I spent July on the other side of the world. It was a trip I’d been waiting to take for nearly three years, but also it snuck up on me, somehow.

These last few years we've been working to adopt a deaf child who has spent his life in an institution. The process has been slow, confusing, and unpredictable, with a lot of bureaucratic hoops crafted by his government and ours on a good day, and a lot of end-timey pandemic chaos creating even more hoops. When lockdown hit, we lost contact with the orphanage. There was no information about his wellbeing for over a year, and it became unclear if what we were doing was even possible anymore.

Then, very abruptly and with none of the romanticism that seems apt to such a life event, we received an email announcing the approval of his visa. We would need to travel three weeks later.