JOYful vacation, bookended by the two greatest e-mails of my life.  I was all over the map (literally and emotionally!) in Mexico, writing pieces of this post throughout the week. My body has landed back home and signed the acceptance papers, and my mind knows that it's real now, but my spirit is floating somewhere it's never been and I'm not sure it will ever come back down.

My daughter's given names are Mai Suong. Mai means "flower" or "blossom". Suong is the word for "JOY". I have long maintained that I would keep my child's name, since it would be given by her previous family. But I also spent some time secretly hoping that she would be a Mai, because it's my favourite Vietnamese name. I love the sound of the word and I am crazy about flowers, which are Mother Nature's most beautiful work. I also decided years ago that I would add Suong as one of my future daughter's middle names, because Joy is my mom's and my middle name. The fact that Mai Suong was out there under the same moon, waiting for me to be her forever mom, is just one of many miracles in our story.

Mai turned 5 years old on May 21. She lives at Go Vap orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City, where she has been for about a year. I have actually been matched with her since September 29, 2012 (!!), in the special needs stream; but under the new adoption law in Vietnam, "older" is not a special need until a child's 5th birthday. It wasn't as simple as just waiting for May 21--the wait for Mai within the wait for a family was a torturous ride on a roller coaster built on a roller coaster, taken by someone who is terrified of heights--but that no longer matters.

Many moons before last September 29, I was asked if I would consider a certain little girl, who was nameless and faceless to me at the time. There were some unknowns, so I took time to think about it. Until then I had not been comfortable with much risk, but something inside told me that this girl was meant to be mine. I said yes, but then things changed and a match was no longer possible.  I had to survive yet another blow and put my heart back in line. But as the weeks and months went by, I kept thinking about this child. So I asked my agency about her, and learned that if I was willing to wait until her birthday, we could be matched! I agreed, and received an e-mail with the subject MAI SUONG, and photos and videos of the most perfect little flower I have ever seen. My head understood what my heart already knew.

I can't post her picture until after the Giving and Receiving ceremony in Vietnam, but I can tell you that she has a face shaped like mine. Her smile lights up from inside. And in every photo I've seen of her, she's wearing something I could have picked, like pink ruffled pyjamas, pink sandals with watermelons on them, a pink empire waist dress with embroidered flowers and a big bow, a red polka dot sundress wtih shiny buttons. These things belong to the orphanage, but not to worry. She already has enough Gymboree clothes in her closet here to open a store.

The day I got the unofficial news, I arrived in Playa and went for a walk as I waited for my friend.  Around the corner from our hotel, I passed a store called Pacha Mama. Pacha was the middle name I was going to give to the Ecuadoran daughter who was stolen out from under me four years ago. In Mayan languages, Pacha is nature, creation, the universe. I know it's not a coincidence that I learned I was a mom and received a reminder of Pacha on the same day. I believe in signs, and this one was literal! For this Mama, Mai is the universe in a single bloom.

The journey to my family has been something that my worst nightmares couldn't even design. But the deeper the darkness, the brighter the light. My heart is so JOYful right now, I can only describe it as winning the Olympics, the lottery and the Nobel prize all at once. For those reading this who are still waiting, may my story help you have faith that your family is out there, and inspire you to keep fighting for the little one who needs you as much as you need him or her.  I promise you that love wins, if you never stop believing what your heart is telling you.

"At this very moment, the world is blossoming into its infinite variety before falling silent in amazement at the miracle it has just achieved."

-Deepak Chopra

neverending road

All I've got tonight after 6 years, 4 months, 2 weeks and 4 days without my daughter is this!!



“...of all the hardships a person had to face none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting.”
-Khaled Hosseini

75 months

Today is my 75-month wait-iversary. One would think that there should be a solid reason why it takes 75 months plus to give a family to a child who needs one. Maybe there are not enough orphans in the world to fill the homes of the waiting parents? Maybe the waiting parents all have evil intentions of trafficking children or using them as servants or removing their organs? Maybe all the waiting parents are using unethical means to arrange adoptions? Maybe all the countries that are turning against adoption are doing so because they can suddenly, magically take care of all their orphans?

There are about 100 million orphans in the world. And that estimate only includes the ones that are known, or fit into someone's arbitrary defnition of "orphan". All the waiting families that I have ever met go through years of personal hell, pay ridiculous fees, give up all privacy and jump through a zillion hoops for the chance to love one of those children. Period. We cannot arrange anything on our own, ethical or not, because the law forces us to use a licensed agency. The system is supposed to regulating those agencies and other stakeholders in sending and receiving countries to make sure they're operating ethically. There are more orphans than ever in the world, but thanks to UNICEF, the Hague Convention and a broken, senseless system, the chances of any of them getting a forever family have become almost impossible. For more on this topic, please watch the documentary Stuck, which is available at www.bothendsburning.org.

Last night, on the eve of 75, I came across a movie called La Misma Luna, the English translation of which is Under the Same Moon. For obvious reasons, I was drawn in by the title. Although it isn't a film about adoption, it was just what I needed to see. This is a movie about a single Mexican mother who is working illegally in the United States to give her son back home a better life. She always tells Carlitos that no matter how far away she is, they are still under the same moon. He is too young to understand why they cant't be together, and he begins to wonder whether she loves him. When his grandmother dies, he runs away to find his mother, and along the way he meets his biological father and a few people who help and care for him like he is their own child. I loved everything about this movie, but I was really moved by all the different kinds of love shown to Carlitos by the people in his life, his mother's commitment to him, and his need to be protected and guided in her absence. I came away feeling inspired, imagining my daughter dreaming of family under the same moon, praying for her protection while we're apart, and believing that somehow, against all odds, my love will bring her home.