Citizenship

I'm not someone who claims to care a lot. As a university student, a friend of mine once said that if I wrote a book it would be called 'I don't give a rat's ass'. I'm the guy who, as soon as I pick up a telemarketing call, say 'I'm not interested in what you're trying to sell me' then hangs up if they attempt to continue with their spiel.

The one thing I do care about, to the extreme, is my family. So, the passport situation we went through with our kid over the past several months really bothered me.

I should say, if you 'don't give a rat's ass' about citizenship adoption law, stop wasting your time, and stop reading this - you're not interested in what I'm trying to sell, so hang up now.

What I've taken away from the passport situation is just how interesting and weird citizenship is. 

Almost exactly 5 years ago, I wrote a blog about being a global citizen and how through my experience in life and family, I had a more global experience than most. How, if my parents had wanted to, I probably could have had tri-citizenship. This was just about the opposite experience we thought our kid would have, when people - including an immigration lawyer - said there was a good chance our kid was stateless. 

Stateless. Nationless. A person who is not a citizen - in the legal sense - of any country. Yes, the child of the 'global citizen' might be a citizen of nowhere. I don't know what the opposite of a global citizen would be, but our kid would be that. A stateless person can't get a passport, can't leave the country they're in, and depending on where they live, receives no benefits of being a citizen of a country, because they have no country they can call their own. Stateless.

Citizenship is weird. What I'm about to write is what I think I know about citizenship, but I'm no lawyer, so I could be wrong.

The United States of America:

The U.S. has birth right citizenship. This means, if you're born in the U.S., you have the right to be a U.S. citizen. It doesn't matter where your parents are from, you can be a U.S. citizen. To be honest (and this is not the most liberal thing to say) I don't agree with birth right citizenship. I just think there should be more than being born in a country to be a citizen of that country - live there for a year, or something. I'm imagining a case where a child with parents from Jeffersonia is born in the US then moves back to Jeffersonia at one week old and never sets foot in the US again - I don't think that person should be a US citizen, but I digress.

A tie-on - sort of - to U.S. birth right citizenship is this: if, when you are born, at least one of your parents is from the U.S., you can claim U.S. citizenship anywhere in the world you're born. I actually fall into this category. I was born in Nigeria, but my father is from the U.S - I have been a U.S. citizen since birth. I'm not completely on board with this either. If I were to never live in the U.S., and lived out my life in Nigeria, should I really be a U.S. citizen forever? I don't think so. If I had only lived in Nigeria and never set foot in the U.S., and if I had a child, also born in Nigeria, that child could, technically, claim U.S. citizenship. That doesn’t seem right to me. At some point, I think the link needs to be broken. The question is where/when. 

It gets complicated with adoption.

When a kid is born in the U.S. and then adopted, they are American, by the birth right rule. When a kid born outside the U.S. and is adopted by Americans, the kid can get U.S. citizenship only after the kid comes into the U.S. and goes through some process I still am not sure about. We happen to fall into this situation. We are Americans, who adopted a kid born outside the U.S. This is where the problems start to arise. To get our kid U.S. citizenship, we have to get our kid into the U.S. To get our kid into the U.S. our kid needs a passport of some kind.

No problem, we thought, while going through the adoption process. Our kid will, of course, be a British citizen and will be able to get a British passport….

The United Kingdom:

The U.K. does not have birth right citizenship; at least not anymore. Prior to 1983 it did, but since then, to get British citizenship, one has to show that at least one of their parents is/was also British. This is where our problems started.

We aren't British, so when I started the online passport application form for our kid, it took me on this wild goose chase, asking where Lauren's and my parents were born, when and where our parents were married, and I thought 'Why is all this needed?'. That's when I learned about the 1983 birth right rule. The online form doesn't know our kid was adopted, so by the letter of the law (which the online system follows, because it has no heart), our kid can't be British. We aren't British, our kid was born after 1983; therefore our kid can't be British.

You would think an immigration lawyer would have a heart - or at least a brain - to realize that we were in an odd circumstance that the law was not designed to handle strictly as written. The lawyer said that once the kid was adopted, everything was transferred to us 'not just the good'. I didn't think much of that comment when she said it, but 'not just the good'?!? Seriously? Who says that? She then said, that our kid could not be British, because our kid's legal parents (us) aren't British. The lawyer said even she thought it was weird, but that was the case. So, according to her, by being adopted, our kid LOST her British citizenship, which, any rational person would think, sounds insane! 

Before I called the lawyer, I had spoken to someone who works at the passport office who I was passed on from 3 different people. He had given me basically the same information, saying we had to apply for her to be a British citizen before we could get her a passport. He then wanted to talk about how crazy the Super Bowl was, which had happened the night before. Thanks passport worker guy – good to see you care about people’s actual problems!

Needless to say, at this point, we didn't know what to do. We had a stateless child. Every non-lawyer/non-passport worker we told this to thought it was crazy that she would stateless - everyone thought she should be British.

