Getting Home

Waiting for the paper work that will allow us to go home is getting to be a little frustrating.   I wander if this is a minor version of the Israelites’ frustration after forty year in the desert.  I know it is not the same – we are not escaping slavery and we are not being lead by a cloud of fire but we do have manna which is Chinese food and our rock of water is Coke Zero and Crystal Lite.  One thing for sure is that our home state is not the Promised Land.  (But once I get there I would like to knock the walls of arrogance and short sightedness down around the topic of their not investing in light rail.)

The frustration is that we have a two day trip home and we really cannot start because “The Ten Commandments” of the adoption paper work has not made it back from our home state.  Our concern is that the there was some minor issues in the paper work that the lawyers (The Levites of this comparison) said would not be any problem.   What is a problem is the home state lawyer is getting back from his honeymoon today and birth states “adoption” person does not work on Tuesday’s and Thursday’.

To say the least like the Israelites our little tribe is getting grouchy, testy and on each other nerves in our little three room tent.  It does feel like it has been 40 years and for a four year old two week is forty years.

I know we will be going home soon but, and to quote my fathers favorite comedian “all things considered I rather be in Philadelphia.”

Can You Believe It!

We have been blessed!  We have a new member of family.  Last Friday our daughter was born.  She is healthy, strong and by the way beautiful.  It true, just ask anyone who sees her.

 We did not have any restriction on what kind child we were going to adopt except that it be and infant.  Race did not matter – location did not matter – sex did not matter– we would have taken twins.  For a while we thought there might be two because the birth mother had been telling us it was a boy and talked about seeing his, you know.  Then three weeks ago she called and said it was a girl. 

After we had taken the child into our position and both birth parents signed the papers, we meet with the birth mother’s lawyer to sign some paper work for our lawyer.  One of the issues we have had with the agency we worked with was the legal fees.  We paid $10,000 in fees for the two lawyers and a lawyer finder’s fee. 

When we spoke with her lawyer we asked how much she charges because our lawyer had a max amount that was not close to what we paid and we discovered her lawyer was getting less.  We told her she need to reevaluate her fee and she said she charges less for biracial adoptions because most people who adopt biracial had less means than those adopting as single race (white) baby.

My wife and a were dumb struck.  The implication is that the more wealth the more likely they would want a white child.  I don’t know why this surprised me but it did.  Because race was not an issue for us why would it be for other persons of means?

 The more things change the more they stay the same.