Where's Willa

Hello Kitty

Willa~

Today, for the first time, I let myself look at your photos and imagine holding you.

In one photo, you are propped against a backdrop of Hello Kitty print. You are in a little white cardigan that has pink roses on the Peter Pan collar, a pair of pants with a print I can't decipher and bright pink and purple socks that are just a bit too big for your feet.

I close my eyes, and I think I know just what it would feel like to hold one of those sockfeet in the palm of my hand.

We've seen a lot of referral pictures, and we know that it's difficult to determine anything at all from the photos. But there is something about your face that that is so content. You are so young in these photos - maybe 5 or 6 months old.

I have to remind myself that you are not much older than that now.

Will we get to see you by your first birthday? Will we see you by Thanksgiving or Christmas?

Maybe today someone is reading our letter and saying "Yes, this is a good match."

Love W/O Boundaries

Dear Willa~

I want to share a story with you about the way some people just go around casually doing good, and leave behind them an amazing trail of changed lives.

Not long ago, I was researching the city where you are, and the SWI where you have lived since last November.

There simply is not very much information available, I'm afraid. So I have resorted to creative measures of data collection.

One thing that I did was email a woman named Amy Eldridge, who is the mother of three Chinese children and works with an organization called Love Without Boundaries.

The group works throughout China, assisting orphanages in many ways, including arranging for medical treatment, providing nutritional aid, and many other projects. As a result, LWB volunteers have traveled extensively throughout China and have personally visited many of the SWIs.

I wrote Amy and asked her if she knew anything about Zhuhai. She responded quickly, telling me that she did not, but that she would forward my question to the LWB representative in Guangdong province to find out whether the facilitator knew anything about the orphanage in Zhuhai.

A week or so later, I got this email from Amy:

Hi Elizabeth! Our facilitator called Zhuhai and found out that there are around 86 kids there. They are sending us the files on four children with cleft and one little girl with an urgent colon issue to see if we can help them with surgery. Usually once we help an orphanage we get much more detailed information, so I will let you know what else we hear. Thank you for contacting me because now five kids will get the surgery they need!

Amy

Tonight, I am sitting here wondering what you are doing right now. I wonder if any of those five children are close to you. Are you eating together? Do you take your nap close to one of them?

Do you have any idea how much we already love you, and how this part of the wait seems like the longest?

Originally written Aug. 2, 2006

Postmark, July 21

Dear Willa~

This will sound ridiculous. It will make me look like a person who I am not. I am reluctant to even bring it up.

The thing is, I saw a ladybug.

A couple weeks ago, your sister and I had been in Boston, and there flew into the car a little ladybug. Your Auntie L remarked that it was the first ladybug she had seen in a long time.

I laughed that maybe we would get good news about Willa.

We didn't, of course.

Earlier today, your dad met a ladybug in his car, and wondered the same thing. But he did not mention anything.

Then, in the actual mailbox - the one at the end of our driveway, not the one that resides on a server somewhere - we received a letter to tell us that we are officially on our way.

Our Letter of Intent was mailed to China on July 21.

Now we wait to for approval.

We wait, and I look at your photo and try hard to keep myself from shouting about this all over town.

These next few months will be so hard.

I can't wait to smell your head.

I want you to remember this on days when you think you hate her

Dear Willa~

At this moment, I am sitting in bed at 1 a.m. Your sister is next to me because it is simply too hot for her to sleep in the room upstairs. She was asleep when I crawled into bed beside her with my little white Apple laptop and my Pottery Barn catalogs. (Don't judge me, little one. You don't even know me yet.)

Now, she is awake. She is smiling at me, finishing her cup of water and instructing Miss Panda to go to sleep because it is very late and babies should be asleep.

This afternoon, shopping at CVS on Main Street, your sister and I found ourselves on the aisle of baby items.

Maybe by the time you get to know her, your sister will have mellowed. (ha! aahahahahaha! and ha!) This afternoon, at age 3 and 2 months, she is a white-hot laser of toddler intensity.