After a several weeks of sitting on this, I said we should just apply. We should show she was British at birth. Our social worker got in touch with a legal expert at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering - this person agreed with every non-lawyer/non-passport person we had talked to about this. We decided to apply. Now, we just needed to show our kid was born British.

This was tougher than I thought it would be.

If we could show our kid's birth mother was British, we would be done. The obvious way to do this would be to produce the birth mother's passport, but that's not the sort of thing we had access to. Being that there was a delay in the adoption because the birth mother was contesting it, I don't think trying to contact her to get her passport info, so we could get a passport for the kid whose adoption she was trying to prevent, would be the best thing to do. So, we got her birth certificate.

Our kid's birth mother was born after 1983, so having her birth certificate was not enough to prove that she (the birth mother) was British. We had to show that one of her parents were British, to prove that she is British, which in turn would prove that our kid is British. We were able to track down the birth certificate of our kid's birth mother's father. We applied for a passport for our kid.

About a week later, we got a letter from the passport office. The birth mother's father's birth certificate was not good enough to show that the birth mother was British. Why is still a bit unclear to me, but to show the birth mother is British, we would need to produce either the birth mother's mother's birth certificate or the birth mother's father's birth certificate accompanied with the marriage certificate of the birth mother's parents. Lauren called the passport office and asked why this additional thing was needed for the father of the birth mother but not the mother of the birth mother. They gave some hand wavy answer which clearly showed that they had no idea why - it was just the way it was. Because someone said so, I guess.

We were able to get the marriage certificate of the birth mother's parents, which, with the birth certificate of the birth mother's father, showed the birth mother is British. By having the birth mother's birth certificate, along with her birth child’s original birth certificate, we could show that the child of that birth mother is British. By having our kid's post-adoption birth certificate, along with her pre-adoption certificate, we showed that that child is now our kid, with a different name.

After rereading the last two paragraphs, I'm a bit lost myself.

In proof-ish language:

We need to show our kid is British

1. Birth mother’s father’s birth certificate + Birth mother’s parent’s marriage certificate ⇒ Birth mother is British.
2. Birth mother’s birth certificate + Kid’s original birth certificate ⇒ Kid is British
3. Kid’s original birth certificate + Kid’s post-adoption birth certificate ⇒ Kid is now our kid, with a different name.

∴ Our kid is British

Three days later, our kid’s passport arrived. So, the immigration lawyer was wrong. The Super Bowl guy who worked for the passport office was wrong. Our kid was never stateless. Our kid was British, and now had the passport to prove it.

The documentation to show that our British kid, is indeed British (and her passport)

The hour from 1:30-2:30 on 5 June 2015 is one of the happiest hours of my life. I got home with our kid and saw the envelope, not knowing what it was, then saw it was her passport. I said 'Hey, it's your passport!!!!' and gave it to her. Thinking it looked like a book, her response was 'Read it, daddy!'

I know I’ll never write a book called 'I don't give a rat's ass', but I'll gladly read an empty passport that belongs to my kid. 

So in the end, our kid, who we thought was stateless, may be, one day, a dual citizen, and like her parents, a global one.

My Mother, March Madness, and Zucchini Bread

I was woken up by Emily tapping on my shoulder. She said something like 'The nurse said it's almost time. She hasn't got much time left.' 

I was on a sofa, college basketball was on TV. It wasn't a sofa or TV that I knew. I came to in the next couple of seconds. It was late at night on the 20th of March 2010. I was at the Gilchrist Hospice facility, in Towson. My mother had been here for slightly over a day. 

I would watch her take her last breath in the next few hours, during the early hours of the 21st.

The days that followed are a blur. There was letting people know my mother had died, there was organising a funeral, there was deciding where to bury her. There were phone calls, and emails, and visits, and more phone calls. Then there was the funeral.

The weeks that followed were odd. There was the film I was an extra in, there was a sense of not knowing what to do with myself in Towson for the next few months, there was the offer to teach a statistics course, there was the declining of the offer. Then there was the chicken pox.

The months that followed were depressing. There was the trip to Ghana for the Ghanian funeral, there was the move to Edinburgh, there was the difficulty in finding a job, there was the Thanksgiving where I wanted to be alone, there was a snowstorm that shut down the city. Then there was a new year.

The years that followed have felt unstable. There was the moving from job to job, not feeling like any of them were 'right', there was literal lack of stability with the fall my father took in Sierra Leone, there was the seemingly never-ending adoption process. Now, we're in the seemingly never-ending citizenship process. To be honest, I'm thankful my mother isn't around for a lot of this stuff - it would have driven her crazy.

It took about 3 years to come to terms with my mother's death. 

In the hours after my dad fell, 2 years after her death, I kept saying to myself 'You better not die on me. Not here. Not now. Not in this way'. I was thinking a lot about my mother during those hours. My mother's death was still haunting me.

Three years after her death, I went to Ghana, and saw how everyone had moved on and I very much enjoyed my time there, seeing people for the first time since her funeral. That trip brought a sense of closure that I needed.

Still though, I feel like I'm missing an anchor, and my ship just doesn't feel as steady as it did while she was alive. I've come to terms that this will probably never go away and now try to put my energy into being an anchor for the next generation.

