More Adventures in Court

Apologies, dear friends for not keeping you more up to date on court.  It is no wonder I came down with a cold and spent the last couple of days on the couch.  Every day has dawned with unappealing news from Ethiopia.  First, the judge presiding over our case dodged last Friday's meeting with the legal representative, and then again Monday, keeping us all in suspense as to whether she would use the old Power of Attorney Forms.  Now it is a mute point because the new POA are in Ethiopia in the hot little hands of our lawyer, T.  So, we are all waiting with bated breath to learn whether, tomorrow, this judge will rule on our cases which have effectively been in limbo since the 7th.  She has made no commitment to do so, having a number of other cases scheduled for tomorrow.  However, I hope and pray that T. can goad, chide, blackmail, or otherwise urge the judge to pass us as part of the next group.  If she decides to reschedule our little group of families, it may mean several more weeks of waiting.  

It's hard to describe what I've been feeling these past ten days.  Outwardly, I suppose I am functioning semi-capably as ever, but inwardly I just feel the loss of all the days I might have had with Mareshet.  At night, my anxieties seem to take on a vivid life of their own, as I have dream after dream of ever more improbable yet very intricate nightmares.  For example, last night I dreamed that the judge finally did pass our case but when I went to pick up Mareshet, she was a grown woman of about thirty.  When I protested that there must be some mistake, I was sternly told to to live up to my duty as an adoptive parent and take her home!  In another dream, my social worker finally emailed me that the adoption had been finalized, but I was so confused and found it so hard to believe that I ignored the message.  In doing so, I missed my opportunity and another family adopted her!  And my worst dream was when the judge said that I was not qualified as a single parent to adopt Mareshet (and for some reason I was there in this dream, which made her ruling even more biting).  All in all, I have not gotten much sleep and I wake up panicked and confused.   I thought the hard part was over when I finally had made up my mind to accept Mareshet's referral.  Why plague myself now with all these hollow fears?  In the end, I'm sure my subconscious is just busy tidying house.  I may end up with a more sophisticated brain for all this nighttime renovation.  However, the dreams seem to get worse each night and if the judge doesn't pass us tomorrow I'm going to end up neurotic and jaded.

I can't close this page without also commenting that April 10th was also the anniversary of my father's death.  My grief over lost days with Mareshet is compounded by my grief over lost days with my father.  I am, under the best of circumstances, cranky and introspective during early April.   I miss my dad, for all his quirks and Republicanisms.  I especially miss the things we did together, out of doors.  The farther away I feel from Nature, the farther away I feel from him, too.  I badly need a camping trip, a chance to sit and stare into a fire and see stars at night.  I want to lay upon some sunbleached grass out in pine country, and listen to birds and insects and not freeways.  I want my kids to get this too.  Not be raised here, dirt deficient and unaware of rivers.  How to achieve this, I am not sure, as health insurance is not readily doled out to the Thoreaus of the world.  But when I reflect on my dad's brief life, I start thinking:  maybe there is more to life than this.