Paper Chasin'

Dear Waiting Little One,

Our journey to you is one step closer after today. Not every day was like today, but I wanted to share just a few of the lengths we have gone to to bring you home (and our journey is really just beginning)!

The process of adoption can sometimes be a tedious exercise. Many call the phase we have nearly completed the ‘paper chase.’ That’s a pretty apt term, as I reflect upon this afternoon.

It started one August morning in a Panera where your dad and I holed up with our laptops, determined to finish the agency application and get the process of your adoption off the ground. It continued through the next several months with more hours at computer screens typing our personal biographies and parenting plans for you, not to mention writing back and forth with our adoption coordinator seemingly hundreds of questions about how to do this or that. It included meetings with our social worker, Anne, whom you’ll hopefully meet some day and visits to the doctor’s office to verify that we (Dad, Mom and Els) were drug and disease free. Over the last few weeks we knew we were getting close to ‘the end’ and became more and more anxious for the day when we could send everything off to go to Albania for translation and await American immigration approval.

Last week we were SOOO close we could just taste it, but we ran into a few challenges (one I won’t bother explaining because it got resolved) but the latter involved getting three people together at the same time to sign off on our home study. It wouldn’t be ready until at least today, provided one of the three individuals returned to work after some time off for bereavement. At 1PM this afternoon we drove up to Lexington to pick up the much anticipated notarized Home Study before driving to the Fayette County Clerk’s office for the necessary certification of the notary. Then we could then make a quick trip to the Capitol in Frankfort for the shiny gold “apostille” sticker and send it off to Michigan before the big snow & ice storm was to hit the Bluegrass tonight and possibly delay our precious papers any longer.

We arrived at the clerk’s office and got our first red flag. We had brought another document with us for certification in addition to the home study. It was a letter from our accountant which we were informed was notarized in Fayette County by a notary not *registered* in Fayette county. The nice lady made phone call after phone call and was unable to track down in which county the CPA’s notary was registered! Eventually we reached the CPA on our cell phone to relay our dilemma. She called us back a few minutes later to tell us the notary was registered in Lincoln County, 40 miles south of where we sat in the public library parking garage. She had to look up the county seat in Lincoln County on the internet and gave us an address to put into the GPS. (Note: we had discussed the option of drawing up a replacement letter but she couldn’t have it for us until Wednesday at the earliest. )

We decided we could not wait another day and I would drop off your Dad and Ellie in Wilmore (not too far out of the way, and there was no need for them to travel hither and yonder when I could do it by myself) and race down to the Lincoln County Courthouse and turn around to drive north again to Frankfort for the apostille. I would be cutting it very close as it was already approaching 2 o’clock and the office in Frankfort closed at 4:30! On the way to Wilmore I called the Courthouse in Stanford to verify that the notary was indeed registered (I didn’t want to make an 80 mile trip for nothing). Yes! She was registered! I called your grandparents in Illinois to fill them in on the situation and to pray, pray, pray that we could get this DONE TODAY!

The trip to Lincoln County was pretty uneventful. Their courthouse was charming, as were the two ladies in the clerk’s office who appeared to be the only ones working on the entire floor. They pointed out a property deed dating back to the 1700s, hanging and framed on the wall, handwritten on sheepskin. It felt like a visit to a museum, it was very quiet, clean, everything appearing quite old except for the one computer in the room. I was a little nervous when they seemed a bit confused about the document I was requesting. Apparently not too many people in Lincoln County pursue international adoption. Rather than pulling the certification document up on the computer and filling in the necessary fields, they started culling a stack of file folders for a form to photocopy, then hand write in the blanks. They didn’t seem too concerned about rushing anything, and nearly forgot to give me my papers back after handwriting my receipt.

I finally got back to the van at 3:08 and my heart sank when I plugged in the address for the Capitol in Frankfort. Arrival time: 4:28. WHAT??? I didn’t expect the drive to be quite that long. At this point I really started praying. Did I risk the trip to Frankfort only to arrive a few minutes late, with another 45 minutes of driving to get home? I didn’t consider this too long in light of the severe weather that the radio station kept repeating was heading our way. After making the trek to Lincoln County, I had to give it a try to get to Frankfort yet today, or I may as well have waited til Wednesday for a new CPA letter because it didn’t sound like I would make it to the Capitol tomorrow.

I raced to Frankfort as fast as I dared. Every stoplight was painstakingly long, and there were a lot of them! At one stretch in the trip, I was able to carve 5 minutes off of the arrival time. I called the Records Office on my cell phone to tell them I was coming. They said, “If you’re here by 4:30, we will help you, but not any later.”

I got within 3 miles of the court house and I think I hit every light but one. It was agony as the traffic increased and the minutes crept back up on my projected arrival time. I finally turned onto the avenue leading up to the Capitol. It’s a beautiful little street with a grassy, tree-lined median and the Capitol building sitting up on a hill at the end of the road. I’ve seen it in the spring time with blooming dogwoods and tulips (when we completed our dossier for Ellie), I’ve seen it in the autumn with brilliant orange foliage (when we apostilled our acceptance documents for her referral), and today I saw it covered in snow as I brought these precious papers which completed our Dossier for you. I know each time I’ve wished I had a camera (and we had plans for a blog picture of Ellie standing in front of it today holding up papers with the shiny gold stickers), but it wasn’t going to happen this time either!

I had already stripped off my coat so I wouldn’t have anything delay me at security and I could run straight back to the office. It was 4:28. The closest available parking spot was empty. Yay! I did my fastest parallel parking job ever, grabbed my purse, locked the van and started jogging up the hill and the hundred-some steps leading up to the Capitol. My legs started to feel like jello.

I wobbled to the doors and my heart sank. They were locked. I tried every one and shook them VERY hard just in case someone inside heard me and wanted to help. NOTHING. I called your dad. I was discouraged. I couldn’t believe I had come this far and just missed completing the mission by one lousy minute. I looked at the phone. It said 4:30. I saw a trail of salt on the sidewalk and decided to see where it led. I followed it around a corner into an alcove and an unmarked door that was OPEN! There was a metal detector and a desk for a security officer but no one was there… so I went in and bypassed the metal detector (I guess no one was watching the security cameras because I wasn’t stopped)! Having been to the Records Office before, I knew right where to go. There was a light on in the office and my hope rose some more! I walked past the janitor’s cart parked outside the door and one lady was at her desk back in the corner. I asked, “Would you be willing to apostille some documents?” She said yes! THANK YOU JOHNNA! You get a gold star in my book today! Thank you for working late! (And, thank you to all of the wonderful government employees I encountered today – they were ALL very kind and helpful!)

When I left the building a few minutes later, a motion sensor let me out the same way I entered. My guess is that this particular door was on an auto timer and I entered it not a moment too late! Jesus got me there just in time and not a second too late! I got in before the clock advanced to 4:31 and the doors could lock me out.

And that, dear one, is just one of the afternoons we spent chasing papers to bring you home. Thanks for bringing a little excitement to our dreary wintry day. ;-)