So I'm here now, 5 years after Emily woke me up. 5 years after my mother died. To honour my mother tomorrow, I'm going to make zucchini bread. 

During her funeral, I talked about how she taught me to bake, and how one of the more meaningful things that happened between us was when she devoured a loaf of zucchini bread I made, a few months before her cancer diagnosis, which was the moment I felt that her teaching had finally paid off. 

To thank the people who helped us out after she died, I made each of them a loaf of zucchini bread. 

Zucchini bread, like March Madness, now always reminds me of my mom, so to thank the small family I have around me now, who's helped me not get too down this week by distracting me with requests that I laugh; requests to say 'oy vey' or 'dios mio' in crying/laughing/happy/sad voices; reading children's books in odd accents; and having tantrums, I'm going to make us zucchini bread. 

It's only fitting, since we can't all stay up late enough to watch college basketball.

I miss my mother

18 March 2010

This is from a journal entry I wrote during the Summer of 2010:

As I was waiting to get onto the bus, Lauren asked me what my mother's full name was; Lauren wanted to dedicate the Twi book she was working on to my mother. I teared up, as I had done a number of times in the previous few weeks, knowing that I would be going back to Towson on March 18; knowing that this would be the last time I was going home to see my mother.

I don't remember much about the bus ride to the airport, or boarding the plane, or what movies were playing on the flight, and what movies I may have watched. I do remember that the flight was delayed for an hour in Heathrow, because of some kind of technical problem.

Two things stick out for me on this flight. I developed a fear of flying at some point in my 20's, but had no fear as I sat on the plane. I remember thinking that no amount of turbulence on this flight would even begin to compare to what my mother had been going through over the last few months. I remember thinking that I was so much luckier than so many people who, like my mother, were suffering in that moment as I buckled in to fly across the Atlantic.

The other thing I remember is the guy from Kenya I was seated next to. He had no bags with him, which worried me a little - who doesn't carry anything on a transatlantic flight. After we were in the air, he borrowed a pen from me, and we started talking. He showed me an old picture of him with dreadlocks, which he no longer had; he told me about his turbulent flight from Nairobi to London, and how he had lived in Baltimore for a few years, but wanted to move back to Kenya.

He seemed like a nice guy, and when he asked if he could get a ride into the city after we landed, I didn't think much of it, and said I would ask my sister, after we landed. He used my phone once we were on the ground, and then we both went through customs. After we met up again, we both complained about the treatment we got from the customs officers at BWI - they took a bunch of spices he had hoped to bring from Kenya; I was asked "How did that happen?" to my being born in Nigeria - I considered going through an explanation of how it happens that children are born to the officer, but I was nervous about seeing my mother, knowing she was in bad shape.

I talked to my dad soon after landing. He seemed to want to talk about everything but my mother - the flight, the customs people, the delay we had in Heathrow. To this day, I don't know if he was doing this because he didn't feel comfortable talking about it, or if he was trying to shield me, for one last time, from the shape my mother was in. Part of me would have liked it if he would have been a little bit more graphic about her condition; a bigger part of me is glad he never did. I can't imagine what the experience was like for my father to go through that with my mother, and in the months since I have grown to admire my father more than anyone I know. We've always kind of teased my dad about his geekiness/nerdiness but, because of what he went through, I have come to see my father as the toughest man I know.

Emily picked me and the Kenyan guy up, and we dropped him off at a parking garage his cousin worked at. We then headed to Towson. Emily had not said anything about our mother until after we dropped him off. She tried to prepare me for what I would see, and said she was worried about me, because I hadn't see the slow deterioration of our mother. She said she would rather be in her position than my own, because she had seen my mother on a daily basis, slowly get worse - I hadn't seen our mother in two months.

I now think of Emily much the same way I think of my dad. I wrote a blog once on how, even though she was the youngest of our clan, during the last months of my mother's life, you would've guessed she was older than her brother and sister, who are 5 and 16 years older than her, respectively. I remember thinking on that drive back how much I admired my little sister, and how much braver and tougher she was than me. I don't think I could've handled taking care of my mother the way Emily did and for that, the rest of my family will be eternally grateful.

I got home, but I didn't want to go upstairs. I was scared to see my mother in the condition she was in. I talked briefly to my dad, but then had to go up there, to see my mother. I went upstairs, not sure what what to expect. She was in bad shape; lying on the bed in an L shape on her side, mumbling incoherently, her eyes were somewhat glazed over, kind of staring into nowhere. She was tiny compared to the person she was last Summer, the last time I saw her completely healthy. She was lying in the bed, seemingly unable to move much.

Emily and my dad said "Jeff is here, Jeff is here." Her sister, Mary, who had arrived from New York that same day, said to her in Twi "Jeff is here, Jeff is here." My mother, in the midst of her mumbling, then said the last word I would ever hear her say in English - she said "Jeff".

