Finding Zoe

by Brandi Rarus

  PROVIDENCE PROVIDES

  I DROVE HOME AFTER reading Marlys’s email about adopting the deaf baby—thanking God and feeling that at some point in my life, I must have done something good. I was one with the entire universe and with my daughter. I didn’t know where she was but felt that I knew who she was—that she was part of me.

  But then suddenly I shuddered, remembering that Tim thought we’d be bringing our baby home from China in about nine months from now and might think that it was too soon and wouldn’t want to pursue this adoption.

  “Dear God,” I prayed, “please don’t let my daughter slip away from me before she is even mine.”

  When I arrived home, Tim was in the living room with one of his coworkers, so I paced the house anxiously until the coworker finally left. Tim was sitting on the couch. I sat down on the coffee table, facing him, unable to even communicate. How could I possibly explain to him the profundity of what had just happened?

  I took in a deep breath and said, “You’re not going to believe this,” and handed him my phone so that he could read the email from Marlys.

  He read it and didn’t say anything; yet, I could tell that his wheels were turning.

  “I’ll try to get more information,” I added cautiously, not wanting to push.

  “Well . . . go ahead and look into it,” he said.

  That was all I needed.

  The following day I called New Horizons, and the caseworker with whom I spoke told me that the baby wasn’t wanted because she was deaf. How she could just blurt that out was beyond me. But her slip of the tongue turned out to be a blessing because when I told Tim, he became so upset just thinking about what she said that he told me we should go ahead and try to adopt her.

  Providence was on my side.

  That evening, however, things got really strange. My friend, Ann Marie, not knowing that I had received Marlys’s email, forwarded a similar email—the subject line reading, “Wow, let’s go for her!” Because Ann Marie was also deaf, New Horizons had offered her the opportunity to pursue the adoption as well.

  Oh, my God. I was not going to compete with Ann Marie for a baby!

  Ann Marie and I had competed for a lot of things over the years and had some good laughs about it, but this was way beyond the realm of comprehension. In her email, she explained that if we both submitted our portfolios, perhaps one of us might become the baby’s mother. My cool and logical friend obviously could handle such a thing, but not me. I told her I didn’t think I could do it.

  However, she was serious; so the following afternoon, the social worker from New Horizons met with us in my office to talk about developing our adoption portfolios for the birth mother to read. (We hadn’t developed portfolios for our China adoptions because with international adoptions, you don’t need one.) I felt just awful sitting there but had done some soul-searching the night before and was clear about where I stood.

  Ann Marie was one of my best friends, and she and her husband, Jon, didn’t have any children, whereas Tim and I already had three. In my heart, I felt that I had to step aside and let them try to adopt the baby; I didn’t want to be selfish.

  “Look, Ann Marie,” I said after the social worker left. “I’m going to excuse myself from this process. You and Jon go ahead and try to adopt the baby.”

  “No!” she replied. “Jon and I decided that if it means you and Tim won’t apply, then we’ll back out.

  At that point, I didn’t know what to think. She had really wanted to apply—and now had changed her mind. The whole thing upset me so; I just took off for the women’s bathroom and sat down in one of the stalls. I needed to gather my thoughts. Ann Marie followed after me. She peeked over the top of the stall and looked down at me.

  I just stared up at her.

  “This is your little girl,” she exclaimed. “Jon doesn’t sign. Your home is the perfect home for her.” She continued, “Your three boys already sign. She would have the same opportunities that they have had. It would be a much better fit.”

  I continued listening.

  “She’d have unconditional love and parents who had every faith in her ability to grow as a person. She’d be much better off with you.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, feeling so guilty about wanting the baby so badly, knowing that she didn’t have any children.

  “Yes, Brandi. She will be your daughter. You and Tim have our full support. Besides, Jon and I have our hearts set on going to China.”

  Well, all right, I figured, and started laughing as I came out of the stall. After that, Ann Marie and I hugged and then got back to work.

  Meanwhile, Tim, after agreeing to pursue the adoption, seemed distant—uninterested even—but I moved forward, ever so cautiously, not wanting to upset the delicate balance I believed that I’d struck with him.

  Yet, I’d never wanted anything so much—never needed anything so much—and she was right there in front of me, but she wasn’t mine yet.

  From the moment that I woke up in the morning until I went to bed at night, she was all that I thought about. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. When all was said and done, I had lost fifteen pounds. There was so much at stake for me.

  Trying to remain calm, I filled out the additional paperwork—answering questions such as whether or not Tim and I wanted to have an open adoption and, if so, what kind. They seemed like such important questions, which deserved thoughtful answers, but with no time to spare, I answered them all in fifteen minutes and emailed them back to the adoption agency.

  For five incredibly long weeks, I corresponded with Marlys and her staff via email and by phone, trying to get as much information about the baby—whose name they finally told me—her situation and the cytomegalovirus. My first email, dated October 5, 2004, read:

  Hi Marlys,

  I wanted to let you know that I am working on the portfolio to show the birth mother. I have already gathered my pictures and have started my letter to her. I’m trying hard not to get excited; however, this is so emotional!!

