The Background Information

Last summer, my 18-year-old son, Rick, went to spend the summer with his father. Even though it was my big idea, I felt like a huge piece of me had been ripped away. I stayed busy with a summer class and the dogs, but I was still incredibly lonely. I realized that I just wasn't ready to stop being a mom on a day-to-day basis, despite the knowledge that my little boy is close to being all grown up and will likely move away within a couple more short years. I had for a long time been privately kicking around the idea of adopting another child; that summer solidified it. The first obstacle for me, before I was even able to research the idea of adoption, was to find out if I was healthy enough, since I have am on medication and a defibrillator for a heart condition. I somehow managed to wait until my cardiology appointment in November and got word that there had been no further deterioration of my heart--the destressing measures I had taken in the last two years had stabilized me.

One of the first decisions I made was to seek to adopt a special needs child. I am active in a deaf church, have signed since I was a teen-ager. Not great, but I do okay and get my point across, and my vocabulary is constantly growing (and being corrected!) thanks to my deaf friends. Although it will mean a lot more learning and accommodations, it is a special need that I feel semi-equipped to be able to deal with.

I also wanted to adopt an older child. Since I do work and attend school, an older child who has some amount of independence would be a better fit for our family, and my Rick was also more interested in an older child than a young preschooler or toddler. (Rick, by the way, is very supportive of this idea, even understanding that it'll mean sharing mom's time, energies, and resources. He has always wanted a younger brother.)

I had been lurking on a listserv all summer for people who want to adopt Deaf/HOH children, and had already learned a lot from the folks there who are incredibly generous in sharing their knowledge. One of the postings mentioned some children waiting for adoption through an agency called WACAP and listed bare-bones details about some of them. One in particular caught my attention: A child named Sergey from Eastern Europe (Russia), 11 years old, deaf.

I contacted the WACAP rep to ask if they could share any further information on him, and they mailed me a brochure with pictures and write-ups on all of the Deaf/HOH children they were currently advocating for. Sergey was in there, and I just fell in love with his smile. The write-up mentioned that he was a slightly mischievous child who loved to make people laugh. I liked the sound of that--a child who still had a spirit and sense of humor despite a difficult start in life. I asked WACAP what the next step was.

That's when I found out that I was doing things backwards. Normally when one wants to adopt, one finds a licensed agency to do the homestudy, and once the homestudy is done, THEN the matching of parent to child is done. Me? No--I gotta do it bass-ackwards by finding the child first and then having to go out and get the homestudy. So the first step is to find a local agency and get the homestudy done. In the meantime, WACAP sent me a small dossier on Sergey--a few pictures of him, a few pictures that he drew (he likes art), and some medical evaluations on him. Unfortunately, I can't share any pictures of him until I have managed to legally adopt him--Russia is very strict about not allowing pictures or personal information on adoptable children to be published in the media.

So that's where we are now: WACAP sent me a list of agencies in my area that I might want to consider for the home study process (they can't do it themselves since they are based in Washington State). So I need to slog through all this and decide what agency to use.