Our Story (Part 2 of ?)

A couple of weeks after submitting our application to our agency, we were contacted by someone from the review committee to schedule a follow up phone call. Because of my schedule as a teacher, it took many, many phone calls/messages back and forth to find a time that we could all speak on the phone. The set-up could not have been worse. It was going to be a three-way conference call: I was being called during my free period, Mr. P was at home before leaving for work, and the social worker was, of course, at the agency.

Mr. P does not speak fluent English. For those of you who have learned or are learning a second language you may know how much more flustered you can feel when having a conversation in your second language on the phone. We tried to organize the call so that Mr. P and I could at least be in the same room, but we couldn't do it. So off we went. We were super nervous.

The social worker called exactly on time (and of course I was immediately interrupted by someone coming in to my classroom. I shooed them away.) The phone call was very much focused on the pieces of our application that were on the most shaky ground. They questioned my decision to give up treatments in order to pursue adoption. On our initial application Mr. P has expressed some concerns about open adoption. He had never heard of open adoption when we went to the information session, so he was still warming to the idea when we completed the application. The social worker had asked about this. I was translating the questions for Mr. P, and he was doing the best he could to answer the questions. Clearly she wanted to hear more (and she wanted to hear from him - not me) and get a sense of how he was feeling, but most of the time he answered simply "yes" or "no". It was a pretty horrible. She also asked about Mr. 's ability to participate in the homestudy process given that we would work in a group and there was a lot of required reading (in English). After about 20 minutes, the phone call ended.

When we all hung up the phone, I immediately called Mr. P back. We both felt devastated. Like this wasn't going to happen. Mr. P felt horrible about his inability to fully communicate with the social worker. Could they really not accept us because he wasn't fluent in English? This prospect was absolutely devastating. Mr. P feels bad enough about his English. If the agency wasn't going to accept us and that was part of the decision, well that would just be too much. We were told they would contact us in two weeks.

Yet another kind of (grueling) two week wait.....