Many people have said to me over the months since she died "remember the good times you had with her", and I do, and remembering those times bring some level of comfort. But every single day, I see what I saw that night, sitting on the edge of my parents' bed, my mother in very bad shape, saying my name. And every time I remember that, I am filled with unbelievable sadness. 

My 2014 Moment

2014 is going to be one of those years that stick out in my life. In many ways, it was a year that was the opposite of 2010. 2010 was filled with misery and grief; 2014 with happiness and joy.

You'd think with the events of 2014, the fondest memory would be meeting our kid for the first time (when she walked right up to Lauren, pointed to her face, and said 'glasses'), bringing her home for the first time, or the day the adoption was granted by the courts. But my fondest memory happened on the evening of 21st June.

My dad, sister, and niece were coming to visit - the first family to visit us since our kid had moved in, in March. They were due to land in the early afternoon. I had the grand plan of taking the kid to the airport and they would meet her for the first time then.

We drove to the airport, played on escalators for a while; my family's flight landed, passengers came off, and they were nowhere to be seen. Not until that point did I check my email to see that they had been delayed and would not be coming until that evening, about the kid's bedtime.

We drove back home.

Even though it was late in the day for the kid, I decided the two of us would go to the airport for the second time that day. 

We got there, and my family's flight had landed already. We had missed the chance to see them as they entered the terminal. We saw that their bags were already at the carousel.

That's when it happened. The moment that sticks out most for me in 2014 - a moment I will never forget.

I was looking for my dad, sister, or niece and I couldn't see them. All of a sudden, our kid starts shouting 'Aunty Em?!' over and over - she had seen my sister, Emily, before I had, and was so excited to see her in the flesh, after seeing her on Skpye every weekend for a couple of months. She kept saying 'Auntie Em?! Auntie Em?! Auntie Em?!' She was bordering on tears of joy, as I was - and I am, as I write this. 

When Emily came to the partition that separates the passengers who are getting their bags from the rest of us, our kid was more than happy to have Emily give her a hug (and maybe even hold her, I honestly don't remember). Our kid was SO hesitant to even be around a new person that this was mind-blowing.

I love my sister with all my heart - the person who is most like me - so in many ways it made sense that our kid would have no problem going to this person she had never met. But witnessing that moment is one I can't ever forget. The moment the two Tuesday-named ladies with the last name that's a first name, met for the first time.

Our kid walking with Auntie Em while my niece points out something to my dad, at the Edinburgh Zoo

Four Court Dates and an Adoption

The wildly popular podcast Serial got into the issue of how well people remember things around the time of a major event in their lives - where they were when it happened, what they remember from the day, etc.

I'm amazed at how un-climactic a day of a recent major event was for me, and how uneventful the day was. The day was slightly over a week ago and I honestly do not remember much about the day.

The day in question was the day the adoption of our daughter was granted, who had been living with us for nearly 9 months.

I've thought about writing about the entire adoption process, but that would be a boring blog to read - to be honest, I'm not sure focusing on four court dates will be any more riveting, but at least it's a shorter read.

We weren't supposed to have 4 court dates, not the way it was presented to us by other adopters and social workers. '2 or 3 minutes' they said; all that would happen would be the Sheriff (Judge, for those in the US) would grant the adoption and we'd be done with it.

Court Date 1:

The day before our first court date, our Solicitor (Lawyer, for those in the US) emailed us to tell us that there would likely be a 2nd court date. Our solicitor couldn't locate the birth mother of our kid.

There are 2 steps to the legal process - relinquishing parental rights from the birth parents, then granting the adoption to the new parents. In some cases, the first step is done before adoptive parents are even found, but ours wasn't one of those cases. We technically were parenting the child whose legal guardian couldn't be found by our solicitor.

In court, our solicitor didn't seem like the brightest of the bunch. The Sheriff pointed out that there was a difference between the solicitor not locating the birth parent, and the birth parent being impossible to find. Our solicitor hadn't tried too hard to find the birth mother, so the Sheriff told our solicitor how to do their job, and gave a list of possible ways to locate the birth mother. We had a different solicitor (from the same agency) for the remainder of the process and I haven't seen this solicitor since.

A 2nd court date was set. We went home.

Court Date 2:

The Courthouse on Court Date 2

We went into Court Date 2 feeling pretty confident. The birth mother had been located and she had been served papers notifying her that she would lose the rights to the kid, and was told when and where the court date was going to be, should she want to oppose this. No one had heard from her, or a solicitor representing her, by the morning we took the taxi to court. 

We took the kid with us (as we did the first time), took pictures of us in the taxi, pictures of the kid walking around the courthouse, went into the courtroom feeling pretty good that this would be it.

It wasn't.

There was a letter that was sent directly to the Sheriff, that was received the afternoon before. The letter stated that the court time was too early for the birth mother to be there, her circumstances had changed, and that she wanted her baby back. 

We were floored. We didn't see this coming at all. The birth mother chose to gave up her kid before the kid was born, and had never been responsible for the child. Now, over two years later, she wanted her baby back?!?!

