WACAP Weekend
We officially got started with our adoption last week when our info packet (AKA “the MASSIVE binder that arrived by commercial freight in a large wooden crate marked ‘THIS SIDE UP’.”) – but today was our first official workshop as the process gets rolling.We met with our newly assigned social worker who proceeded to, somehow, shake me from my tree of confidence and, within the matter of an hour or so, turn me into a babbling, trembling idiot – and I’m positive this was completely unintentional on her part.Next we met with our program coordinator. Now, we are applying to the African American Infant program through WACAP and this program, by most standards, provides people with incredibly good odds for adopting a happy, healthy baby in a short amount of time without the legal risks associated with most domestic adoptions. That said, these are still, typically, birth mothers who *may* be relinquishing their children for nefarious reasons. Part of our responsibility in the process is to become informed about the issues that may come up during the referral process.I don’t feel that I’m a super square guy or anything. I mean, I was never really a party animal or anything, but I did me some mis-be-hav-in in my day so it shouldn’t be a big deal to think about what situations might contribute to a mother making the most painful decision of her life. But, as we sat there, listening to our instructions regarding becoming informed about the potential effects on a child of prenatal heroin use and how there are a entirely new classes of drugs out there (something called “poly drugs” which I take to mean, “We just kind of mixed a bunch of shit together and gave it a try and now Time magazine is warning their readership about it.”) and we, as responsible parents, need to get hip to all that street lingo so we can understand just how potentially harmed our future child might be – man! What a trip. Okay, sorry for the painfully long run-on sentence, but my point is that for something that figured would be more of a just an informal information session, I can’t believe how exhausted and overwhelmed I am.We continue the saga tomorrow and hopefully, with the aid of my much-smarter-than-I wife, I’ll be able to keep my trap shut and my energy up. We shall see.
