Read Online Instant Mom by Nia Vardalos - Free Book Online

We waited to be parents.
    The phone rang a few times. We’d listen carefully to the case presented to us by the adoption agency: “This Illinois birth mother has two kids with the same guy, and he is in prison on a seventeen-year sentence. This last baby was conceived on a conjugal visit and she hasn’t told him because she wants to leave him. So this baby is up for adoption. Do you want him?”
    Uh . . . we asked if we could think about it. Privately, we admitted we were a little scared of a felon who would eventually get out of prison and find out about his youngest. It’s not as if we thought our own eccentric families’ DNA was so superior, but what was this birth father in jail for? And how about when that child wants to meet the birth father? The adoption worker called us back to convey they found out the birth mother lied about a lot of things, including who the actual father is and when the baby was conceived, and she’d also refused a drug test. To say we weren’t relieved when the worker called back a few days later to tell us we were not matched would be a lie. A few weeks later, we found out someone we knew had been successfully matched via that same agency with a high school girl in Oklahoma who didn’t feel she could keep her baby and go to college. That sounded ideal. We did not get a call like that.
    The phone rang again. It was another agency in another state: “These two boys, aged three and eight, have been brought over from Germany. The adopting parents are now divorcing and don’t want the children. Would you be interested?”
    We said we were interested. But the story didn’t make sense. I knew firsthand what it took to immigrate; why would two adults go through all that paperwork and neither take in the children? We asked more questions. The woman at the adoption agency told me “it happens” and I’d have to speak to her supervisor if we wanted to take the next step. We said we did.
    We waited. During the two days we waited to get more information, we thought about the logistics of having two boys living at our house. We have nephews. Boys are fun. We thought our quiet house could use some madness. From all the visits, we had quite an accumulation of crayons and half-used bottles of bubbles. To be candid, adopting two boys whose language we didn’t know wasn’t the most prudent path, but we were frantic to be parents. We felt we could do it. Finally, the supervisor called me back: “The boys have a history of violence, and the older one tried to attack the adopting mother. The younger one tried to light the house on fire several times.”
    Ian and I are just two dumb actors; we’re not equipped to take on two children with such intense psychological problems. I mean, of course we could do it and we actually wanted to. We were so desperate to be parents that we thoroughly discussed every case. We were willing to do anything. But on the phone with the supervisor, before I could go on, she said the agency would only place these children with experienced parents anyway. I blurted out that made sense to me and couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.
    Having heard so many simple and successful adoption stories, I now wondered: Where’s my call from a foreign country? Where are all the bubbly infants born to corn-fed North American college girls? I encountered people every day who had adopted infants in a beautiful and smooth way. They would tell me their successful story and I could visualize the women’s-cable-network lighting of the scene. I kept thinking: How do I get my hands on one of those babies? Why are we not being matched?
    I gave in and finally met with a Celebrity Adoption Attorney. I capitalize it because that’s how he referred to himself. He said for a “Certain Fee” (yes, he air quoted it) we could have a “match” (yes, this too) within a very short period of time. A matter of days, he winked. I didn’t fully understand. He said there’s a list and if I paid