She did not want to leave the baby supplies. She pulled a package of bottle nipples from the shelf.

"Are these pacifiers?" she asked.

"No, they're bottle nipples."

"We need to buy these for my Willa," she said.

I took her hand, and as I led her to your dad, who was standing at the front of the store waiting for photos to print, I explained that, as soon as we get word that we can come meet you, she and I will go to the store and make sure we have everything you need.

She thinks about you all the time, Mei Mei. she is saving her favorite dresses that she has outgrown, and she knows just where your crib will go in the bedroom you'll share.

She has instructed me that you will need your own blanket and bear.

She writes letters to China on her computer keyboard. She petitions for your adoption several times a week.

Had I known how long our wait for you would be, I would not have told her about it as early as I did. But that is what it is.

A couple days ago, we were getting ice cream up the street at a little joint that caters to locals, tolerates tourists, and adores children. Outside, there is a swingset and jungle gym, picnic tables, a deep porch and a little wishing well made of stacked bricks painted white.

Your sister found a nickel in the sand under the swings and, without a word to me, made a B-line for the wishing well and threw the nickel over the edge.

"What did you wish for, Bee?" I asked her.

"That Willa could come home and be with her family."

Dream a little dream

Dear Willa~

You were in my dreams two nights ago. You were justhome, and beautiful. Our house was full of visitors to see you, and you did not disappoint with your cuteness.

We were all surrised at how quickly we had found you.

The truth here is that it has not been quick at all, and the road has stretched longer the longer we've been on it.

There have been raised hopes and disapointments and unexpected twists and turns.

One day I'll be grateful for every delay, because they all will have added up to exactly the right moment to meet you, my girl.

Just maybe

(Originally posted Saturday, April 29, 2006)

Dear Willa~

Your dad and I are in the car again, this time headed back from Boston to New York.

When we arrived at Stephen and Lisa’s house yesterday, I had an e-mail waiting from our agency representative sent out to all waiting families. It said that many people had inquired about the Waiting Child Program, and that a new list of available children would be posted at 4:30 p.m. central time. It also said that the agency expected a rush of applications and inquiries, but that the applications would be reviewed beginning May 8.

I printed the letter to show to your dad, and then we got ready and headed into Cambridge. It was all I could do to keep from finding a computer in the MIT student center so I could look at that list when it was posted. But there was no hurry. I restrained myself. Besides, what was I going to do - review files next to the MIT taqueria?

I could not, however, restrain myself much longer after we got home from the show. Sitting on the futon next to your dad, I pulled up the list, and proceeded to break everyone’s heart with one file after another.

Are you on that list, my little Willa Josephine? Ae you there? Have we looked at your photo and put our hands to our mouths, because your beauty was astounding. Do you have a serious, cool gaze? Do you have large, frightened eyes? Are you much bigger than we expected, or much smaller?

Who is this little girl who’s waiting for us at the same time we're waiting for her?

Four months later...

(Originally posted Friday, April 28)

Dear Willa~

It was “Middle-Aged Ladies in Track Suits Day” at the Lee, MA service center on the Mass Pike.

Your dad and I are on our way to Boston. Christian and Mollie are at home with your grandmother, who has been visiting for the past month or so from Florida. On Tuesday, she’ll go back home, and then drive her car back up here for the summer.

Dad and I have gotten an unexpected day away - driving to Boston to stay with Stephen and Lisa and see Stephen’s band open for Cake at MIT. We’ll get to go to a couple of real restaurants and see Cambridge and act like irresponsible adults for 24 hours or so.

You’ll see from the date of the previous entry that it’s been a while since I’ve attended to these letters. The only excuse I have is that, between then and now, we managed to move from nearly the southern extreme of the country to nearly the northern extreme. Yes, we could have moved from Key West to somewhere in Maine, but we’re just not that brand of overachievers.

Instead, we’ve come from Pensacola to Fly Creek, where we’ve got our 15 acres and 6 chickens. It’s been a hectic few months, to say the least.

