Waiting for Eli

Imagine that you've been waiting not nine, but eighteen months for a new child. You've jumped through hoop after bureaucratic hoop, filled out numerous forms for the governments of two major world powers, disclosed every intimate detail of your personal and medical histories to bureaucrats around the globe, and spent more on this process than you would have spent on a brand new car.

Now imagine that you were matched with a living, breathing, waiting child nine months ago. For all that time you've known his name and age, what he looks like, the circumstances of his birth, his favorite toys and eating habits, the status of his physical and mental development, his exact location, the language he speaks, his medical condition, and the quality of the orphanage where he lives.

Imagine that by law, you are permitted no contact with him whatsoever over all that time. You can send him no letters, no pictures, no gifts. Despite the fact that your job requires you to travel to a location just 6 hours away from where he lives several times a year, you are not allowed to visit him. As the months tick by, you receive no additional updates regarding him. The information you do have falls more and more out of date. For all intents and purposes, as far as you are concerned he is arrested in time, receding into the distant past like a slowly fading memory. You found him, only to begin losing him immediately, by degrees. He is beyond your reach.

He has no idea that you even exist.

This, despite the fact that somwhere your boy -- your son -- is speaking his first words, growing by leaps and bounds, bonding with his caregivers, throwing tantrums and suffering sudden fits of joy and laughter, learning to share and play and create and engage, becoming his own unique self.

And you wait...

And wait...

And wait...

And wait...

And then one day, almost, but not quite thoroughly out of the blue (or so it seems), someone calls you and tells you that your entire family needs to be on a plane to China in 8 days; and that despite the fact that your son has no idea who you are or what is about to happen to him, in 2 weeks he will be handed over to you, to have and to hold and to love forever.

Now imagine that today was the day that call came. Have you caught your breath yet? Are you ready? Tickets and visas and clothes and medicine and thoughts and emotions and lives all in order? Do you know what the hell you are doing? Can you make this work? Can you afford it? Does it matter?

Hang onto your hats and suspenders, if you plan to come along for the ride.

Lei XinXing, we are coming to get you.