Almost Famous

One of the stranger chapters in this process has been the celebrity factor, for lack of a better term. Anyone who follows that kind of news knows that Angelina Jolie recently adopted a child from Vietnam. Because Mollia has the intuition of a clarivoyant on steroids, she knew immediately that Angelina was picking up her child from Tam Binh, the same orphanage where our boy is. And the more the story developed in the press, her suspicions were confirmed. Furthermore, we learned that Angelina was adopting a boy in the same age range as our boy, An. I won't detail the level of anxiety Mollia went through when she worried that Angelina was going to take our son, but there were a few days where she almost convinced herself of it. Evidently, the mother bear instinct is so strong that it operates independently of extreme geography.

I myself was more amused by the coincidence and played with the fantasy of Mollia and I getting into a custody battle with the most powerful couple in Hollywood. I thought it would make an incredibly dramatic film on its own, The Social Worker And The Waldorf Teacher vs. Brangelina! It was exciting to imagine our war of words appearing in the paper each day. I started mentally preparing for our press conferences. Alternatively, I visualized that our boy had been a playmate of little Pax and that the Pitt-Jolie's would soon be sending us an invitation to us to come their mansion in the Hollywood Hills, so that the boys could stay in touch and adjust to their new country together. I saw us taking trips together all over the world.

Turns out the fantasy wasn't so far-fetched. At a pre-travel meeting at our adoption agency on Thursday, the Director confirmed that Pax and An were part of a group of boys that played together regularly. We have been in touch with a couple of other families whose boys are playmates of our son and who want to be in contact with us. We are still waiting for our invitation from Brangelina. I know they've been busy, maybe I should give them a call so we can hook up after we get back.