Mike and Leigh's UnBlog

10.13.06

Sorry for the lapse. Busy at work. Busy at Peter Pan.
I promised a little background on how Leigh and I arrived at the decision to adopt Mary. Here it is:
We were the classic - straight from Central Casting - professional couple with little or no interest in having kids. Two incomes and a lot of freedom to do whatever you want is pretty appealing.
Of course, we had conversations about starting a family, but they usually ended with laughter and a changing of the subject. When our talks bordered on the mature or serious - a rare feat for us - we talked about adoption as a very appealing option. Though we are far from let's-link-pinkies-and-sing-Kumbaya goody-goodies, the thought of making such a profound difference in the life of an unwanted child is something we're drawn to.
For me, there is a direct connection between my grandfather coming over 'on the boat' to a place that, for him, really did have streets paved with gold, and my desire to somehow replicate that in the life of someone else. Though Mary will be much less aware of that dynamic, it's still pretty awesome.
For Leigh, who knows. Maybe as she got to know me and my many quirks, she decided she'd rather not risk a dip into my gene pool. I'm kidding, of course...right, Leigh?
It wasn't until November of 2004 that something changed and we decided to investigate international adoption.
For those of you wondering why we didn't consider adopting domestically, we did. However, there are many issues with domestic adoptions that make us nervous, not the least of which are the rights of the birthmother. Also, even our orphans have exponentially better longterm survival and success rates than the lost children in other countries.
By the time we decided to attend an "informal and informational" meeting about international adoption, I knew we would be going through with this. Heck, we once bought a $5,000 set of cookware at a Home Show after a 15 minute presentation because it promised to "make anyone a 5-star chef." Although we thankfully suffered buyer's remorse before leaving the parking lot and cancelled our order, we've never been very good at "informal and informational." Thank God we've never been to a timeshare seminar!
Believe it or not, we went into that first meeting pretty much with our hearts set on adopting an eastern European boy - maybe from Russia or Ukraine. But after hearing about China's One-Child Law and the thought of girls being deemed undesirable, we shifted our focus and began the process of finding Mary.
More to come...

posted by Michael Fresina @ 8:06 AM