Sonntag, 13. Juni 2010

risky transition with no risk of spoilers.

Adoption.
We're treading water in the unknown. Every little teeny plan feels like a victory because there are big massive things that we cannot know until we know them. It appears that the process of adoption is akin to surveying a land of bridges and being told to ignore them. The wonderful, beautiful, terrifying things that are possibly in the future can not even be contemplated, without the hubris of assuming that we will be permitted to encounter them.
It's just the normal day-to-day unknown, but there is a whole lot unknown all at once. There is this place in my agenda where plans just stop, nothing is written and nothing is known. Before that, we have adoption forms to fill out that lead to an unknown, my certification course, the outcome of which is unknown and my fluency exams which are two days of scary testing that lead to yet another unknown.
One fun unknown is the world cup. It's lovely to have one unknown that doesn't mean life-altering scariness. Plus there is an end date, so we know when the result comes out.
I hesitate to blog about adoption, for fear that it will lead to blogging about little else. That may become inevitable at some point, but I think that I want to postpone that. It's a big topic at the moment and it's nice to think and talk about the good parts while we're ensconced in paperwork and the minutia and bureaucracy.
Even writing this has been a helpful reminder that not knowing what's to come is horribly banal. Even when we have our kid and wonder what that kid will look like, our lack of genetic influence won't make that wondering any different from an average parent. The possible heartbreaks awaiting us during this process may be different from the heartbreaks of natural parents, but we'll all have heartbreaks, in one form or another.