We had met the birth mother shortly before bringing the kid home with us. As the letter was read, the one thing that went through my mind was that the woman we met did not write that letter. The woman we met couldn't seem to speak in more than a couple-word sentences and here was this well-written letter. The letter never mentioned any names; not the kid, not the birth mother. To top it off, it was written on the back of the notice that was sent from the Sheriff notifying her about the court date.

I don't think the birth mother wrote that letter. No one can ever make me think otherwise.

Her circumstances had changed. She had a new partner now, and I think he wrote that letter, or they went to some sort of advice place and an advice person wrote down what such a letter should look like, and that written suggestion was sent to court. If you really wanted your kid back, why would you not say the kid's name in the letter? Why wouldn't you even sign off at the end of the letter.

In light of the letter, the Sheriff had to set a new court date. It was set at a later time of day, to give the birth mother a chance to get to court. We would have to wait 4 more weeks with our lives in limbo.

Between Court Date 2 and Court Date 3:

It's hard when you think that a kid, who you're raising as your own, could be taken away from you.

We read horror stories of kids taken away from their adoptive parents - reading stuff online is never good in times of stress.

Everyone said the birth mother had no case and everything would work out - it would be a question of when, and not if, it would happen. It's one thing to hear this, and even think it. It's another to live it. Hearing this didn't make me feel any better. 

I lost a lot of sleep after Court Date 2.

I felt like every conversation I had over those 4 weeks would, at some point, circle to the adoption court dates, and the possible outcomes.

It was hard to even play with the kid, with that in the back of my head all the time. Just the other day, I was talking to Lauren about it, and she said it was going from feeling like you are the kid's parent to be the kid's foster carer. Not that you love the kid any less, but thoughts of seeing your long-term future with the kid seem to fade. You focus more on the day-to-day.

As Court Date 3 approached, I was very nervous. It was this part of my Adoption Leave that I really wished I could be going to work everyday, as a distraction.

We decided that Lauren and the kid would not got to Court Date 3. I would meet our solicitor and go in with her. The thought of the birth mother being there, and the kid being there, was something we didn't really want to experience.

Court Date 3:

I don't remember much of what happened before court on Court Date 3, or after for that matter. I know that I was home alone that morning because Lauren had taken the kid to the weekly library singalong that I usually go to with the kid.

I was nervous; I didn't know what to expect.

I got to court and our solicitor found me. She said the birth mother was here, with her partner, but didn't have a solicitor. Our solicitor predicted that the Sheriff would set a continuation hearing date, so the birth mother could have a solicitor with her at that time.

It was odd to be sitting across the table from this woman who I had met months earlier, who I had taken a picture with, who seemed not particularly upset that we were adopting her kid then, but now wanted the kid back. I didn't make eye contact.

The Sheriff asked her some questions. Questions she couldn't really answer: 'What is your hope in doing this?' is the one that stuck out. Her answer was that her hope was to get a solicitor - clearly not understanding the question. The question was asked twice more, with some clarification, before she gave an answer basically saying she was hoping to have the chance to get the kid back (again, no mention of the kid's name). 

The birth mother's partner was not allowed in the courtroom, and I would guess he would have done most of the talking, if he was in there. Our solicitor had talked to the both of them outside of the courtroom and described him as 'slick' - not really sure what she meant by that, but he did do all of the talking when she talked to them.

As predicted, the Sheriff set a continuation hearing date. Birth mother was told she would need to get legal advice, and was told by the Sheriff exactly where to go to find a solicitor who handled cases like this. Our solicitor again pointed out where they should go, once they were out of the building.

I left court feeling somewhat relieved. I won't go into much more detail of what happened in court but it was clear this was not a person who was able to take care of a child - she seemed to barely be able to take care of herself. 

I asked our solicitor what happened next. She said that, if birth mother and/or her solicitor showed up at the continuation hearing, there would a trial date set, where witnesses would be called and things would be settled then. That would be Court Date 5, but as the title of this post implies, that Court Date never happened….

Court Date 4:

The walk to court was awful. 

It wasn't raining when I left home, but I carried my rain jacket to be safe. Less than 5 minutes after leaving home, I was soaked. It was windy, the rain came at such an angle that no rain coat could have protected my face. 10 minutes after leaving home, I got under some cover and wrung rain water out of my trousers and watched it dribble onto the pavement beneath me. I thought about going back home, or calling Lauren and asking if she could go - as long as our solicitor was there, we didn't need to be.

I kept going.

When I got to court, 15 minutes early, I was completely rain-drenched. My torso was the only dry part of me. My sleeves got wet from rain going up my rain jacket sleeves, my face was wet, my legs were wet. I thought to myself, is this how I want to go into court? But what else could I do?

Our solicitor arrived 5 minutes later and said nothing of my soaked-ness. We talked about the rain, went through security, and went upstairs to where the courtrooms were.

Our solicitor had never heard anything from the birth mother's solicitor (if she had a solicitor). I asked her if this was normal. I'll never forget her response: 'Nothing in adoption cases is normal' 

We got to the outside of our courtroom. There was no one there. 

I was told I could go into the courtroom and wait. Our solicitor went to other courtrooms nearby to see if the birth mother and/or her solicitor where around somewhere.

