The Check is in the Mail and more musings on Adoption

R and I sent in our dossier fee to our agency yesterday. I know it is a bit of a taboo to talk about money (that's private business after all) in our culture, and even more awkward to talk about it in relation to a child (we all shudder at the question "how much did he/she cost?"), but I have to tell you guys, writing a check for 3790 bucks is not for the faint of heart. Perhaps if we were independently wealthy, it wouldn't be such a big deal, but we are certainly not independently wealthy. Now, it isn't a question of is it worth it, because how can you put a money value on a child? It is most definitely worth it. Still, it is a big thing (at least to me) to write out a check for 3790 bucks! I know what your thinking, "if you have such a hard time writing that check out, how are you going to handle paying the country fee (that is around 10,000 bucks)?" Never fear, I will handle it, but I can't promise you that I will just whip out a pen, write it out with a flourish, and send it off without a second thought.
Maybe it is growing up rather poor in a rural community, maybe it is emotional residue from having grandparents who lived through the depression and kept their money in a locked box at the bottom of a wardrobe, and maybe it is just that I have an irrational fear of being broke.....heck it is probably a combination of all of these things. The bottom line is, it freaks me out to write out checks for thousands of dollars.
Ok, now that I have shared my nerousis about money, let's move on to the sibling/twins discussion. The question that I have been asked, by family members and friends, is why would you want two children at once? Are you crazy? (which, I believe, is a completely seperate, if not perhaps valid, question). There are a number of reasons why we have "opened the door" to the possiblity of twins or a sibling group. R comes from a family of ten children- he is very comfortable with living with more than one child in diapers at one time. R has also allways wanted children- there is nothing in the world that he wants more than to be a father. I do not come from such a large family, but I have spent a lot of time in my life with infants and toddlers- as a babysitter, as a nanny, as a sunday school teacher, and as a volunteer in a pre primary impaired classroom (mostly of 3,4, and 5 year olds). My family and friends joke that I am a bit of a pied piper when it comes to kids- for some reason children "glom" on to me when I am around. Two children at one time does not scare us.
As E. noted in her comment on a previous post, a lot depends upon what kind of support system is available to help out with the challenges of taking care of two children at one time. When R and I were in a position to start a family, we recognized the importance of being near family and being a part of a community of friends. That is one reason why we moved back to Michigan (well, it is back for me, as I grew up here) where my mother, sister, brother in law, niece, nephew, aunts, uncles, a zillion cousins, and childhood friends live. We also have friends in this area who have formed (or added to) their family through international adoption. Add to that the fact that we are members of a phenomonally supportive and close knit church congregation, and we have, I believe, one of the best supportive systems we could hope to have.
One of the other major factors behind our decision to be open to twins or a sibling group has to do with age. Yes, age, like money, is not something that our culture is comfortable with discussing. But age, like money, factors into our adoption plans. There is a bit of an age difference between R and I -no, not so much of an age difference that Maury Povich is going to want us on a show about May-December romances, but still a noticable age difference. Because of this age difference, there are many countries in which we would not qualify to adopt an infant (due to R's age). We both feel strongly that we want to adopt more than one child, and we are aware that the possibility of doing two seperate adoptions decreases with the passage of time- that is to say, between age restrictions and the ever growing time frame of adoption in the countries that we do qualify for (i.e. vietnam) the likelihood that we would be able to adopt again and ensure that our children are close in age is not all that great.

The other taboo of money comes into play here: the reality is that adopting twins or a sibling group is financially more feasible than two seperate adoptions. *please do not burn me here with gigantic flames of outrage, I am not saying that we want to adopt two at once b/c it is some great "two for one" deal. I am merely admitting that part of the reasoning has to do with the reality of the financial cost of adoption. One trip is less expensive than two. The extra country fee for adopting twins or a sibling group is less expensive than an entirely seperate adoption. So yes, as much as talking about adoption cost is a major no no, the reality is that adoption does cost money. a lot of money.

Here is probably the most controversial (and flameworthy) reason of all: R and I both believe that it is important to face full on the reality that not looking like us is going to matter to our child. As much as we hate to talk about it, human culture places a high value on blood relations- we identify ourselves by who our parents are, our geneology, wether we are left handed b/c great grandma so and so was left handed, etc. We can argue until the cows come home about wether or not it SHOULD matter, but the reality is that it does matter to people.

We, as parents, will never know first hand what being "adopted" is like - we did not come into our families through adoption. We do not know how much, or how often, our child will think about his birth family - the questions of why, how, why not, etc. I think it would be terribly niave of me to believe that he will never wonder who he looks like (birth mother? birth father?) or whether or not he has birth siblings (brothers? sisters? younger? older?). Adopting twins or a sibling group will not solve all these hard questions about adoption, but it will give both children the comfort of having a brother (or sister) that looks like him/her, that shared the same womb, that share a common history, that have (at least in the case of twins) never been seperated from one another. Perhaps they will feel safer talking with each other about their wondering, their questions, their feelings surrounding their birth family, their country of birth, their adoption, their parents (who are, I freely admit, not going to be perfect parents)- surely there are things that are going to come up that our children are not going to want talk to us about, no matter how hard we work at making them feel they can talk to us about anything and everything.

To quote Charlie Brown "Good Grief!" I have written a mini novel here, haven't it? I am sure that some of you are going to take issue with some of the things I have shared here. If you have taken issue with something, I encourage you to share your thoughts, objections, outrage, feelings, etc in the comment section. I do not pretend to have all the answers or to have thought of all angles of this multi-faceted complex reality of adoption. We are trying to make the best choices that we can, for ourselves and our future child(ren).

To quote School House Rock "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER"- so please do not hold back in sharing your knowledge with us.