Are we nearly there yet?

So what is life like once the ‘if’ of adoption is almost totally replaced by the ‘when’?

In one word….

Strange!

Let’s start with the technicalities.

Having been recommended by the Adoption Panel and having had that recommendation accepted by the Agency Decision Maker we are now Approved Prospective Adopters for Cumbria County Council.

The next stage is called the Matching Stage. As approved prospective adopters we are now eligible to be matched with a child aged 0-2 for whom the plan is either adoption or foster to adopt.

And if this sounds exciting – it is! If this sounds as though we are getting pretty close to being able to welcome a child into our family – we are! We’re on the mailing list, we’re welcome at support meetings, we’ve got all sorts of dates in our diaries.. In short -the activity levels are all systems

but….as far as we are concerned – all that GO, all that action is happening behind the scenes.

Or more accurately, it is our family who have come to the point in the script directing us to…

and who are now back in the green room waiting for our call as a different thread of the story plays out under the spotlight.

In my next post I lay out the sorts of things that might be going on out there – but for now I want to linger on life back stage.

Which brings me back to that word STRANGE. In one sense it is life as normal – work, school, home, family, food shopping, plans for half term – there are plenty of threads of our family’s story still going on! And yet there is a readiness and a getting ready for a really amazing, wonderful, big, daunting, exciting. life changing moment that could happen at any moment. COULD happen, but may not for months or even years.

Going through the assessment in Stage 2 was like working through a well thumbed script. This would happen, and then that would happen and than we would be do this. It was all heading in a predictable fashion to a denouement – the final scene of Act 1 – Panel. Tension mounted as we waited to see how that scene was going to play out – we weren’t provided with that part of the script in advance! – and then jubilant celebration as the curtain dropped on our delighted approval.

Now here we are in the green room – no script, no guarantees, no time scale. We are living in the readiness of a “5 minutes to curtain” call, and yet without the 5 minutes to count down and with only a very vague script to prepare for Act 3 with.

And meanwhile the curtain is back up – Act 2 is underway.

But before we move on, I want to linger on one more element of Act 1 – after all it’s not as though Act 2 can’t manage without us for a bit!

You see I have spoken about Act 1 as though ours was the only story being told, as though each and every scene was about us.But for all the drama of our scenes in Act 1, ours was not the only story being told, and certainly not the most heart rending. In fact much of Act 1 went on when we were off stage and out of the picture and told the story of the child who will soon be ours, but is as yet completely unknown to us.

Act 1 was a tale of two stories – heading towards each other – but for now completely distinct and so very different. Everything about the staging will have been different as the two stories unfolded in alternate scenes – the lighting, the music, the scenery, the cast of characters. One day we will read at least a partial script from those Act 1 scenes, but our new daughter or son will have lived them. Right now I have no idea where they are in their story, but just that I am aching to become part of that story.

Roll on Act 3 when our stories will fully intertwine – but of course I’m getting ahead of myself. First those stories need a meet cute (to quote from the Christmas film ‘The Holiday’) –  they need to stumble across each other’s paths – which brings us to Act 2.