She came back a couple of minutes later - she didn't see anyone. I started to get hopeful that things would be wrapped up.

The Sheriff came in, made mention that she picked this time so the birth mother could get here on time. She asked the court security guard (I would call him a bailiff, but I'm sure that's not the correct term) to go look for them in other courtrooms. 

He came back in a few minutes. He couldn't find them.

Adoption:

That was it. The Sheriff granted the adoption on the grounds that no one from the opposition came to court. 

She apologised to me for the delay, saying she wanted to cover all bases, should an appeal be lodged.

There was no grand moment, no tears of joy. It was done. We just had to wait a few weeks, because the birth mother had two weeks to appeal (as of this writing, we are still within those two weeks).

If no appeal is lodged, we'll be done with this in mid-January. If one is lodged, we will still likely be done with this very soon, because when you don't show up to court when you should, your appeal will almost certainly be dismissed.

Just after I left the court (of course the rain had stopped for my walk home), I called Lauren to tell her the news. She was happy.

I went to pick up our kid from nursery school - because of a bumped head at nursery that day, I had to sign a form acknowledging this. I gave the kid a big hug, and we walked home as we do every nursery day; kid eating the fruit snack I always bring for pick up. Kid walking very slowly, focusing on the snack instead of the walk home.

I don't remember anything of that afternoon. I was tired, as I usually am. Kid took a nap, as usual. We went to a grocery store, as usual. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

That night, the kid got ice cream for adoption day. Kid didn't care much about Adoption Day, but was very excited for ice cream. Lauren recorded the ice cream excitement. We were all happy.

4 court dates and an adoption are done. We can now move on with our lives.

Scotland Decides

I want to start at the end - my prediction.

To the question: Should Scotland be an Independent Country?

I predict the vote will come out this way:

Yes - 46.4%

No - 53.6%

I want to preface the rest of this post by saying this is entirely based on my observations and thoughts, with no real sources to back up anything.

Scotland votes tomorrow to decide if it can break away from the UK. We should know the result early Friday morning.

As someone who likes following elections, I've loved this. I've loved the back and forth, I've loved looking at polls, I've loved the whole thing.

I can't vote, I have no say, and to be honest, if I could vote, I don't know how I would vote - I would probably make a decision in the final seconds before I cast my vote.

For me it's a heart vs head thing.

My 'go out on your own' heart says break away, venture out, and become independent; do your own thing. I've made this 'heart' decision several times in my life. I wouldn't be in Scotland now if not for the heart decision to leave De Anza College, and a very good job, with the idea of doing something new, being someone different, not knowing what would lay ahead of me.

My heart says this will be good for Scotland, but my head says it won't.

My 'analytical/business-minded' head says don't do it, don't take the economic risks that lay ahead of you, stay with what you know. I've made this 'head' decision several times in my life. I tell people that leaving Berkeley was one of the best life decisions I've ever made. It was made with my head. I didn't think (and still don't) that it was in my economic best interest to pursue a Ph D, when I was in a job that paid me more, and gave me a better lifestyle than I would have had, if I had gone through with getting the Ph D.

Again, I can't vote, so I listen and I analyze what I hear.

The polling has bothered me because the percentage of undecided voters are more often left off the polling numbers than left on. The numbers exist somewhere, but I think those are the most important numbers of the polls. There is also little mention of margin of error on the polls - again, one of the more important factors in polling data.

According to a lot of polls, things stand at about 51-52% No and 48-49% Yes (of course, there is no mention of undecided voters in most of these polls).

Here's why I think the votes will go slightly more with the No votes.

First, I think undecided voters who do vote (some may decide not to) will vote more with No than Yes. My gut feeling is, if you're unsure about something, you tend to stay with the status quo. Maybe I'm wrong; again I have no facts to back this up.

Second, historically, older people vote in greater percentages than younger people. Some polling data have shown that younger people are more likely to vote Yes than older people. Even though there is expected to be a very high turnout, I still expect a higher percentage of older people to vote, tipping in favor of the No side.

Lastly, and this is sort of out-there thinking, I think there are a group of people who want to vote No but have some irrational fear that by saying No, they will be unpatriotic, so they may have lied to pollsters. It has been far cooler to say you're voting Yes than voting No - it's a lot easier to advertise a brand new world, than saying 'let's go status quo, just say No to something new'.

As a foreigner, I don't think I'm in the position to say which side I prefer, and I'm not even sure I have a side I prefer. I'm happy that I've been allowed to live here and have been made welcome, regardless of how different I may sound and look, so I'll be happy with whatever Scotland decides. I just hope the losing side is able to accept the outcome.

21

In early February 1992, I had a dream. I woke up remembering nothing about the dream except that the 21st of the month meant something - I didn't know what.

I'm not one to think dreams mean very much, but I still wondered if anything would happen on the 21st of February that year. Nothing did. I vaguely thought about it for a couple more months, then the thought of something happening on the 21st just faded, but was never forgotten.

