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 | The Son Rises in the East
by Jessica Brooke-Buskirk |
“Please Adopt our Baby”
When Liz and Chris Wild made the decision to adopt, they felt adopting a child from Vietnam was the obvious choice.
“You can usually adopt children younger from Vietnam,” Liz explained, “and information about the birth family is available.”
So in the fall of 2000, they brought 11-month-old Emma to their home in Ontario, Canada, with a promise to write her birth family at least once a year. But it was a letter from the birth family that turned their everyday lives into a bureaucratic tug-of-war.
The letter came two years after Emma’s adoption. Emma’s birth mother was pregnant again — the family wanted the Wilds to adopt this child as well.
Liz described her child’s birth family as “poor provincial farmers.” They were raising two children and had relinquished three, including Emma. The Wilds agreed — they would adopt Emma’s baby brother.
But what should have been a relatively smooth process turned into a nightmare when Vietnam shut down adoptions three months before the baby’s birth.
The moratorium was enforced January 2003, and the little boy, whom the Wilds had named Liem, was born on April 14.
The Wilds tried in vain to find a way around the moratorium.
“We’ve strategized together to find any possible legal way (to adopt Liem),” said Martha Maslen, the program director of the Wilds’ agency, Children’s Bridge, based out of Nepean, Ontario. “Both the Ontario government and the Vietnamese government have been trying to find a way, but when one side finds a way, the other side can’t. There’s no avenue.”
Liem is now 2 and still living with his birth family.
Waiting for Liem
Liem’s birth mother has sent Liz and Chris five letters since his birth. The letters say the family’s situation is “desperate,” but they will continue to “look after” Liem. Experience has taught the Wilds to be concerned about Liem’s health. Emma was severely underweight at the time of her adoption, weighing only 11 pounds.
“It is extremely difficult,” Liz said. “We will only feel secure about his health and safety once he is living with us.”
The Wilds cannot send money to Liem’s family because it is against Canadian law for adoptive parents to provide birth families with any type of financial aid.
Despite the impoverished conditions in which Liem is living, the Wilds would prefer he stay with his birth family and form emotional bonds rather than be institutionalized in an orphanage.
“We feel that if he has had a successful bonding experience prior to joining our family, that the probability of him bonding with us is much higher. We have our eyes wide open,” Liz said. “We expect that the transition will be difficult for him. Needless to say, we had hoped that he would have been able to join our family at a much younger age and by doing so, would not feel the emotional impact to the same extent that he will now.”
Liz is taking Vietnamese lessons and has been writing the family to explain that they still want to adopt Liem, but they are being held up by bureaucratic policies. Liz thinks they understand but said, “Even with simple things, so much gets lost in translation.”
Emma is equally anxious for her little brother to come home. Liz said Emma asked when Liem was coming to live with them so incessantly, and became so distressed when he didn’t appear, that Liz and Chris had to stop discussing the adoption in front of her.
But when Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Kai met with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to sign a treaty resuming adoptions, Emma was there in a pink Vietnamese ao dai, representing the Vietnamese children who have been adopted by Canadian families.
Since the treaty was signed on June 27, the Wilds have been forced to wait for each province to sign the memorandum before agencies can become licensed.
Liz spoke to the media after Emma, with another child, presented the Vietnamese Prime Minister with flowers.
“It’s been a long, hard road,” she told reporters on Parliament Hill, outside the castle-like buildings where Canadian laws are decided. “We know that all the negotiations and everything have to be done, but when it’s a child’s life, you sometimes think that some special things can be done to move things along.”
Liz said she chose to speak to the media because she was told it might put pressure on officials to expedite Liem’s adoption. “What we’ve gotten is a lot of sympathy,” she said. The family even received a call from the Vietnamese Embassy when the story reached them, but so far, they have been left to wait with several other families for Vietnam to reopen.
Adopting on a deadline
Among those waiting families are the Klavonskis of Plymouth, Penn. Three-year-old Jake Klavonski was adopted days before Vietnam shut down, and his parents, Linda and Bill, worried he would be the only Vietnamese member of their family.
The Klavonskis struggled with infertility and suffered through the heartache of failed domestic adoptions for nearly 11 years. The couple decided intercountry adoption was their last chance for becoming parents. “We had heard it was more of a guarantee,” Linda said.
The couple chose Vietnam because, as Linda explained, “We are not considered young by any stretch,” and Vietnam had flexible restrictions regarding age. They had also hoped the birth mother would take advantage of Vietnam’s health care program — much like Medicaid — and receive prenatal care.
The day the Klavonskis signed with Adoptions from the Heart’s Vietnam program, they heard adoptions in Cambodia were shut down, paralyzing proceedings for American families adopting from that country. They were told Vietnam would be next.
Despite rumors of Vietnam’s impending moratorium, they began their paperwork in February 2002.
“People were really panicking,” said Paul Pinkerton, a Vietnam facilitator for Adoptions from the Heart, based out of Pennsylvania. “Everyone was hurrying to get their paperwork done. Vietnam was hurrying to get paperwork done.”
Pinkerton and his wife, Sandy, made 13 trips to Vietnam the year before the shutdown in an attempt to match as many families with referrals as possible. “We should have just stayed there,” said Pinkerton, laughing.
Once a family received a referral, the paperwork would be pushed through despite a moratorium.
“We were just going to see what panned out.” Linda said. “We probably would have given up if it hadn’t worked out. One more dead-end, and we would have just given up.”
The Klavonskis submitted their dossier on May 23, 2002. They were told Vietnam would most likely shut down on July 1.
Happy Halloween
Linda and Bill began to relax after they submitted their dossier. There were many more boys available than girls. They had heard people who had indicated they preferred to adopt a boy, or as in the Klavonskis’ case, indicated no preference, were receiving referrals for boys almost immediately.
But the Klavonskis didn’t receive a referral right away.
Pinkerton said the Vietnamese actually halted progress with adoptions before the government gave any official word on a moratorium.
“No one knew what was going on,” said Pinkerton. “When the Vietnamese don’t know what’s going on, they don’t do anything because they’re scared. It panicked American families.”
Linda and Bill had waited five months without progress, when the phone rang at 10:30 p.m. on Halloween. They had received a referral, and Sandy Pinkerton wanted them in Vietnam in nine days.
The couple met their 5½-week-old son, Jake, on November 11. They beat the deadline by a few short days when they finalized Jake’s adoption on Dec. 30, 2002.
A Sibling for Jake
Although Linda and Bill finalized Jake’s adoption before the moratorium was enforced, having only one child was never part of the plan. They don’t believe it’s fair for their son to grow up without someone who shares his heritage.
“We had always hoped for more than one child — maybe two or three,” Linda said. “Once we decided on intercountry adoption, we knew we would have to have more than one. We owed it to our child to have a sibling from his own culture and country.”
Jake agrees. He announced at his daycare that he wants both a brother and a sister.
Linda and Bill are leaning more toward adopting a girl. They have submitted their application with Adoptions from the Heart but, unlike most, are patiently waiting for their agency to become licensed.
They don’t want to get caught up in the chaotic rush once the new Vietnam program is officially born. “We’ll let other people work the bugs out,” Linda said, but she is envisioning her family’s life with its newest member.
Jake will travel to Vietnam with Bill and Linda once they receive the referral for their new child. They are already planning a trip back to Vietnam once their children are in college.
The Klavonskis never considered adopting a child from a country other than Vietnam.
“We are a Vietnamese-American family, and that’s it,” Linda said matter-of-factly.
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