The China Syndrome

It has been brought to my attention by one of the most trusted advisors to the Axis (my husband) that readers of this blog could easily take away the impression that our trip to China was all hearts and flowers. That it was never hard, or frustrating or sad.

It was, at times. I'll get to that part later.

But by far, by a hundred miles, the saddest, hardest, most frustrating part of it all happened before we left. Call it the China Syndrome, if you're not afraid of cliche. Making the decision to do this thing, and then to get ready to actually go do it while undertaking a raft of other life-changing activities (starting a company, building a house, losing our elderly beagle), and it wasn't pretty. It was paralyzing.

Oh, and there were the two boys to take care of, and then the Beijing quarantine. And the boys vis-a-vis the Beijing quarantine. Would we get caught in the dragnet? Would I bring my children and my parents to the other side of the world, only to have them run afoul of an authoritarian regime, and detained? Again, I'll emphasize, those weeks before we went were not pretty.

During the flight over, though, I felt very at peace with our decision. Glad we were going, glad we had brought the whole family along to share in the adventure. Not worried about much of anything, except getting through the large pile of fashion magazines I'd brought to help me kill the 14 hours of the flight.

But moments before we landed, I started chatting with our flight attendant about the quarantine, and asked her how often they "got someone" and took them away. "Oh, it happens almost every flight," she said. "One time they got an entire crew."

Now I know this is not exactly a cliff hanger--we didn't get the big Q--but I'll save the story of the Bejiing "health survey" for an upcoming post.

(UPDATE: The chief adviser to the Axis has pointed out this post doesn't exactly deliver what it promised, which was to discuss some of the difficulties we have faced in this adoption process. Upon review I realized he's right, it tangented off into the quarantine thing. I'm going to plead jet lag on this one and fix it soon, OK?)