Maybe we did something right. Wow.

I just read a website sent to me by an email friend. An adoption website, a record by a mom of her life with Attachment Disorder kids. The mom made lots of references to her daughter, adopted at "21 months."

I didn't think too much about that aspect of it until later. Then I got to thinking about how I never refer to my kids as "adopted at such-and-such an age." I always feel compelled to add a disclaimer. "He was supposedly twelve, almost thirteen," or "We think it was right before her second birthday."

The daughter described in the website articles had lots and lots of difficult attachment issues, was in her teens at the end of the articles, and was still having a rough time and had a kind of a bleak future--much bleaker than we like to think we could expect from a kid adopted into a caring U.S. family at such a young age. It's just now occurred to me to wonder if she might have been older than 21 months at adoption, maybe malnourished and appearing younger. I know nothing about the family or the kid other than what I read, so probably her mom knows her real age. But I always wonder about ages.

We had a terrible time getting Francie out of Haiti. We actually adopted her TWICE--the first time, the INS wouldn't accept the paperwork because the birthdad on the papers turned out not to be her real birthdad (determined by DNA testing). They made us do all new paperwork that specified that the birthdad was unknown.

We picked out Francie in person at an orphanage at six months of age. I picked her up, thought, "Man, this is one gorgeous baby," she reached out and touched my earring, and the rest is history. Our dossier was actually in Haiti at the time, had just arrived in the country for our two boys. All we had to do was add her to that dossier.

We finally got her home a year and a half later.

While we were trying to get her home, a psychologist friend told me that we needed to get her as soon as possible, because those first three years are a crucial time for emotional development. All I could say was, "We're trying, we're trying."

Phone calls and emails, continually, to this government agency, that government agency, to Haiti, to Washington, to the local INS office. It was a nightmare. I still feel guilty because of how I undoubtedly neglected our other kids, due to the time and energy involved in Getting Francie Home.

Anyway. Back to ages. You can't trust a birth certificate issued in Haiti. Francie's birth certificate age is probably pretty close to her real age, because she was taken to the orphanage at one month of age. (This means, from what I can tell, that her birthmom brought her to the orphanage on May 28, said "She's a month old," and her official birthdate became April 28. It probably isn't really.)

Angelo, though. He came here at age twelve, about to turn thirteen. He's supposedly sixteen now. He believes himself to be sixteen, and he might be. But, like many older adoptees, he's immature emotionally. He's also very small for his (supposed) age. People tend to be shocked when they find out how old he is. He looks about twelve. Is he sixteen, and stunted due to his early hard life in Haiti? Is he twelve? Heck, I don't know.

So I'm never very definite about anything regarding adopted kids' ages. Sixteen, fifteen, twelve, whatever.

All this has led me to the new, somewhat startling realization that possibly the most significant thing we have done in Francie's life was done over two years ago, before we even got her. Yeah, I've spent over two years caring for her, she's spent over two years living in a family, with a mom to carry her and chase after her and feed her and play patty-cake with her. We can decide that what we do now will shape her future and her behavior and her personality--we can make star charts and send her to a good preschool and so on and so forth.

But, if the theory about how important the first three years is, is correct, then maybe the most important thing we did was all that paperwork and all those phone calls and emails, all that pushing to get her through the system, that got her here when she still had a year (supposedly) before she turned three. We could be a less than perfect family for her (we undoubtedly are) and she could still turn out happier and more secure than if she'd gone to the best family in the world, at a later age.

If we'd given up (and it was almost tempting at times, especially when the orphanage started requiring us to pay for stuff we'd paid for already) then she might still have been adopted by someone later. But it would have taken more years for that to happen. She might have been five by the time she got into a family, or seven. Even if she went back to her birthmom at age two, the same things that caused the mom to give her up once, might have happened again. She might have ended up in another orphanage, getting on the adoption track once again. She could have ended up an older adoptee. She barely missed that fate.

I don't know why I never thought of it like that before. It's startling, like realizing that your kid narrowly missed being hit by a bus.

Maybe it startles me because, before we adopted kids, I believed nurture was far more important than nature. I thought the right approach could make any kid do a complete turn-around. I don't believe that any more.