Growing Family Counts Its Blessings and Gets the Seal of Approval

Picture this: You’ve got one little girl who’s nearly 2, never wants to slow down and shrieks if you tell her no.

You’ve got a second who is not yet 4 but could teach college-level classes in stubbornness and manipulation.

And you’re sitting in the Hall of Justice in Ventura, praying that you get called soon for your adoption hearing, before the kids--and you--crumble into hysteria.

That was the scene earlier this month as I went through the formal adoption process for Mariah, the 22-month-old.

As I tried to rein her in, I had a flashback to the previous October. I had flown off to Denver one Monday morning, not knowing if I’d return empty-handed or with a baby in my arms.

I flew back with 13-month-old Tanushree.

Her adoption was the biggest decision of my life, one that was cemented this month in the chambers of Superior Court Judge Donald D. Coleman.

Tanushree was a 12 1/2-pound bundle of energy who traveled light. Her possessions amounted to three bracelets, an Indian flag, an airline blanket, and the dress and sweater she was wearing.

Her older sister, 3-year-old Julianna, was at the gate at LAX as we emerged from the plane. Before we left the airport, the baby began to fuss at being set down for a minute. But Julianna assured her that she was with family now.

“Don’t cry,” Julianna told her new little sister. “We love you.”

Tanushree immediately became Mariah and took her place as the youngest and smallest in our family.

It took nearly nine months for the adoption to become final, for my appearance before the judge, when he would announce that my petition to adopt this happy, stubborn, unceasingly active little creature was granted.

In those months, Mariah thrived, and the worry that we’d had about her premature birth waned.

She was born in Calcutta at least two months early, weighing just two pounds. But 13 months later, she was babbling and usually in a buoyant mood as she crawled around, exploring her new Ventura home. And she bonded almost instantly with us, even more quickly than Julianna, who had arrived from India in 1994 when she was 8 months old.

Mariah didn’t have it easy right away. When we went to see an ophthalmologist about her crossed eyes, we discovered that she had only partial vision in one eye.

Before she even grew to 15 pounds, she’d undergone two surgeries, and we learned that she would have to live without the central vision in her left eye. The retinal fold that caused the partial blindness would have been caught and fixed had she been born in the United States.

But still, she thrived. If her sister, who weighs twice as much, raced past and knocked her down, she just kept going. If the dog, who weighs four times as much, wagged its tail and clipped her, she just kept going.

Developmental delays from her months in the orphanage and her prematurity are being treated by physical and occupational therapy.

As Mariah passed crucial milestones in her therapy, our worries have abated.

First she began to understand what we were saying--not the easiest task for a baby who had heard only Bengali and Hindi in her first 13 months. Then, seven months after her arrival, she walked. And, finally, she began using sounds that approximate words. Her first was “cracker,” a fitting word for a child who was always ravenous.

All those events got us, one day at a time, to a courtroom in the Hall of Justice at the County Government Center.

There were three anxious families waiting outside Judge Coleman’s courtroom at the appointed hour of 1:30 p.m.--a time when toddlers might otherwise be napping. So we parents sat there, trying to keep our charges from last-minute tantrums, bruises and split lips.

We were called into Coleman’s chambers first--luckily for us, since Mariah was becoming increasingly less interested in eating the crackers we brought and more intent on hurling them across the room or stomping them into the carpet.

The judge was wonderful. He made his desktop container of M & Ms available to Julianna, who, sensing my inability to administer a time out, immediately demanded some. And he seemed unfazed when Mariah crawled under the desk, pulled herself up on his chair and wandered off across the room.

Between Julianna racing around offering M & Ms to everyone in the room and Mariah making her way to her grandmother’s open purse, the proceedings took on a less-than-solemn tone.

But Coleman pressed forward, getting to the last of the papers I had filed. Everything was fine. “The statutory requirements have been complied with, and required consents, agreements and reports are before the court,” he intoned. “The petition for adoption is. . . .”

He stopped. The noise didn’t. “Mariah?” the judge said. Everyone quieted down a couple of notches.

”. . . granted.”

Mariah, who could not have heard what Coleman was saying, much less have understood it, nevertheless seemed to get the message. She smiled and clapped.

It was official.