  My husband and I are both deaf, and our three boys are hearing. Celine would not only thrive in our home; she would be given the tools required to grow into a successful adult. Her hearing loss is the least of our concerns!

  Is her hearing loss the only concern? Did all of her other tests come back as normal? Does she have any other disabilities? Please let me know what the next steps are. Thanks!!!

  Holding my breath, Brandi

  Next, I began developing our adoption portfolio and went at it with a vengeance, selecting photographs and writing our family story. It seemed as if the very balance of my life was on the line. How on earth would I convince a seventeen-year-old girl from a rural town in Minnesota—who had probably never met a deaf person in her entire life—that her deaf daughter would be better off with us than with a hearing couple?

  I was so afraid that our being deaf would work against us—that this young woman would see our deafness as a disability and would want her daughter to be raised by people she considered “normal.”

  Oh, how I longed to meet Jess in person. One-on-one, I exuded confidence—in myself and in my life. But how do you exude that same confidence on paper? Fortunately, Mark Seeger, a good friend and colleague of mine from Sprint, who had supported me with writing proposals and with whom I’d won several contracts, was in town at the time. We sat around my kitchen island and worked on the portfolio together. At the very least, this was the most important and meaningful proposal I’d ever develop.

  Putting myself in Jess’s shoes, as best as I could—and without using the word “deaf” even once but using “hearing loss” instead, figuring that it sounded less scary—I explained that Tim and I didn’t view our hearing loss as a disability, but rather as part of our cultural identity. That if placed with us, her daughter would thrive because we already lived with hearing loss, and we would provide her with all of the tools that she needed to be successful in life.

  I said that she’d have the right
education and access to communication and all of the available technology—that our home was already equipped with captioning for TV, video technology for the use of the phone, light flashers for when the doorbell rang, and more. Rather than learning about these options for people with hearing loss from parents who, themselves, might be learning about them for the first time, I said that her little girl would have the advantage of immediately being exposed to all of her options—medical and otherwise.

  Simple things like sharing a story with her grandmothers, I explained, would be easier because both sets of our parents had traveled that road with us. Her daughter would have generations of support, I said, along with high expectations held for her and a loving understanding of the person she was.

  I also shared that we believed in a power that was greater than us, and that each of us has our own unique destiny. Perhaps, I proposed, it was God’s plan that she give birth to this baby and that we raise her. I couldn’t know this, for sure, I said—that decision was hers alone. But we had prayed for a daughter for a very long time, I explained, and that when I’d heard about her little girl—and the fact that she had a hearing loss—my heart had skipped a beat.

  I ended by saying that I hoped to look her in the eye and tell her that if her daughter were placed with us, she would be raised by a family that appreciated her every need. She would learn how to navigate the world around her, on her own, and overcome any barriers that she might encounter with confidence. Because, as you must know, I said, the world can be a difficult place at times.

  FAMILY PHOTO WE USED FOR ADOPTION PORTFOLIO. IT IS OUR LAST FAMILY PHOTO BEFORE ZOE CAME TO US.

  When I wasn’t creating our adoption portfolio, I was searching the Internet to learn about CMV. Some of what I read really scared me—kids with feeding tubes, mental retardation, support groups for mothers—however, knowing that what you read on the Internet isn’t always true, I stayed strong. I reminded myself that it’s impossible to know what the future will bring—that’s the risk when having children.

  After a couple of weeks had passed without hearing anything from Marlys, she finally let me know that Jess had not ruled us out and asked me to be patient, saying that Jess was dealing with a lot of emotions and needed more time to process them.

  It was good news. Yet, still craving information, on October 25th, I sent Marlys the following email:

  Hi, Marlys,

  I have another question. Why did the first family relinquish Celine? Did all of the medical possibilities from the CMV, in addition to the deafness, overwhelm them?

  To which she replied:

  I believe that they were impacted by a number of things. The possibility of total deafness was a great factor, in addition to possible developmental learning delays. As you know, different people are impacted by different “handicaps.” What for some of us may be a hill, to others may be a mountain. I may have difficulty parenting a child with major physical needs, but better able to handle a child with emotional needs.

  I wrote:

  I am under the impression that Celine’s eyes and liver have been tested, and that she has had a brain scan and everything turned out to be normal. I also understand that she has a 25 percent chance of eventually losing her vision. That seemed small to me, and I wondered if after she had her vision tested that the concern was even less?

  To which Marlys replied:

  By routine, the exam for liver, eyes, and a brain scan are done. In a small percentage of cases, all of these areas can be impacted. That being said, there are only a minute percentage of infants that are positive with CMV! All of Celine’s testing shows no impact, and the actual test results would be shared with you, if the biological mother selects you as the adoptive family.

  I wrote:

  Celine is probably seven months old by now, and I would like to ask how she is doing. Is she developing normally in size? It is so critical that she be exposed to language as soon as possible! Can I call you? I want to understand the chain of events that happened in this baby’s life. . . .

