Meanwhile, back in Viet Nam…
I’ve been reading about this foundation in Viet Nam that is focused on breaking the cycle of poverty by focusing on educating street kids, including victims of trafficking, and offering them job opportunities. A single AP of a little girl from VN has moved there to volunteer with the foundation, which I think would be an amazing opportunity. Since I know nothing about them specifically, I’m simply passing on information for those of you interested in researching other avenues to continue to support those who could use some assistance back in Viet Nam.
The name of the foundation is The Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, founded about 7 years ago by an Australian teacher. According to its website, it has done the following (all of which I find fantastic – even the soccer):
Sent 928 kids back to school and training
Provided accommodation to 74 girls and boys
Served 71,327 meals
Built or repaired 16 homes for families
Distributed 2,610 litres of milk
Handed out 12,120 kgs of rice
Reunited 47 runaway children with their families
Taken 254 kids to a doctor or hospital
Put 5 teens through drug rehab
Obtained legal registration papers for 119 children
Rescued 42 trafficked children
Placed 37 teens in jobs
Played 557 games of soccer
I think it’s worth at least checking out.
My Mother’s Day Gift
Oscar is such a great shopper – and I just love how he enjoys finding treasures on Etsy. What a clever child. My Mother’s Day gift from him arrived last night, and I really like it (although I don’t love it since the stamp with his name and our G&R date is kind of faint). I do love the design and the copper, though, and when I replace the chain I think I’ll like it much more.
obviously, this is not my necklace, but a photo from the designer’s site. . .
What I do love is this pendant from another designer on Etsy. It’s the Vietnamese word for Mother, and I love the color of the glass (which is far clearer and more vivid than the photo).
My new favorite thing
I don’t know why this has become my new favorite object, but I find myself looking at this paperweight all the time. I got it from Etsy, and the woman who designed it custom made it for us. It’s just a little map of the northern part of Vietnam, but she was able to find a map that included the town where Oscar was born. Sweet, huh? The photo doesn’t do it justice.
The cinema
A sweet looking Vietnamese film that’s gone on my to watch list, “The Owl and The Sparrow.”
So, here’s what I’m thinking
I don’t think I want another child right now. Wow, I actually typed it. I mean, I want another child. I just don’t want to disrupt my life with Oscar. Things are great right now. Even with both of us being very sick, my working too much and him seemingly breaking into the terrible twos already, I love our little life together.
Not to sound too much like Sallie Field (and if you’re too young for the reference, I’m sorry), but Oscar “really, really likes me” right now. I cannot impress on you enough how big of a deal this is to me. I know I haven’t really written about it, but it took months for the little guy to like me on a consistent basis. Now that it’s happened, I’m not sure it’s a great idea to jeopardize it by bringing another child into the house. I’m feeling like he needs more time with just the two of us (and honestly, I might be feeling like I need more time with just the two of us). I have all of these things I want us to do together, and oddly I have a hard time imaging another child with us. This is, of course, partially because of the fact that it is so difficult to imagine what my next child will look like (what with my not being able to really decide whether I want to adopt a little girl (for me) or a little boy (for both Oscar and me)).
I also have spent too much time online and talking with friends who have decided to be candid with me about their “real feelings” about their second child. Jeesh. Who knew there could be such deep-seeded ambivalence in such a decision? I’m amazed by people who are willing to come right out and say that having their second child was a mistake. I’m not saying that in a judgmental way – I’m saying that I’m amazed that people are willing to overcome the social taboo of admitting that they regret having a child in order to help spare someone else from making what they believe might be a mistake. It has truly shaken me.
And I must admit that part of my ambivalence in this decision stems from the less than warm reaction I received from friends and family when I announced that I was going to adopt again. I don’t mean this in an accusatory way. I just started second guessing my decision when no one I knew congratulated me – honestly, all of my close friends and family members were at best tepid about it, and some came right out and told me I was making a mistake. You know, usually I would simply ignore this type of advice, but this has certainly stuck with me.
There are so many other factors that are contributing to my difficulty in making this decision (the point I’m at in my career, Oscar’s health issues, the economy, uncertainty in the Ethiopian adoption process (regarding single mothers and also regarding relinquished children and more importantly new guidelines for APs to not travel in country with their child as the fact of IA in the country is making people uncomfortable), my unrealistic (and bizarre) hope that adoptions from Vietnam (ethical, of course) will again become a possibility and on and on). What amazes me is that as soon as I come to a decision, I almost immediately reconsider it. As I do not typically waffle on issues, I think I need to tread lightly here. So, that’s the reason I’ve been so quiet about my adoption plans lately. I just don’t know what my plan really is.