In the meantime, we learned that our dossier was logged in at the CCAA on March 20.

One morning last week, just after waking up, I had a memory of your father telling me we should look on the so-called “waiting child” list to see if you were there. That morning, I could not remember whether I had dreamed about your father’s suggestion or if he had really asked me.

Later that afternoon, I asked him.
“I’ve asked about that before, but not recently,” he told me.
“I must have dreamed, then, that you told me to look at the lists.”
“Then maybe we should look at the list.”
So that is where we are now. We have begun to research our agency’s Waiting Child program.

In the language of Chinese adoption - and probably of adoption in general - there are two broad categories of children who need families:

+ No Special Needs - NSN - meaning children with no identified physical, emotional or developmental issues that would require medical intervention or treatment.
+ Special Needs - SN - a broad designation that could mean anything from a birthmark to cerebral palsy and everything in between and beyond.

We have begun our research on the types of “special needs” that are commonly described: Cleft lip and/or palate, heart conditions, hepatitis, albinism, genital ambiguity - the list is long and can be very sad. And reading the list is an exercise in brutal self-examination.

With every description I read, I ask myself, “Could I do that? Could I handle it? Would I be the right parent to help a child handle that?”

Sometimes, the answer is yes, sometimes I just don’t know.

I remind myself, however, that most families that include someone with “special needs”* don’t have the chance to cast a vote in such matters. These are things that just happen in families. Your child is born with a heart condition or without a hand, and it becomes just like their eye color or most ticklish spot. It’s part of the whole child. You might wish things were different - easier - for your child, but you never wish you had a different child.

*The very notion of a “special needs” child is pretty relative when it comes to children who find themselves available for adoption. Can it honestly be said that any infant who was abandoned and spent more than 6 months in an orphanage is totally free of “special needs”?

If you ask me, we all have special needs - needs that can baffle or even exhaust the people who care for us. And it is in the act of providing for those needs that we get to experience something holy.

A Jane by any other name

(Originally published Tuesday, January 17, 2006)

Dear Willa,

It's a rainy Tuesday that feels like a Monday because yesterday was MLK Day. I'm at work, waiting for a phone call, and slipping in a little note to you.

On Saturday, the mail carrier brought us one of the three packages of paperwork on which we are waiting so that we can proceed to the next step. We're getting closer to you all the time.

You still have no middle name, however.

All around your Papa's closet door, I have taped some options, so we can see them in action. Each name recalls someone especially close - someone to whom you can look up and remember as you grow.

Will you be Willa Elizabeth, carrying the name of your mother, both grandmothers, three great-grandmothers and a certain strong-headed English queen? Willa Elizabeth is romantic, but surprisingly strong. But she hates how long her name is when it comes time to sign real estate closing papers. Trust me on that one.

Could you be Willa Elise, with a name almost shared by two women - Jahna and Lisa - who are my sisters is every way but biology? If I were basing my decision purely on giving you a name with the most solid role models, this would be the one.

Or are you Willa Jane, named for your father, Jahna and Rebecca? Willa Jane is no-nonsense. She takes care of business and she has a tongue that is as sharp as it is funny. Willa Jane wrote poetry in high school, and rolled her eyes at her teachers more than once.

Willa Josephine - is that you? You, with the initial J for your father, Jahna and all those other J's we love, and Josephine for the mythologized Aunt Annie Joseph and all of the Senchyshyns rolled into one. Willa Josephine, you remind me a bit of Willa Elizabeth and a bit of Willa Jane, but I think you combine their best qualities. Not too hard, but not to soft.

If only it weren't for things like Social Security cards and kindergarten, I would give you all those names.

Instead, we'll just have to choose one, and give you plenty of time with the people and stories of people, who inspired the others.

~Mom

The name game

(Originally posted Friday, January 13, 2006)

My Dear Willa~

Nothing in the mail today - but then I did not really expect anything.

Today, Mollie and I were reading about Dora the Explorer, who talked about her big adventures. Mollie said, "I don't like my adventures. They're scary."

