In His Embrace

But here, too, we soon learned that the road was strewn with obstacles. For one, adopting a Jewish American child is all but impossible. Even a non-Jewish American child is hard to find. At that point, we were so desperate that we were willing to adopt a child from out of the country, as far out as Ukraine. At long last, from all the other potential adoptive parents in the United States, we were next in line for a baby from Ukraine. We even booked tickets to Kiev, the capital. But then we were told that the United States had stopped adoptions through Ukraine. Nobody ever told us it was going to be easy.

We switched to a different agency and started looking in Brazil. Early one Sunday morning, we received a call that a baby boy was born, and he was available for adoption. We were barely awake, but we already had to give the child, whom we had never even met, a legal name so his papers could be processed. So we picked a name, Jason (name changed). Though we had already named our child and we couldn’t wait to meet him after all these years of waiting, we were told that we could not travel to Brazil until the preliminary paperwork was completed. We went back to our waiting game, going crazy from excitement, anticipation, and nervousness.

When we got married, we may have been told the importance of patience. But now, after waiting to have children, then waiting to adopt, and now waiting to travel to Brazil, we really learned how to be patient. We had no choice, after all. And we were soon to learn that our waiting game was far from over.

Finally, after three endless months, the agency informed us that we were good to go. The plan was to travel to a city in the north of Brazil, Fortaleza, known as the Miami Beach of Brazil. It sits right along the Equator, on the Atlantic Ocean, and lots of people vacation there. We would stay in a residence hotel, while the rest of the paperwork and legal proceedings were taken care of, which, we were told, would take five to six weeks. What can I say? Man plans and G-d laughs.