My dream vacation
For months now I’ve dreamt of taking Oscar back to Vietnam (not for good, of course, just for a visit). I want to do this fairly soon – like next spring. This means, of course, that my desire to take him back there really isn’t about developing in him an appreciation of his birth country. I guess it’s about me. We saw some great places when we were in Vietnam earlier this year, but I don’t think I really enjoyed our experience at all. While I loved meeting the different people we encountered, the experience itself was marred by the constant worry that I was not going to get visa approval and would have to spend at least a couple of years living in exile.
So many people talk about taking their internationally adopted kids back to their birth countries when they’re anywhere from 10-14 years old. If possible, I’d love to take Oscar back every few years. I want to avoid putting too much importance or significance on one birth country visit. I think that’s just too much for a pre-teen to shoulder.
But I do have to wonder if taking a toddler to Vietnam is crazy. He’d do fine once we were there, I’m sure. The people there so adore children. It’s one of the things I marvelled about during our stay, and still love about the country. I am fairly afraid of the flight, though. Oscar did not do well on the flight from Taiwan to San Francisco. I fear that now that he’s mobile he’d do even more poorly. So, this is what I’ve been day-dreaming about lately. Finding a way to return to the country where I spent two months dreaming on a daily basis for a visa that would allow us to leave. Go figure.
Giving a little back
I keep in contact with a few of the other parents I know who adopted children in Vietnam. At some point or another we’ve all discussed the extreme poverty we all encountered in one way or another while we were there picking up our kids. Believe me, you couldn’t escape it. The parents who were able to meet their child’s birth parents tend to wonder whether they should send money back to them each year; the parents with abandoned kids just seem to wonder how to help ameliorate the problem of poverty. The problem of poverty is so overwhelming that at times it’s just easier to ignore it than to attempt to do something to help.
I know I’ve written about Kiva before, but I thought I’d mention them again. It’s a microfinance site that allows people like you and me to participate in loaning money to folks across the globe. Oscar and I are each lenders; I’ve been doing it long enough that all of my original loans have been repaid and I’ve been able to re-loan the same funds to other well-deserving individuals. Kiva has done the research that I am not able to do; they find business owners in need of funds, and people like us send them the money they need.
What I love about Kiva is that they allow the individual lenders to choose which people/groups whose loans the lender will fund. I also love that Kiva works with three field partners in Vietnam, so there always seem to be a number of Vietnamese women and men to whom we can lend funds (and BTW, the delinquency and default rates of the VN businesses on Kiva is 0% – zero!). If you’re looking for a way to help someone in need, you might want to look at Kiva. Are we individually going to change the world by making a $25 loan? No, but if we all did it . . .
Then and now – adoption forums
Like many prospective adoptive parents (to you bio mommies out there, we call these PAPs), one of the first things I did when I started down the road to adopt in Ethiopia was to join the relevant forums. I was incredibly reluctant to do this, as I had a love/hate relationship with the Vietnam forums while I was waiting for Oscar. Now, though, I really love to read the posts on the Vietnam boards, although I’m just a lurker.
I find myself comparing the Ethiopian and Vietnamese online adoption communities. Not based on their demographics, as I have no clue how these groups are comprised. I focus solely on the choice of discussion material and the tone of the participants in their forums. The upside of being a BTDT adoptive parent is that I’m no longer desperate for information from third-parties and I certainly don’t get as emotionally invested in the heated discussions in these groups. I was a sponge when I started the process in Vietnam. I may have thought about things like corruption in adoption, the adoptive triad, issues relating to having a multi-cultural family and more general issues like attachment, but I soaked up everything I could find (especially in these groups) and went back to my social worker to ask for more reading material. Now, I’m still curious, but I have a much better handle on what my opinions are about issues and those opinions themselves are far better developed than before.
The Vietnam groups were full of discussions regarding the ethics of adoption, focused (naturally) on corruption. Over the months, these discussions ranged from allegations of wrongdoing against agencies (versus wrongdoing of orphanages/individuals on their own), the malevolence (or not) of USCIS, and still my all-time favorite, the moral superiority of a PAP who had chosen an “ethical” agency or who had chosen to walk away from the program altogether in a condemnation of corruption (and not because it was clear that the program was going to shut down before they received a referral).
The Ethiopia groups I’ve joined have a different slant. Possibly because the corruption issue simply isn’t as prevalent, the debates focus on different topics. What I find the most interesting are the discussions about race (as issues relating to the race of the child I’m adopting now are seemingly more emotionally packed than Oscar’s, at least in our country (and if not, they’re at least a bit different)) and the adoptive triad.
I actually find the discussions on the Ethiopian boards about “birth” mothers to be similar on an emotional scale as those about ethics/corruption in Vietnam. There’s a huge focus by a small subset of one of these groups on compassion toward the first/birth mother. I’m all for this sort of compassion, BTW (in fact, it always astonishes me that we don’t extend this same sort of compassion to the birth father). What I find interesting is (a) how some people can turn a show of compassion towards another into a demonstration of what a great person they are and (b) how those attempting to be compassionate towards the first mothers can be so terribly insensitive to the adoptive mother. I find “(a)” to be very similar to the ability of some in the VN program to turn a discussion of ethical agencies into a demonstration of what an ethical person the PAP is.