As day broke on 21st March 2010, I was taken back to 1992. I had seen my mother take her last breath a few hours before, in the very early morning of the 21st. I remember thinking, in the midst of my mourning of my mother, 'was that what the dream meant?'

On the 21st of April 2010, I happened to be driving by a McDonald's and decided to stop by. I never have been a person who eats at McDonald's, but my mother worked there for a couple of decades, so I decided to go in, get something, in honor of my mother. Since then, on the 21st of every month, I go to McDonald's. Being that I can't eat almost everything on the menu, I always order one of the same 2 or 3 things, and I'm fine with that. I'm not there for the food, I'm there for my mother.

On the 21st of August 2012, a kid was born. I didn't know about this kid, and it was just another 21st of the month for me - I went to work and went to McDonald's. I've looked at my calendar many times in the past few months, to try and figure out if the day had any importance to me - it didn't.

On the 21st of March 2014, it was four years since my mother died. It was also the first day the kid born on the 21st of August 2012 came into our flat for the first time.

In the five months since then, the kid has run around our flat endlessly, bounding from one room to another, jumped on our bed, fallen off our sofa more times that I like, stomped feet on the floor in the midst of a tantrum as well as in the middle of 'If you're happy and you know it'. The kid has laughed and cried and made me do both. The kid has eaten more food than I thought was possible for someone that size. The kid has made me feel very old at times and very young at others.

On the 21st of August, almost exactly two years to the minute of when the kid was born, we headed to McDonald's. We had a birthday lunch and I thought about my mother. 

We spoke to my sister on the kid's 2nd birthday; my sister, whose face reminds me of my mother. We spoke to my father on the kid's 2nd birthday; my dad, who often says things that remind me of my mother. We watched a video made by my niece on the kid's 2nd birthday; my niece, who makes faces at times that I see my mother in.

As the kid and I sat there, watching the video of my niece, saying 'again' every time it ended and us watching it again, the kid would look up and smile at me. It wasn't a smile of my mother, not in the way it looked, not at all. But it was a smile like my mother's in the quickness of how it would flash on and then off. I thought about my mother then, feeling sad that she never got to meet this kid, but also felt happy that the kid got the chance to meet my mother, in a way, through the father that carried his mother with him.

My mom and I on a sofa

The kid and I on a sofa

In the end, the 21st dream was probably nothing. Just a dream, but the 21st of the month has so much meaning to me now that's it's day I look forward to most every month.

Drinking in the morning

Every morning at breakfast, my daughter asks to drink the watered down juice I'm drinking from my cup instead of the non-juice she has in her sippy-cup. When I'm down to one swig, I give my glass to her. She drinks this over several sips, saying 'ahhhh' after each sip and about 1/3 of the juice ends up not going into her mouth. I look as her with the giant cup in her tiny hands, covering her entire face, with it dribbling down her chin and I think she looks like a drunk.

I've very rarely been drunk and I'll be the first to admit that I'm not much of a drinker.

Before I went on Adoption Leave, a co-worker jokingly suggested that instead of going out for drinks to send me off, we go out for tea. I'm a one-drink type of guy; I have my one drink, and I don't really want anymore. The one drink doesn't make me drunk, and I never have the desire to drink any more than than. This may stem from my family never having alcohol in the house, so I was so rarely ever around it growing up, or that Lauren has Asian Red, or who knows what? I'm just not much of a drinker.

With that in mind, I don't know much about liquor laws, so none of the laws I state in this post are necessarily actual laws, they are just what I have guessed the laws to be....

In Maryland, where I spent my teen years, you couldn't get alcohol in a grocery store. It's my understanding that only places that hold a liquor license can sell the stuff and due to zoning rules, it seems that alcohol can only be bought in bars or liquor stores - I'm not sure if 2-buck (or 3-buck, due to inflation) Chuck is sold in Trader Joe's in Maryland - someone who lives in the state can let me know.

With that background in mind, imagine my shock when I moved to Michigan, went to Meijer and saw alcohol for sale at a place that also sold groceries, clothing and tires (I should really write a blog about my MSU experiences with Meijer one day, but today is not that day). I think I actually said to whoever I was with "wait, is that beer for sale with the groceries?" - I probably sounded like an idiot, but people who had only lived in Michigan were equally dumbfounded when I told them that you just can't get alcohol in a grocery store in Maryland.

Of course, I now live in Scotland, and I think the law for buying alcohol is more bizarre to me than the difference between Maryland and Michigan. 

In Scotland, you can buy alcohol in grocery stores - in fact, stores are well stocked with the stuff - but you can't buy it before 10 am. I find this law ridiculous, and have yet to figure out the reason for it.

Who would be buying alcohol before 10? 

The drunk - My guess is, if someone was so hard up for alcohol, all the time, they may not be awake before 10, or they would be so drunk they couldn't make into the store, so I don't see this being a person who the law is designed for.

The all-night partier - The person who's been partying all night and wants to continue the party. The problem with this is, many grocery stores don't even open until 8 am, so I don't see that person saying 'maybe Sainsbury's is the place for me to go at 8:15 to pick up some alcohol'. I also think the all-nighter would probably have some stashed away at home.

