Pt. 3

So at our agency when there is more than one family interested in a waiting child, they send you some pretty extensive questionnaires to turn in, do a phone interview with you, and then a panel of social workers and relevant country workers convene to make a decision.

Because we had just started our homestudy, we knew that this was the first glimpse they would have of our family.  We wanted desperately to answer in truthful, meaningful ways so that they could make the right decision, but these questions were deep, man... really, really deep.  Yes, we had thought through a lot of these things, but discussing things informally between each other, or our fellow parenting class participants was one thing.  Telling a faceless panel of strangers our deepest heart's longing and desire, in a succinct and articulate way was something else entirely.

It was a labour of love, those questionnaires.  We thought about them constantly, stayed up late writing and contemplating, and the day before they were due, in the haze of my fatigue, I saved over one of them.

An entire document, hours of work, lots of heart plumbing, vanished.

There was a back up copy, several edits ago that I had emailed to myself, but not the eloquent version that we had created.  There was that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach... what if we could never get that eloquence back?  What if these were the questions that made their decisions?

It was agonizing putting those answers back where were hoped they should go... plunging again into the far reaches to try and scavenge some articulation.  But we did it.  Then we sent them all in.  And we waited.

The phone interview was arranged.  We waited nervously on the other end of the phone, and I prayed fervently that my brain wouldn't do what it does when I know I have an answer to a question, but can't for the life of me think what it is.  Of course it did.

But it was ok.  The person we were talking to was patient and gracious and tried to set us at ease, although, isn't it always hard to be at ease when your future feels heavily dependent on you?  We answered well and honestly, and probably optimistically, but purposefully.  We talked for about an hour, answering questions, asking questions and finally we were done. 

It was all up to the panel then.