David and Chanin French were “in the trenches,” Chanin said. The Jackson Heights couple had been in Hanoi, Vietnam since October battling the State Department over a maddeningly minute technicality in the adoption of their son Oliver, now eight-months-old.
With legal fees mounting, Chanin’s maternity leave extension dwindling away, and David’s idleness as a freelance jazz writer in Hanoi no doubt taking its toll on the couple, the Frenches began planning for a life in Vietnam.
“You’re halfway around the world, cut off from your family, your friends, your work, your pets, your house, from everything that you love, from everything that gives you strength and sustenance,” David said of the couple’s frustrating and devastating situation that left them living week to week.
Oliver’s grandparents on both coasts of the U.S. were soliciting help from elected officials and amassing a collection of photographs of an adorable baby boy. Oliver was, “packing on the pounds, getting taller, sitting up by himself, standing if you help him balance,” David said.
The Frenches were told that if their rebuttal to the State Department proved fruitless, they would have to wait two years for another type of visa that would allow them to bring Oliver home and initiate his citizenship procedure on American soil.
David discovered a neighborhood in Hanoi where he thought he could settle down with Oliver while Chanin returned to work in New York. The dream was ostensibly fading away.
“We got to the point where psychologically we always expected the worst,” David explained. It was with that mentality that David answered the telephone on the morning of February 2 and heard, through a bad connection, the news he and Chanin had been longing for.
“I just started sobbing,” Chanin said, smiling in the couple’s Jackson Heights home, where shiny hardwood floors and freshly painted walls underscored their new life.
“It was like a dream come true. But I hate to say that about getting the life we always thought we were going to have,” she said.
The couple recounted a whirlwind tour of getting a passport photo taken of Oliver, verifying documentation at the American Embassy and, finally, purchasing tickets for the long-awaited flight home – with their son.
“We must’ve said ‘I can’t believe it’ twenty times at every stage of the flight,” David said, laughing next to his wife.
“As lucky as we feel to be home, it’s scary to think that that can happen to American citizens,” David said staring down at his son Oliver who was sprawled across the living room floor and sound asleep after an ordeal he won’t come close to comprehending for a long time.
“We certainly started thinking about lives in Hanoi and really learned to love Hanoi. We can’t wait to go back,” Chanin said, quickly interrupted by her smiling husband.
“I wouldn’t say can’t wait,” David said.
“We can wait a few years.”
