Over the course of the last two and a half years, I have learned not to hold
my breath when it comes to anticipating milestones for eventually getting our
child. From the moment we submitted application, we hit obstacle after
obstacle.
I typically tend to see the
glass half full so despite the seemingly endless series of setbacks, I
constantly expected things to get better.
But while the adoption process hasn’t soured me and turned my optimism
to pessimism, it has forced me to become a realist.
In reality, I don’t think we will be traveling until March.
But in the back of my mind, the
positive-thinking Jill still holds hope for a February travel date.
As indicated in my previous post, one of the
most recent delays is due to our agency’s license expiring and a backlog of
agencies waiting for the same thing.
Without
a license, the Ministry of Women in
Ethiopia will not issue letters of
recommendation for adoptive families and without that letter, no court date
will be issued.
And so, on January 25
th
our letter was due in court, but did not materialize.
Our case was then issued a new deadline of
February 8
th – this Friday for the letter to arrive.
There have been murmurings that the Ministry
was to start issuing letters again this week.
Ours would be the first of our agency’s cases (as far as I know) for
which the letter is due.
Potentially, then, on Friday, if our letter is received, we could be issued
a court date shortly thereafter.
The
other caveat, however, is that supposedly Ethiopian courts are closed until
February 22
nd.
Yet court
dates are still being issued and I have heard that they aren’t exactly closed,
but are catching up on a build up of cases.
Are we one of those cases?
I’m
not sure.
Optimistically, the letter
could be received Friday, a court date could be issued shortly thereafter, and
we could be traveling in two weeks.
That
is the best case, and highly unlikely scenario.
Worst case scenario is that our letter is not received, we are issued a new
deadline date two weeks down the road, we receive a court date soon after that,
and travel mid-March.
Well, I suppose
that is not worst case scenario, but I can’t emotionally afford to think of
every potential thing that could go wrong!
Clearly, we have no answers.
And with
no answers and vague indications of what actually is transpiring across the
world where our son is waiting for us, we cling to hypotheses.
We find ourselves trying to calculate and
make sense of something that is futile.
“Well,
IF, our letter is received Friday, and they immediately issue a court date and
we get a court date even during this supposed closure, we could spend Valentine’s
Day in
Ethiopia!”
Right.
Even optimistic Jill realizes the impossibility of that one.
Still, over a glass or two of wine at night,
we fantasize about the day, hopefully sooner than later, when the voice on the
other end of the phone will say, “book your tickets.
You’re going to see your son.”
