And Zen What

"Will Seven be home tomorrow?"
Uh, no.
"Nex' day?"
Nope.
"NEX' day?"
No, honey, not then either.
"WHY NOT????????"

I'm right there with Five on this one! Why not????? wah.......

Well, I do know why not. Once the dossier is finally gathered, notarized, authenticated, certificated, belled and whistled, adoptive parents tend to breathe a sigh of relief--done, done at last.

Welllllllll.........

No.

Not exactly.

After the excruciating wait, and before landing in China, there's more, much more, hoop-jumping. My "brown envelope" didn't arrive, for instance. It's got forms you need for the Consulate in Guangzhou, where all adoptions in China are approved and the children sworn in as new about-to-be U.S. citizens. So if you don't get your envelope (I didn't get Five's until months after he was home), you have to find a list and print out the relevant forms. And they are legion.

Your guide will have copies, of course, in China. But there's no way anyone who's already waded through the avalanche of paperwork and procedural minuets that defines international adoption is going to risk getting halfway around the globe only to discover that the consulate is out of forms and they'll have to change their plane tickets to get home and....and....and....well, you get the picture.

And then there's the Search for the Ultimate Plane Fare. No matter when I travel, somehow it's always Peak Time, which is to say, start looking for that second job (or third) to start when you get home so you can pay off the airfare bill. Now you can obsess about that online too, so that the laundry will pile even higher than it did when you were checking every 5 seconds to see if your TA had arrived yet.

Explaining to people why you can't go tomorrow is good for a few hundred hours a day too.

And don't even get me started on the ceremonial gifts you bring to China as a sign of your respect and gratitude for the indescribably wondrous gift they are entrusting to you. Yes, they are ritual gestures; they aren't like the perfect birthday gift you never quite manage to buy for your beloved. But that doesn't help. It's far worse, actually, than worrying that your giftee will hightail it back to the mall to exchange the Hideous Object you thought so lovely as you staggered to your car in the vast reaches of the parking lot. Because even though they are tokens, and we are told not to get all wrapped around the axle over them, they matter. They DO! How on earth can you be cavalier about a gesture that will convey respect, thanks, gratitude, cultural sensitivity, and an ability to read the fine print on labels (one tries not to bring things "made in China"....)??

Then there's convincing your bank that you really do have to have bran' spankin' new $100 bills. A true delight, especially when you get the Crabby Teller. You know--the one who peers owlishly at you over her glasses? I got her (and isn't she everywhere?) back when I was preparing to travel to adopt Two.

She breaks the rather lengthy peevish silence--well, "peevish" on her side; craven, on mine.

"Ma'am. Those are perfectly fine bills."

"Yes, yes, I see that, but I have to have new ones."

"These are what I have, Ma'am. They are in excellent condition. There's not a mark on any one of them."

She glares at me, and then looks, with great Significance, at the growing line behind me, and then bestows her increasingly severe attention on me once again.

"Yes, I see, and they are lovely, really they are, but you see, I called some weeks ago and talked to several people and then finally the last person I talked to understood what I was saying because her aunt's cousin's niece also adopted from China and, she said she'd take care of it, and, uh, well, see, I just can't use these....."

She purses her already pursy lips. Starts rapidly tapping the packet on its end the way I remember the grownups doing with a cigarette pack back when I was a child and cigarettes were cool.

I try to think of a graceful exit line . . . .

It's eleven years later, and I'm still working on it--I'll probably need it when I go in to get the bills for my trip to Seven.

But first, I must get online and spend many many useless hours looking for, finding, copying, and then losing Packing Lists.

Because heaven forbid I should start being sane at THIS juncture.

Lessee, I wrote down that url on the back of something on this counter.........