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I had planned to adopt a child for 10 years. I almost got married for very wrong reasons and the shock of the mistake I almost made woke me up. I realized that I wanted a family. I knew that I couldn't control whether a wonderful, well-adjusted man would come into my life, but I could work towards having a family on my own. I thought that it would take a lot of work on my part to get ready to have a family and I wanted to give my child the best that I could. So.... despite my education to become a teacher, I took a job in Sales. At age 35, I knew this would be the fastest way to make money... and I did. I loved my job but being on the road 42 weeks of the year was grueling. After 3 years, I came to my senses about the relationship I had been in, and left the 7 year mistake I had been in and left my job and walked away with enough money to go back to graduate school for 6 years (I had fellowships and assistantships to help me). I completed my Masters and PhD at AZ State and must say I had a fabulous time there. I cried the day I left AZ but knew if my dream to have my own family was going to come true, I had to do it. The last part of my plan would be to become financially stable and be on my feet emotionally and psychologically. Appalachian State University offered me an opportunity to do that and I could not turn it down. The mountains of Boone, NC were quite a change from the desert of AZ. However, by 1996, year ten of my plan, I knew this would be the year to fulfill the dream. Whenever I had had difficult times over the last 10 years, I thought of my daughter's face and kept going. When other colleagues did not finish their dissertations, I kept pushing thinking of Mei Ling. Time had come to see her and love her.
So...one morning I sat down at home and made 4 hours worth of phone calls. I didn't know how to put the whole puzzle together but I kept pushing until I had figured it out. My brother Kim had been adopted 35 years ago. My parents had used Welcome House, Pearl Buck's agency at the time but because I was single, they wouldn't work with me. So I called lots of agencies and finally put it together. Lutheran family Services would do the local work and Holt would help me with the international part. It was an excellent combination. I LOVE Lutheran. I had the nicest social workers. The woman who did my homestudy was just wonderful. The homestudy was a very positive experience for me. Jean asked me some good questions and she worked carefully and quickly. Alice, my main contact in Raleigh, helped me through the INS tangle and got all of my papers authenticated in Raleigh in a 3 day turn-around. I had my first interview for the homestudy on Jan. 26th (significant date...remember it!) and my dossier went to Holt at the end of April. It went to China May 5th and on July 12th, I got a call from Alice.
That call deserves a paragraph in the story. For a month I had been diving over things to answer the phone, hoping it would be THE CALL. I tried not to be disappointed when it was friends ... I mean that really isn't nice! Well, on July 12th I was teaching summer school (to pay for the trip to get Mei Ling). I had a small graduate class of 4 students and our room had accidently been booked for a meeting. So.. the students and I decided to meet in my office (trust me... it was a tight fit!). The phone rang while were were in the middle of a discussion and I toyed with the idea of turning my answering machine on and turning the volume down and not allowing it to interrupt us. At the last minute, I decided to pick it up. Alice said, "Kyle I have some good news." When I realized who it was, I almost went into shock. I started to shake and cry and I remember trying to keep my breakfast down. The students stared and Alice sensed something was going on and asked if I wanted her to call back later. There was no way! SHe gave me the info and with shaking hands I wrote it down. The students whispered, "Is it the call? Is it the call," and I shook my head. There was shouting all the way down the hallways of Edwin Duncan Hall of Education. The whole building knew that call had come in within 5 minutes! I hung the phone and just shook and cried and laughed and cried. It was the first time that I truly felt 10 years of waiting was about to end. I was going to be a mother and there was no stopping those tears. A little 6 month old girl named Xia Yi Mei in Xiamen, Fujian was going to join together with me and we would form a new family. I was choking with tears when I called my mom in Phoenix and woke her up. She couldn't imagine at first what was happening ... but when she realized, she didn't go back to sleep. Meanwhile, the students proclaimed class over and grabbed me to go out to celebrate. I was in no mood to eat, but I obediently went, passing a lot of smiling people in the hallway.
After I finished the first section of this story, I was amazed how much I left out. I neglected to say that I started writing to my daughter relatively early in the process. I am saving all I am writing to her and will give it to her when she is 18. I also didn't tell how much my family supported me in the whole process. My dad had just died 3 months before I started the process and it was the money that he left our family that was the final piece in the puzzle. My mom used some of that money to help me pay for some of the adoption costs. Focusing on Mei Ling helped my mom and the rest of the family in our grieving process. More than once my mom made the comment that it was through my dad's death that a new life was coming into the family. And finally..... remember that date... Jan. 26th ... the date I started the adoption process..... Xia Yi Mei was born that day!
Kyle and Mei Ling's Story continued...