Woven

Open, open, open.  Anyone remember these commercials?  They went virile before there was virile and were quoted and spoofed for years after they aired.  And although I could not even tell you where to find a Mervyns now (I think they may have gone bankrupt, how is that for failure of a marketing campaign?!) I can still hear that little voice in my head "Open, open, open." Except now it's a big voice and screaming incessantly, getting louder with the rising of my blood pressure!

Let's backtrack, shall we?  Our home study is done, everything turned in, report sent to the agency for corrections and then coming back to us for any final input before it is rushed. . .off to sit on a shelf and gather dust.  Why? Because Kazakhstan is still not open to adoptions from the US.  After being expected to open at the beginning of the new year (ours, not theirs), we are still waiting to hear that they are open.  Open.  Open.  Oddly enough (and most of you will not believe me) but I haven't been too stressed about the delays.  I'm not sure why, probably a combination of faith, trust, hope, and distractions   I've been distracted because although we finished 98% of our home study over a month ago, we have been waiting on two final documents.  One from me, and one from Bard.  Mine was a total blooper, something that I should have done ages ago.  Listen up folks, never put off til tomorrow what you can do today because it might come back later and bite you in the adoption butt.  Bard's was very frustrating though. And as much as I would like to go into the details and completely slander someone who so royally got on my bad side that I am surprised the universe didn't implode from the pure pressure that was exuding from every pore in my body, I will restrain myself.  Let's just all be thankful that my husband is for more mature than I am and that every once in a while I listen to his voice of reason. However, I will give you a little cookie in that I may or may not have uttered the phrase, "I can't even imagine why you are doing this to us, are you against international adoptions?  Because there is an orphan on the other side of the world waiting for us to bring him home and we are waiting on you." You groan, but the next day we had our paper-after two months.  Silly people, if you would stop giving into my tyrannical displays, maybe I wouldn't behave so tyrannically :)

Either way, those two obstacles took way longer than should be legal for someone trying to meet her child, and so it didn't really matter that Kazakhstan was still closed to the US.  The day those forms were completed the full force of my attention turned toward the current problem.  Remember in Jurassic Park when the dinosaur spots the kids, turns and bears down on them like a freight train with snappy teeth? That's me (I am full of 90's cultural references today!) except I have no where to run because I can't see where I'm going and I'm not the one in control of end goal anyway.    That is so irritating.    And before you jump to conclusions, it's not Kaz I am waiting on, it's our own government, agencies, and people here in the US taking their sweet time.  I don't know why, but somehow that is oddly relieving, yet also incredibly annoying. And in the meantime, Russia is apparently considering lifting their ban on US adoptions, to which my response would be the same as when they first made the ban legal.  Oh wait, Bard wouldn't let me blog that either, you all need to talk to him, this blog would be SO much more colorful if I said what was in my fun little head!

So, where are we now?  Waiting.  We had originally hoped to turn in our dossier sometime in June.  And while if Kaz opened immediately and we put our dossier together super fast, that might still be a possibility, it is looking less and less likely.  So we wait.  That's the adoption process:  hurry, hurry, hurry, wait, wait, wait.  Pieces from all over the world have to come together in a complicated and pre determined order.  One piece can't be in place without the other and if a different piece comes undone, it can bring many more crumbling down with it.  And most frustrating, I don't even know what all the pieces are and which order to put them together in.  Or even the final product!

A Kazakh shanyrak at the top of a yurt.

Years ago, a decade now, when I was going through a challenging time in my life, someone told me the analogy of a tapestry.    Sometimes all you can see is your little threads being woven together.  From your limited perspective, the tapestry just looks like a colorful jumbled mess. You might not even be able to see the front of it, but are likely just looking at its back-torn off threads unraveling with no apparent purpose!  But time gives you a bigger picture. As you move further and further away from your own little spot, you can see patterns emerge.  Threads and colors blending together creating shapes, something new.  You look at it from the other side, designs and symmetry are visible.  Each small, seemingly chaotic piece has somehow been woven into a beautiful story.  How?  Someone had a plan, a purpose, and set out to turn knotted threads and snipped off ends into a piece of art.

Thank you Kelly, for our shanyrak.

Tapestries are quite prevalent in Kazakh culture,  from rugs to wall hangings.  But easily the most recognizable, and culturally important item woven together, is the shanyrak. Made from intersecting wooden beams it is used to center the yurt. As a nomadic people, Kazakhs resided in yurts, dome like structures, on the steppe for countless generations.  The final piece of the yurt was the shanyrak, allowing light and ventilation, but also providing a deeper element.  The shanyrak became a family heirloom, handed down from generation to generation. Just as the woven wood centered the yurt, the shanyrak also symbolically reflected peace and calmness as the center of family life. As we watch our own story being woven together, we have been given a shanyrak, created from love to remind us of our center: peace, of threads of life being woven together, wandering and being found in family.  Peace only comes from trust.  From faith.  From hope. This shanyrak, given by a dear friend, lets Light into our home.  And that is what I most want to be open.  And that is the reason for this whole journey.