Building an American Family with International Parts

This is the first part of a three-part series on the foreign adoption experiences of Randy and Catherine Johnson.

I remember only two times that I arrived home to find Catherine crying.

The first one was when she announced that our offer on a house purchase was accepted. Now, you’d think that would be a joyful event, but it would be our first house and our offer was made on a whim at the suggestion of a real estate agent. This was in 1980 and, with the $10,000 earnest money we could lose, we really had to go with it. We lived there for 36 years.

The second time I came home to her crying was when she announced that we had run out of reasonable options for generating our own family. We were approaching our mid-30s and it was now the 11^th hour. Catherine had endured endometriosis, which involved surgery in Rochester. I had provided evidence that I wasn’t shooting blanks. Nothing worked, not even scheduling creation attempts at prime times, which could be at noon on a Tuesday. Modesty began to mean nothing to us anymore.

The endless questions about why we didn’t have children were humiliating. But we couldn’t afford any further experiments and it was risky at best. The technology wasn’t where it is today and it also didn’t help when doctors told us that even they couldn’t explain why some couples have kids by the boatload and others can’t ever have them.

We had discussed adoption. But we pushed it out as a last option and now we were at that point. The cost of adoption was the same as one attempt at in vitro fertilization (IVF) – $10,000. IVF was pretty new and the odds were not favorable. Adoption wasn’t a sure thing, either, but the odds were much better.

We had to decide what was important to us. We could choose a life with no children which would allow us to focus on careers and early retirement. It was tempting but not realistic for either of us. We had each been part of large families and we knew we would not be satisfied without having our own family. So we decided to see what adoption entailed.

Right away we discovered that adopting children that looked like us was a long shot. We could get in line, wait for years, and then be told we were too old to adopt. We could adopt special needs children. As much as our hearts leaned that way, our minds said no. We were just not equipped for that. We could seek an open adoption, but that meant the child would have two families and we were afraid it could get messy. And we wanted an infant, not an older child. We wanted to raise a child from infancy.

We were also leery of foreign adoption, having heard some horror stories about adoptions in South America that required having to travel there, waiting for months for paperwork to be completed, paying bribes and even getting shot at on the way to the plane. No thank you. These choices narrowed our options considerably.

But we soon learned that not all countries required in-person adoptions. So, we attended an informational meeting at Children’s Home Society in St. Paul to learn about their many adoption programs. It was like attending a funeral. The majority of those attending the meeting included couples just like us, all looking depressed, desperate and even embarrassed.

Knowing that we were not alone actually gave us some comfort. Had they gone through the same sadness and despair we had? Each of us wanted to hear each couple’s story but we barely dared to make eye contact. The meeting facilitators knew this, of course, so to brighten things up, they introduced us to some couples who had already adopted foreign children. They were there with their kids and they looked happy.

We learned that it would be a time-consuming process and the options would get more limited after about age 35. We were 34. It would also require a very serious commitment from us, financially and emotionally.

Our minds were full of unanswered questions as we left the meeting room and headed down the hall. It was then that I noticed the adjacent wall, filled with a long series of pictures of foreign children from different countries. When I saw them, I knew it could work. I could be a father to one of them.

Attending one meeting did not in itself start the whole process. There was paperwork, numerous meetings, background checks and fingerprinting at the Sheriff’s Office, all culminating with a home visit from our case worker. Even though there is a great need for adoptive parents, the agency wants to ensure they are stable and capable of providing a good home environment. I understand the importance of that. 

It is ironic, though, that there are no similar requirements for couples who produce their own children. Some of them would not meet the requirements for adoption, and childbirth costs are usually covered by insurance.

A lot of couples who want to adopt can’t afford it. Recently, some of the costs have been tax deductible but when we adopted, there was no help with the costs.

When we found out that the wait times were relatively short for children from India, we chose that program. We were OK with either a girl or boy. During the training for the adoption process, we met another Minnesota couple about our age that were in the India program as well. We now had someone we could relate to and compare notes.

Things were coming together. The hard part was over – we thought.

Next: Waiting for an Unknown Child Half a World Away