  Brandi

  I thought about my little girl just lying there and no one communicating with her; so many concerns I couldn’t possibly have expressed were running through my mind. Did they realize that a deaf infant could be severely slowed down in acquiring language unless early and effective measures are taken—unless she is given sign language? Did they understand that she must be exposed to fluent signers? That she needs parents who will communicate with her properly, who know how to address her, and who use dialogue and language that advance her mind?

  I may have been getting ahead of myself, after all she was still a baby, but did they understand that as she grew, she must be asked probing questions, be introduced to logic, cause and effect, and to a conceptual world that would give meaning to her life, just like hearing children are? That she must learn to understand symbols, the past and future, relationships, and hypothetical events? How to deal with things at a distance, arrive at new versions of reality, and verbally rearrange situations, which, in themselves, resist rearrangements?

  Who would introduce her to imaginative literature and help her to juxtapose objects and events far separated in time and space, so that she could turn the universe symbolically upside down?

  All of us have an innate ability for language. But this ability is only activated by someone else who has already had language training. When I traveled around the country as Miss Deaf America, I learned that most hearing parents with a deaf child feel powerless when confronting such a communication barrier. I was so fortunate that my parents had learned how to sign. So many deaf kids grow up as strangers in their own homes.

  Tim has often talked about being in the fourth grade and having dinner at his friend William’s house, and his parents, who were hearing, just sitting around the table and talking while ignoring William and Tim the entire time. To this day he has never forgotten it.

  As Miss Deaf America, I saw through my travels that poor linguistic ability is common in prelinguistically deaf children, like Zoe. They can have a limited vocabulary, lack concreteness of thought, and have difficulty with reading and writing later on.

  Their cerebral development can even be altered; maturation of their brain can be delayed. When they become older, they can have difficulty with formulating hypotheses, refer to objects in the immediate environment only, and be confined to a preconceptual, perceptual world. It may be hard to believe, but some deaf children have difficulty understanding the concept of “question.” They know the answer but just don’t understand what a question is.

  And what about the connection between language and thought? People rarely think about that, hearing people especially, because they automatically have language just by hearing. But language is what makes thought possible. People speak not only to tell others what they think but also to tell themselves what they think. Speech is a part of thought.

  Well, just as hearing people need the language of speech to be able to think, deaf people need the language of sign. Sign is our language; without it we won’t be able to think. Just as a hearing child must learn to speak at a normal, early age for his or her intellect to develop properly, so must a deaf child learn to sign. For it is language, rather than what kind of language, that nurtures not only linguistic competence but also intellectual competence.

  Only when my little girl learned how to sign would all else follow: a free flow of information and conversations, reading and writing, emotional growth, and then speech. However, if she didn’t learn how to sign, everything else would be in jeopardy.

  I emailed Marlys, again, regarding my concerns. Her response, which was curt—but which I appreciated, as she had to remain neutral—was that while Jess was thinking things over, she would do her best to educate Jess about the needs of her baby.

  To complicate matters even further, the adoption agency stipulated that if we adopted Celine, we would be required to provide her with a cochlear implant because it was determined that she was a good
candidate for one.

  Well, Tim was really angry. Number one: he resented the adoption agency dictating to us how to raise our own child. Number two: he and a good part of the Deaf community are against cochlear implants because they don’t believe that being deaf is a disability or that they need to be fixed. He says it would be like white people trying to paint African American people white. Some deaf people also view the use of cochlear implants as a loss of their Deaf Culture.

  The reason for this is that when a child is given a cochlear implant, the child’s parents (who are usually hearing) are told by the mostly hearing professionals to only talk to their child and not sign to them. Research has shown that deaf children who sign often have speech delays, something their hearing parents don’t want for them (although other research has shown the opposite). I completely understand; in a similar way, my own mother wanted me to continue speaking after I became deaf. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking can perpetuate the notion of deafness as a defect, with hearing being the ultimate goal.

  Tim wanted his daughter to feel good about herself, exactly as she was—and not feel “less than,” or that she had to hear to be somebody. He also believed that the time that she spent learning how to speak in school would be better used by learning math, reading, history, and science, along with our language of ASL.

  I completely embraced where Tim was coming from. However, the whole issue brought me right back to the AG Bell Conference years before when Eric’s father had said that he wanted Eric to speak and sign, that he wanted him to have both—he wanted him to have a choice. After all those years, I finally grasped why his words had meant so much to me.

  I, too, wanted my daughter to have both—audiological training and sign language. I wanted to encourage her speech, so that she could have a choice, so that she could have total communication. I knew that being deaf would always be an integral part of who she was, but I didn’t want it to limit her.

  But my daughter’s speech wasn’t my concern. October just dragged on. Like an automaton, I went to work every day, forced smiles, took care of the kids, put one foot in front of the other, and kept things copasetic between me and Tim. I was afraid to feel and afraid that if the adoption didn’t work out I would never get over it. Every day, I prayed to find solace and inner peace.