Part 1/8: Choosing Our Path
According to the route taken by Northwest Airlines, Chicago and Bangkok are roughly 9,000 miles apart. The flight path, curving sharply northwest before diving back along the Asian Pacific Rim, requires three planes, two transfers, and 20 to 24 hours, depending on whether you're assisted by the jetstream and the turning of the earth.
In our case, the journey to Bangkok--and our child, Margaret Nuthamon--took more than two years.
After returning from China in August 1997 with our beautiful daughter Alice Jiaojiao, Rod and I began discussing a second adoption. Jiaojiao, at 14 months, was malnourished and developmentally delayed. But the strides she made during her first few months with us gave us faith that she was going to be fine. (Or maybe it was the unquenchable spark in her black eyes that told us, "Of course I'm all right.")
Time was precious. I would turn 40 in November; Rod was already 45. Our ages, and our status as a childless family (despite years of "trying," treatments, and miscarriages), had worked in our favor for our first China experience. But the country's adoption law mandated that going back for a second child would put us in the "special needs" category. Having waited nine months for a referral (and six more weeks to travel) for our "healthy child" adoption, we would probably wait a year to 14 months for a referral of a child with minor to moderate special needs. Considering the dilatory nature of the INS, adding months of stateside paperwork, we felt there was no time to lose.
As we observed Alice's progress, we began to realize how lucky we had been. A new thread arose in our discussions: were we sure we wanted to return to China? To me, it was a no-brainer -- of course we would go back. To Rod, the picture seemed less clear. Never an enthusiastic embracer of risks, Rod's ability to gamble on uncertainties had been strained by the China process. Like many China a-families adopting in 1997, we had been referred, and ultimately accepted, a child considerably older than we had requested. Our decision was based on an inch-square, black-and-white photo and a one-page "medical" -- both more than a year out of date. After 19 years of marriage, I loved him for rising to the challenge and saying "yes" to our girl.
But now, with an active toddler at home (and the gaping hole in our hearts starting to heal), the world looked a bit different. Though most of "special needs" kids coming out of China had minor or even nonexistent problems, we knew of much more severe cases. We also knew of supposedly healthy children who had later turned out to have significant special needs for which their families had been unprepared. Despite the fact that there are no guarantees in ANY kind of child-getting, Rod asked that we at least research other programs before making a decision. I, too, wanted to look at all the options before deciding if this was a battle worth fighting with him.
So for much of that fall we gathered agency information and did Internet research. Figuring that another Asian adoption might at least give our children a comforting resemblance to each other, we looked there first. We were ineligible for Korea due to Rod's age. Vietnam was a possibility, but we were concerned about the length of the trip, since all Vietnam adoptions at the time included a stop in Bangkok for U.S. visa work. A two- to three-week trip is fine if you're childless, but we now had Alice to consider. We weren't sure we wanted to travel with her, and we were unwilling to leave her any longer than absolutely necessary. Cambodia was newly opened, and in the end, we were too cowardly to be pioneers.
Thailand, on the other hand, looked promising. Long referral waits, but China "SN" referrals were so slow the wait was comparable. The age of Thai "babies" in the program was dropping; once it was rare for any child less than 2 to be referred, now it seemed more possible to meet a child at 15 to 18 months. Thailand allowed families to specify gender (Rod was set on another girl), and both "healthy" and "SN" kids needed families. The trip could be made in 10 days if necessary. Several reputable agencies had established programs with Thai orphanages, and we talked to agency reps and adoptive parents at some length. Our conversations reassured us regarding the extent and reliability of the medical information provided. Costs were less than or comparable to China.
My biggest reservation concerned our ability to do a good cultural education job if we added another country to our mix. China resources are abundant; Thai resources would take some work. Thailand doesn't usually make the yearly "top 20" list of countries chosen by Americans adopting internationally, and in most of the past decade, U.S. adoptions of Thai children numbered in only the double digits annually. I was skeptical that anyone was going to publish books or organize heritage camps targeted to such a small audience. This aspect made me inclined to try to convince Rod to go to China again.
But weird things kept happening. For weeks on end, as I'd think about these issues, I'd discover "made in Thailand" messages. One day as I was cleaning up Alice's toys, I was putting the costume on her Chinese "Baby June" doll, thinking, "Where will I find Thai dolls if we do this?" I flipped the doll over and noticed a red tag sticking out of her leg. Baby June's Chinese, but she was "Made in Thailand." A couple days later I was thinking about adoption again while rummaging through a box of picture frames. I found one I'd stuck away after our baby shower and removed the back to insert a picture. Out fluttered a paper label: Made in Thailand.
This happened four or five times -- always when I was already pondering the issue. Rod thought I was merely being hypersensitive. I thought so, too, until the Sunday morning in December when I was shopping at the supermarket. (We'd blown off church, fighting head colds.) I pulled boxes off the shelves absentmindedly because I was preoccupied with the China-Thailand thing. I was feeling a very strong urge to get started. "Y'know, " I said to myself, "it's stupid to base your decision on coincidences. You should just push for China again. Your life would be so much simpler that way."
And I turned the corner and just about mowed down a clerk who was stocking shelves from boxes marked "Made in Thailand" in big red letters. Now this store's small Asian section only has a few Thai products. I checked. What were the odds that I'd amble by at the one point in the month when those products were being stocked -- and on a Sunday, when I'd usually be in a church pew instead of pushing a cart?
Three weeks later, during a visit to my parents' home, I was cooking a meal with my mom and telling her this story. "Guess someone was trying to tell me something," I said.
"Guess so," she agreed.
She opened up the microwave to put in a dish and pulled out a plastic toy ring, probably left there by one of my nieces. "Hmm," said mom, turning it over in her hands. "I've never seen this before. What's it doing in the microwave?" She handed it to me, I flipped it over, and on the back was engraved "Made in Thailand."
That was enough for me. A week later, we sent in our applications to WACAP -- a Seattle agency with a longstanding link to a top-notch orphanage run by the Thai Red Cross -- as well as Family Resource Center, the Chicago agency that had assisted us in our first adoption. By Feb. 1, 1998, we were on the paper trail ... and the bumpy road that would ultimately lead us to the mysterious "Land of Smiles."