False alarm

Monday December 1st. The day when finally Aida and the judge's secretary went to get the signature from Maya's birth mother. After various delays, hiccups, holdups (how many other synonyms for delay do I know? Well this is my year for learning them) they were able to actually go and get this final signature, that would allow the judge's secretary to push our case through the court as fast as possible to get it out of their system before they close for their month vacation on the December 12th.

I finally allowed myself to believe that we were getting to the end of our process, and had mental lists of what to pack, what to leave at Red Cross, what to give to whom. I kept finding myself fiddling around on travelocity.com trying out different flight variations for the flight home, with stopover in Canada, and different possible dates, and had penciled them in on my calendar. I was picturing us spending Christmas in Toronto with Ahmed's family, and wow, Maya in the snow, below zero temperatures!

Aida called in the afternoon and told me that they hadn't got the signature. Maya's birth mother had refused to sign. Aida now says that the following Tuesday is the only other day that Carolina, the judge's secretary, is available to try again, and after talking to the birth mother, Aida says she has promised to sign next Tuesday.

Well. That was the most devastating, confusing, frightening phone call I've had from Aida yet. We have no idea why she didn't sign, and why would she not sign, then promise to sign a week later? All of my worst fears started to surface. That perhaps after all this time, the adoption won't in fact go through. On a technicality. Maya's birth mother doesn't want to look after Maya. Her three older children have all either left home or are living with her parents, who can barely support her children. We feel like we have moved heaven and earth to get to this point, and all we need now is that signature. She's promised Aida one minute that she'll sign, then turns around the next minute and refuses. I wish I had more strength to deal with this, but I don't.

The person who meets Ahmed at the airport on the 2nd December, is a puffy-eyed bawling wreck, from 24 hours of tossing the what-if, what-if worst case scenarios around in my horribly fatalistic imagination.