The other thing I find fascinating about the PAPs in the Ethiopia program is how open they are about their faith (from what I’ve seen in the forums and on blogs, the majority of the people who post are Christians). I’ve read a lot of posts / blogs in the Vietnamese adoptive community and I have no idea what the religious preferences of most of the parents are. I’m sure many have a faith that is just as significant as those in the Ethiopia program; I find it interesting that people choose to show it in one country and not another. Not better or worse, just interesting.
Anyway, I’ve just been thinking about the differences, and while I suspect this might not be of interest to a lot of you, I’ve been trying to make sense of it in my mind.
Then and now
In the van on the way back to Hanoi after the G&R (yes, he was trying to scratch out my eyes):
In his room last night after his pre-birthday celebration with Grandma, Grandpops and Nanny Norma:
Blissful Ignorance
Wow. Was I some kind of idiot when I started my first adoption or what? I chose a homestudy agency near my home, chose a country based on the fact that it accepted singles, had a low incidence rate of FAS and had a culture I found interesting and chose an IA agency because my homestudy agency recommended it and other families did, too. I didn’t know what a NOID really was; I didn’t worry about my country shutting down; and I didn’t worry all that much about ethics (I mean, they reopened the country, so the process had to be fixed, right?). I automatically ruled out domestic adoption (who’s going to choose a single woman to parent her child?) and special needs (hey, there’s no way I could knowingly take that on). I had no idea what I didn’t even know about adoption.
I feel like I’m starting from scratch on this one. Maybe I’ll adopt a bi-racial baby domestically. There is an obvious appeal to knowing I’m not going to have to spend weeks (or months!) in a foreign country alone with my kids. Maybe I’ll adopt an HIV positive child. All I know right now is that with every thought I have, I have a number of thoughts questioning the original one.
Adopting domestically – it would be nice to have a child from the time s/he is a newborn, but I do wonder whether Oscar would somehow be jealous of that. There’s also the issue that this adoption would likely be an open one. Is it fair for one child to have a relationship (regardless of how close it is) with his or her birth mother when the other cannot?
Adopting special needs kids – I know now that I can take on far more than I previously thought. I also have a better handle on the kind of life kids who don’t find families are likely to have. Is it unfair to Oscar to have a sibling with a significant medical need that will require such a large amount of my attention? Or, would that need eventually just become a part of who that child is that he didn’t even really notice it? Do I really have it in me to parent a child with a chronic illness that could become a terminal disease? I think I do, but one of my best friends reacted to this prospect far more negatively than I had imagined anyone would. There’s still a lot of mis-information and prejudice out there about HIV. I know I’m open to “correctible” needs like a cleft palate. I met the sweetest little girl in VN whose lovely mom was waiting it out over there, too. Little RG had the sweetest disposition notwithstanding the fact that she had severe hip dysplasia and a club foot that had to be causing her extreme pain. While I know the surgeries, etc. would be difficult, I no longer see those obstacles as reasons to turn away from a child.
Adopting internationally again – Where? Jeez, it’s becoming tough for a single girl out there. There’s Ethiopia, of course, but will it go the way of Vietnam? The multiple trips required of some of the Eastern bloc (and Asian) countries rule them out for me. I just can’t put Oscar (or myself or our dogs) through that. There’s Colombia, although I would be looking at an older child, which raises the birth order issue. I’m leaning towards India, but I’m not of Indian descent, so that makes it more difficult (added to the fact I’m a 40 year old single woman) and likely I’ll need to adopt an older child (birth order issue, again). I’m interested in Thailand, but there are significant restrictions there.
Gender – Hmm. Do I want to choose? I’m thinking no. Although I have a great name for a little girl and still have some desire to have one, I know I won’t be asking for a HBG AYAP. Should I adopt a brother for Oscar? Maybe it wouldn’t matter to him.
Timing – While part of me would love to do my homestudy now, I know I can’t adopt until next summer at the earliest. I do want to have at least a year with Oscar home alone before we actually bring another child home, so if I go international, starting back up now is the right choice. From talking with some of you out there who have gone the domestic route, I’ve been shocked about how quickly you’ve been able to add to your families when you’ve been open to race, relationship with birth mother, etc.
So, while I was thinking that my second adoption should be a snap, I’ve managed to make it far more complicated than the first. Not a surprise, really, if you know me. Perhaps I’ll simply put all of the options into a hat and have Oscar choose. Ok, probably not, but there’s some appeal there.
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Etta’s Hats
Where I’ve Been