I thought about the adventures that she has been through and that you are going through and will go through, and I agreed that they are, indeed, very scary. They're much scarier than what most grown-ups I know could handle.

"My adventures are scary, too, sometimes, I told her. But they're also exciting and silly and funny and happy sometimes, too. Adventures are like that."

This is the entry in which I talk about your name and how it came to be your name.

First, I will tell you that, assuming you have been born, you already have a name that is yours and always will be yours. It will mean something, like your sister's name JiaXue means "good snow." But it will mean something more than Chinese vocabulary.

Your Chinese name is your tangible, legal link to the life you have now - the life before you came to our family and to the U.S. You are loved and cared for by people who will always remember you by that name.

And already you are loved by people who know you by a name you have not yet heard: Willa.

People ask if you are going to be named after someone, and the answer is "sort of."

My great-grandfather - my maternal grandmother's father - came to the U.S. from Sweden and raised a ho useful of children who all loved him dearly. In my grandmother's eyes, Jesus Christ may have been sitting at the right hand of God, but her father was seated at the right hand of Christ. His name was Axel Lagergren - neither of which lend themselves to a beautiful girl's name.

But his middle name was Wilhelm.

Wilhelmina has a beautifully lyrical sound, but written down it is lunky and over-crowded with consonants.

Shorten it to Willa, and you have a name that is reasonably soft and curvy if you think the L's and A. Yet that W can be sharp or showy or strong or playful. It's all in how you put it out there.

It also is the name of not one but two Tuscan empresses, one of whom is credited with founding the Badia in Florence in 978. She is also your great-many-times-removed grandmother on your father's side.

And then there is William, my grandmother's brother, who died just a few months ago. He was an excelptionally kind and smart man - an Air Force officer and physician. He and his wife took in my mother when she was pregnant with me, and always treated us as especially loved members of the family. So you are named after him, too.

Of course, Willa will be your own name, too, to make of it whatever you will.

Here are the first names you escaped:
Hannah
Hana
Chaya
Zia
Maura
Maralia
Mirabelle
Annabelle
Annelise
Mina
Sara
Maizie

Oh, there were so many others.

And now we still must find a middle name.

~Mom

Birds, Bees, Bureaucracy

(Originally posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006)

Well, hello there my younger daughter
Dear Willa~

A couple years ago, when we were waiting for your sister, I should have kept a blog, but didn't. Instead, I wrote almost daily notes to her in a small journal covered in purple silk and embellished with glass beads.

Don't worry, you'll get a little book, too. Yours is periwinkle silk, and although it doesn't have beads, it is thicker.

Both of you are luckier than your older brother who got nothing of the sort - nada, bupkiss. Instead, he was lucky enough to get a very young Mom with an extraordinarily hep early-90s CD collection and a demanding college class schedule.

There are all kinds of trade-offs in this life.

I want to begin by telling you a little bit about the process we are in - the process to adopt you from China.

And I want to welcome anyone else who is happening by to wait with us. Welcome to you.

Here, then, are:

THE BIRDS AND BEES OF ADOPTION

When two people love each other very much, or one person loves her- or himself very much, and they want to share their love by increasing the size of their families, sometimes they decide to adopt a child.

Wouldn't it be great if it were as simple as making the decision and then getting the child? On one hand, yes. Prospective parents can be awfully eager to hold their new baby in their arms. On the other hand, all the requirements are set up to protect children, ensure that parents are beginning this new life with eyes wide open, and - of course - grease the financial cogs that make the adoption machine go.

The process I describe here is specific to adopting from China. Some things are the same whether you're adopting a child in the U.S. or Russia or the North Pole. Other things are very different.

~ The Agency ~
When adopting from China, a family must go through a licensed agency that has an established relationship with the Chinese Government. All international adoptions in China are handled by a central bureau called the Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs. This office reviews the information from all the would-be parents and matches each family with an available child.

