Adoption

By Mark K. Updegrove

When we finally got word, it came anti-climactically in an e-mail from Guatemala City. The secretary of our lawyer wrote simply that her boss "has just advice [sic] me to inform you that the file is ready for pick-up. Please acknowledge receipt of this mail." "The file" contained all the legal forms and administrative information the Guatemala attorney general's office required in consideration of our adoption of a Guatemalan toddler; "ready for pick-up" indicated that the office had approved the adoption. We waited an agonizing two months longer as U.S. authorities processed more paperwork around an immigration VISA. So ended the turbulent two and a half year process-rife with endless red tape in Guatemala and the U.S.-through which we would ultimately bring a daughter, Tallie Reed Updegrove, into our American family.

It began in the spring of 2005, when my wife Evie, convalescing from a near fatal abdominal emergency at Greenwich General Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut, pondered the rest of her life. As we walked delicately through the hospital's corridors, Evie in a pale-blue hospital gown pulling a wobbley-wheeled IV, we talked of having another child. Our son Charlie, our "miracle baby," had been born in 2000, the result of an intensive invetro-fertilization regimen Evie. This time she felt strongly about adoption, and just as strongly that we give a home to a child from the Third World. After considering our choices, we settled on Guatemala.

Upon returning home Evie threw herself into the tangle of bureaucracy inherent in the process of adoption. She treated it like a job, taking all the necessary steps with the passion and precision of someone bucking for a promotion. Adoption agencies, administrative forms, government bureaus, home studies, lawyers, immigration papers, DNA tests, finger prints, notary publics, letters of recommendation. She balanced them all while dealing with unavoidable frustrations. In the U.S., she would often get conflicting direction from American government agencies. Occasionally, they didn't even recognize each other, a disturbing sign that departmental reform is needed. In Guatemala, she had to contend with a government that does things on its own time, and where periodic populist overtures threaten American adoption altogether.

A year later we were "matched" with a newborn baby girl who Charlie named "Sallie." It seemed fated. Sallie shared Charlie's birthday, April 6, and despite her dark Mayan features, had blue eyes like him. Though we understood the adoption would not be finalized for at least eight months, we all journeyed to Guatemala City for three days to meet Sallie, and embraced her as the newest member of our family. It was an emotional time. My most vivid memory is of being awakened one night well before dawn as Sallie howled a newborn's cry. Charlie, who had just turned six, kneeled in front of her as she lied unsettled on the bed and, as a lullaby, softly sang words to a song I had never heard before:

"Love goes one by one, two by two, and four by four.

Love goes round in a circle, and comes back knocking at your front door.

It comes back knocking at your front door."

Sallie stopped crying. I started.

Two month later we learned the adoption had fallen through. Sallie's birth mother had told Guatemalan authorities that she was widowed. In fact she was married, in violation of a U.S. law prohibiting the adoption of the children of married Guatemalans. Suddenly, Sallie was out of our lives. There was nothing we could do. We all mourned the loss as we doubted our fortune. Resisting the feeling that we were helplessly abandoning her, Evie went through the process again in the hopes of being matched with another Guatemalan newborn. If we can't give this one a loving home, we thought, we'll find another.

We were matched with another child several months later. Wary of the whims of fate and still reeling from the loss of Sallie, we ventured down the same bureaucratic roads. Though it took an interminable sixteen months, we would pick up our daughter on December 17--just in time to have her home for Christmas. She captured us immediately with her soulful eyes, the color of cocoa beans. We named her Tallie, a nod to Sallie, the sister she would never know.

As Newsweek pointed out earlier this year, Americans adopt just over 20,000 children annually from foreign countries. Guatemala is second only to China in international adoptions, followed by Russian and South Korea, though Guatemala's status is threatened as U.S. authorities warn of "wrong and unethical behavioral and practices" among those in Guatemala involved in the process. Not all of adoptive parents of foreign babies are named Anjolina, or Brad, or Madonna, and many face the kinds of delays, disappointments, and frustrations we met during our course. But, in our case, it all faded with the incomparable joy of parenthood.

A friend who shares Tallie's birthday, the eight of August--or 8/8--told me it's the only birthday where the numbers possess a never-ending continuum. Just a short time ago it seemed a cruel metaphor for the endlessness of the adoption process during which we often wondered if our efforts, no matter how well intended, were in vain. Now it's a symbol for the infinite love we feel for both our children.

Love goes round in a circle and comes back knocking at your front door.

- MKU