Thai approval: Zapp is our's!

This is a day to rejoice: today Thailand officially handed over the parenthood of Zapp to us. Two signatures captured the moment earlier this morning.

Mary was dressed in a sarong and scarf of Laotian silk (albeit in the national colours of Thailand) while I had dressed up as if to attend some meeting in Rotterdam. As of 09:00 AM we have been waiting at the Institute of Social Welfare in order to attend the bi-weekly adoption commission meeting which would pass our file, amidst dozens of other to-be adoption parents. Social workers, members of the commission and governmental workers continuously crisscrossed the aisles, with children dotted around the public areas: lightly coloured and dark skinned, a single girl amidst mostly boys, curly hair and sleek hair, young babies as well as 3-year olds. When comparing – which we evidently did, without ever exchanging any single word – Mary and I concluded that we were very lucky having Zapp as our son.

The few fans and none of the open windows were able to get the stifling heat in motion, let alone give some freshness on just another very tropical day (approx. 39 C). Slowly but steadily sweat started to flow along arms, legs, spine and stomach until virtually no part was dry anymore. Boss is definitely not the appropriate attire for the tropics. We had to wait until 10:30 AM, and of course the waiting did no good to Zapp. He started to rattle, protest, run: obviously he balanced between uprising and sheer hooliganism. Just when one of his tidy-up-moods threatened to get the overhand – this time by lying flat on the ground and sweeping the floor with his new windmill shirt – a door flung open and we were summoned into an old-fashioned type of boardroom.

Five ladies of different official status were seated behind a desk. With Zapp between us – all of a sudden dragon-nice and –quiet and playful with a small plastic dragon that he could lay his hands on – we were interrogated about the why’s and where’s and when’s of our adoption process. The discussion that followed turned out nice, personal and upbeat, in the end lasting a blasting 20 minutes (quite an impressive duration for Thai circumstances!). The other side of the table was surprised of the long waiting time of almost 6 years. Upon my remark that all that waiting had caused my little hair left to turn into a greyish fade of the past, the answer was a typical Thai one: “the happiness of your Zapp will cause your hair to grow dark again”, with the following motherly smile not allowing any protest on my behalf.

The end of the meeting was a special one. The chairwoman announced that as of today Zapp is our’s. She bade us farewell with a solemn voice and the most wonderful greeting that we could have ever fancied ourselves: ‘be happy with your son, treat him well and he will bring joy to your lives”. Both Mary and I could not resist shedding tears of joy, tears that were met with five laughing Thai faces on the other side of the table. Mary and I embraced each other, only leading to our little dragon to place kisses on both Mary’s and my cheek with everybody watching us. And on departure from the room, prince charming waved kiss-hands to the committee. We greeted the traditional Thai way, the wai (two folding hands in front of the face): sawadee adoption committee, sawadee Thailand!

Pictures were taken and when we fled into the airco’d car of our host (Mr Pramote), we realised that while every inch of our clothes were soaked we were every bit a happy family at last. While the Bangkokian skyline passed by, we were able to soak in and enjoy the special moment for quite some time, though our tears may have proved the opposite. This lasted until Zapp had passport pictures taken in a nearby shopping mall and these showed his charming dragon face: it caused us to laugh and rejoice in having Zapp amongst ourselves. I thought: “let this be the start of the legalisation process, and let it unroll quickly, so as for us to be able to travel back to Holland in 3 weeks time”.
Zapp now “is ours”, and that is the achievement of another wonderful, emotional and truly happy day.



PS
You all should know that Mary and I encountered some rough days with our little thunderdragon this last week. Zapp can be utterly impatient and usually becomes totally annoyed if things don’t go his way. This results Zapp in totally blanking out and screaming like all vultures and sewer-serpentines were chasing him. Our little dragon of course – as we believe to understand – likes to get enough attention and as such learned us to accept having to allocate enough time for him to familiarise and appreciate new and exciting situations. However we believe the greatest frustration of all most probably is our inability to communicate freely. Zapp is pretty fluent in Thai language, however, we speak hardly any word of that terribly difficult language. As a result Zapp does not understand why his new parents do not understand his expressions and explanations. Having identified this, Mary and I have reformatted our day-to-day activities in such manner that enough structure is present to hold on to even if understandability is limited. Additionally we have cut all excursions except to a local park and a shopping mall (buying clothes and shoes for little dragon Zapp), are spending time with Zapp learning Dutch words (he makes fabulous progression!) and learned him how to appreciate the shower. Currently everything is under control and we have a lot of fun indeed, each and every day, from early in the morning until the roaring little dragon puts his fiery but charming character to rest late in the tropical night.