The planner - The person who is planning a social event for later the day/night, who wants to make sure they have everything beforehand. Why isn't this person allowed to buy alcohol before 10? Surely this person is not going to be menace after buying alcohol at 9 am.

My guess is that this law is some sort of show that drinking too much is a bad thing (which I don't disagree with in principle), but if you want to really show that, go with the Maryland law, and make it that much harder to get alcohol.

Telling shoppers who shop before 10 that they aren't allowed to buy alcohol is preaching to the wrong choir. The people who are shopping before 10 are probably people who wouldn't want to be drinking before 10 anyhow - I go to the store before 10 and I see other parents with toddlers and retired people, and and it is us that see signs like the one below; signs probably never seen by people who actually consume alcohol before 10 in the morning....

Attachment and Disorder

Before we began the adoption process, I don't think I'd ever heard the phrase Attachment Disorder, and if I did, I surely didn't pay any attention to it. In the adoption/fostering context, Attachment Disorder is the inability for a child to have a normal bond (attachment) with a caretaker. 

I may be exaggerating, but I feel like the phrase came up in every single adoption meeting, interview, and prep class we attended. It was drilled into us that we would likely be adopting a child who suffered from the disorder, since we'd be adopting domestically, through the social work system. Between this, being told we'd probably be adopting a kid with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and my being talked to in a way that made me feel I would not be a capable parent, there were many a day that I wasn't sure this was something I wanted to go through with.

Add to this, my sense of order in how things work in my world, and I didn't come off as the most enthusiastic potential adopter. 

When you're an adult who's not around kids much, you kind of do things a certain way - you don't notice that you have a bottle sitting at the edge of a table, you keep things where you want, you can listen to podcasts without being interrupted. You have a certain order to your life that a kid doesn't really fit into. Whenever we would have a kid visit, I would worry that they would break something, or do something to our walls, or floors, or carpet. I like my things orderly.

The thought of attachment issues and losing order in our flat scared the hell out of me when it looked like we were going to be matched up with a child. It scared me even more when we were matched with the child, and even more when we met one of the child's foster parents, and even more when we met the child, and even more with each day of the transition process of moving the child from the foster carers to us. 

We were told we were lucky. The kid we were matched with had lived with one foster family since birth and had a birth mother who didn't drink alcohol. This was very good, everyone said, but it didn't make me feel much better.

The night before we moved the kid into our place for good, I barely slept. On the 1.5 hour drive to the foster carers, I kept thinking it would be kind of nice if the roads got so blocked so that we'd have to turn around and go back home. Of course, this didn't happen and we were at the foster carers at the set time and brought the kid home.

At some point during the transition process I was talking to a social worker. I said I didn't see how this kid, who had lived with one foster family since birth, would possibly attach to us, random strangers who just showed up a few days earlier. The social worker said she was sure everything would be fine and I would be amazed at how well, and quickly, a kid who is attached to one family can attach to another. I smiled, acted like I believed her (I didn't) and didn't push any further on the issue.

I was very wrong.

The kid follows Lauren around like a puppy dog (me, not so much), plays with us like we've been around forever, and didn't just appear a couple of weeks ago. It's unbelievable, and almost a little scary how well the kid has attached to us, and how quickly we've become a family.

Last night, as I was cleaning up rice off the table (plates mean nothing to this kid), and the floor, and the chair the kid was sitting in, and finding random grains of rice all over the rest of the kitchen, I had to admit that I had lost my battle with the order of things in our flat, and my life. Things are now out of reach of toddler-sized hands, I'm waking up at times I only used to when I had an early morning flight, and all my pens have gone missing.

While we still have a way to go, I have to say that it's impressive how in less than one week, we have gone from where we were to where we are. We are well on our way to reaching a strong sense of attachment, which is an amazing thing. Our flat is starting to have a strong sense of disorder, which I'm not so amazed by, but will learn to live with.

Say 'ta'

I'm still very much American in the way I talk. 

Unless I take the time to think about what I'm saying, I still use phrases like 'parking lot' and 'trash can'; I tend to say 'thank you' instead of 'cheers' or 'ta'; I catch myself pronouncing tomatoes and basil the way an American would (tow-may-tow and bay-sil, instead of tow-maa-tow and baa-sil). I pronounce strawberry with the 'e' and almost never say 'hiya' or 'wee'.

My world is about to change.

We are in the process of adopting a toddler (it won't be legal for many months to come, but that's another story). This kid has spent 19 months with a Scottish foster family and just moved in with us. At that age, growing up in a Scottish home, phrases like 'trash can' might as well be 'schloog fleig' as far as the kid is concerned. 

As American as I may sound, I want to keep the kid up with Scottish terms, so I'm finding myself telling the kid to put rubbish in the bin, asking if the kid wants any 'bluebries' and when I give the kid a grape and say 'what do you say?', I don't want to hear 'thank you', I want to hear 'ta'.

This wee child is going to change my world in ways I hadn't really thought much about.