We’re number two! I just found out that the people who were two places ahead of us got their referral, meaning that we can’t be far behind. Perhaps Sammy the Adoption Seal really was foretelling good news.

After yesterday’s post, I started thinking: Why all this focus on omens, anyway? Have we learned nothing from literature?

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. It’s been a while since I flattered one of the Romantics. It’s no “Ode on a Sippy Cup,” but here goes:

It is an adoptive Applicant
Who stops a Dad at Gymboree
“By thy Mom Jeans and crazy eye
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?

Gymboree’s doors are opened wide
And our class starteth soon,
The kids are dressed, the snacks are pack’d,
They scream, forsooth, like loons!”

She holds the Dad with gnarled hand.
“There was a bug,” quoth she.
“Hold off! Unhand me, grey-rooted shrew!”
Eftsoons her hand dropt she.

The Gymboree Dad is spell-bound by the eye of the old Adoptive Applicant, and is constrained to hear her tale.

“The forms were filled and notarized
Merrily did we drop
The application into the post
At the mailroom stop.

The Ancient Applicant tells how the homestudy proceeded fortuitously, till it reached the I600-A.

The Case Worker came into the house
From the agency came she,
And looked fain on, and did approve
Our Homestudy.

But then ‘twas INS’s turn,
They, tyrannous and strong;
Did lose our paperwork; to find it
Took far, far too long.

At last they took our fingerprints
For better, nay! For iller,
For my thumb did match exact
With a serial killer.

All was finally straightened out
With Favorable Dispensation
But then referrals did slow down
To a trickle from that Nation.

The land of Waiting, and of fearful sounds from the Yahoo adoption board, where no reliable information was to be seen.

And through the weeks the info leaks
Did cast a dismal sheen:
But little happened, nothing changed—
The wait was all between.

The wait was here, the wait was there
The wait was all around:
It bored and enervated us
Yet to it we were bound.

Till a great land-insect, called the Ladybug, came at the darkest hour, and was received with great joy and hospitality.

At length did come a Ladybug
Through the air it came
As if it had been our caseworker
We hailed it in God’s name

It ate the food it ne’er had eat
It flew around and sang,
The silence split with a thunder-fit
The telephone, it rang!

And lo! The Ladybug proveth an insect of good omen, and followeth the Applicant as she continued to wait from referral to travel call.

And the weather turn’d from cold to warm
The Ladybug did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the Applicant’s hollo!

The ancient Applicant inhospitably killeth the pious bug of good omen.

“God save thee, ancient Applicant!
Needst thou some calming drug?
Why dost thou howl?” – “With my dish-towel
I squashed the LADYBUG.”