The CCAA only works with licensed agencies. There are no private adoptions for foreigners in China. So, when you want to adopt a Chinese child, you choose an agency that works with China, and you apply. Because China has some fairly strict guidelines about foreign adoption, the agency application is a sort of prescreening. If the agency approves your application, that means you appear to qualify to adopt from China and the agency is committed to seeing you through the process.

The agency will help you gather all the necessary paperwork, review and translate it, send it to China, send you to China, guide you through China (physically and bureaucratically), and make sure you and your baby get home safely.

It's important to choose a good agency, because it is essentially the midwife in the process.

~ The Homestudy ~
You also have to hire a homestudy agency, which will send a social worker to your house to determine whether you qualify under U.S. and Chinese guidelines to adopt a child.

Your social worker will ask for medical exam forms, financial statements, criminal background checks, letters from your employers verifying your employment, letters from your friends verifying that you're not psychopaths, letters from friends or relatives who promise to take care of your baby if a piano falls on you, birth certificates, marriage certificates and seemingly every other document that can be generated about you.

They also ask things about your families of origin, your discipline philosophy, why you want to adopt, how you solve conflicts, etc.

When we were paperpregnant with your sister Mollie, we cleaned house like we were moving before our first social worker visit. I emptied and re-organized every closet and drawer in the house. We bought a brand new welcome mat and joked that he must see a new welcome mat at every house he visits.

When he came, he didn't even venture farther than our dining room table. He never even saw the bathroom, despite drinking more than one cup of coffee and sampling from the platter of hors d'oeuvres we offered. "Look - we're adults who make appetizers for guests! We're responsible enough to raise a child - honest!"

At any rate, after several visits the social worker writes a report about your family and sends it to your agency, and to the U.S. government agency that used to be the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but is now called the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

~ Immigration and the I 171H ~
In order to go to another country, adopt one of its citizens and bring him or her onto American soil - thereby making that child a U.S. citizen - parents must get approval from the U.S. government. Basically, you file a request and send a check.

The BCIS fingerprints each parent and orders an FBI background check on the fingerprints. Your social worker will send a copy of your homestudy to the BCIS. If they like what they see, they'll send you the prized I171H form, which says, in effect, "Sure, they can adopt a baby in another country."

~ The Dossier ~
The paperwork that goes to China is called yuour Dossier. It includes all those forms and statements about you - your health and medical history, your financial status, your local criminal background checks, your birth certificates, your marriage certificate and your homestudy. Each document must be notarized by someone in your county.

Then each document must go to the state capital, where a piece of paper is attached to the front certifying that the document was notarized by an official source.

Then each document goes to the Chinese Consulate, where another piece of paper (in Chinese!) is attached to the front stating that the state certifications were official.

Compiling the dossier is the part of the process is called the Paper Chase. You have to collect all these documents and get them notarized. Then you send them (or drive them) to their state capitals for the certification. When they come back, you send them to the Chinese consulates for authentication. When they all come back with all the proper pieces of paper attached, this is your dossier.

You send it to the adoption agency, which will translate everything, package it with family photos of the parents and bind it all together in a pleasing manner, then send it to the CCAA.

~ DTC ~
DTC, or Dossier to China, refers to the date or month when your dossier is officially logged in at the CCAA. China usually sends out a batch of referrals, or matches, once a month. When we were paper pregnant with Mollie, our DTC was August 2003. All the other U.S. families who received their referrals at the beginning of April 2004 were also August '03 DTC. The September 03 DTC group received referrals at the beginning of May '04, and so on.

Currently, the wait between the time you are DTC and your referral is about 8-9 months. That can change a little in either direction. When we started our paper chase for Mollie, the wait from DTC to referral was 16 months, but it got considerably shorter while we were in the process.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So that's where we are. On Monday, Jan. 9, I sent our paperwork to the Chinese consulates in Houston, Chicago and Washington, D.C. When they come back, I'll send them to our agency, and soon our paperwork will be in China.

Meanwhile, we are trying to decide on your middle name. We have many in mind - many middle names designed specifically to embarrass you in your middle school years. It's a family tradition - take it from me, Elizabeth Agnes.

~Mom