The Road is Paved With Paper

Over the past two months it feels like we have been trudging through muck and mire.  The past two months have been an exercise in the "business" of adoption.  Honestly there have been times when it seemed more like a chore, plowing through reams of paper, phone calls with bureaucrats in Trenton and Harrisburg, emails back and forth with our adoption agency, frustrations with delays in delivery of documents .... To say that the "business" of adoption is dull and tedious would be an understatement.  The phrase "dull as dishwater" and the image of Sisyphus comes to mind when discussing this phase of the process, especially when compared with the excitement of obtaining USCIS approval (see our previous posts).

I thought that there really wouldn't be much worth writing about when we completed our dossier package of documents and shipped them off to Latvia.  But I was wrong.

There's nothing "sexy" about three piles of documents with fancy seals on them.  There isn't any "bling" associated with paper with some ink on it being stapled together, wrapped with rubber bands and handed off to DHL to deliver across the ocean to our attorney in Latvia.  Really rather drab and listless.  In and of itself, the paper has no value. So what's the big deal?

Kristofers.

He's got value.  Family has value.  Love has value.  When you are nothing more than a glorified clerk, gathering documents, driving all over the place to gather the missing pieces, frantically racing against deadlines, losing patience with the system and its minions it is difficult to remember that there is a person at the end of this road.  There it is.

At the end of the road is Kristofers and our family.  The road to Kristofers, family, love, God is sometimes paved with paper and gold seals, wrapped in rubber bands.  Not macadam, not concrete, not yellow bricks Dorothy ... paper.  Paper mixed with patience, a little bit of anxiety and lots of love.

The road to Kristofers is paved with bricks of 8 1/2" x 11" paper.

We continue to plod our way through the next phases of this journey - adoption grant applications, visitor visa applications, airline tickets, Latvian court documents - the endless pile of paper grows.  But not all of the paper is bland and tasteless.  Kristofers loves to fish. Phil took it on himself to complete a paper application for a fish and game club in the Lehigh Valley and was given a temporary paper access card that will give him and Kristofers access to the fully stocked lake when he arrives.

Not all paper is valueless.