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I know we tend to pickle memories in a brine that renders them more rosy-shaded than blood-red.   Nonetheless my journal is a record of how I viewed my world at the time, a primary source with hopefully less cherry-picking than my mind might remember now.  Still, reading those journal pages 25 years later, it seems…

Institutions of all sorts dress themselves in routines. It is certainly a given for orphanages whether George Mueller’s Ashley Down in 1849 or SOS Children’s Villages today. Routine at Ashley Down Orphanage 1849 – 1958.[i] Time Activity 6:00 AM Wake-up, washing, dressing, and chores (making beds and cleaning floors) 7:00 AM Morning preparatory work –…

Library shelves in the 21st century continually showcase new books being written about adoption scandals coming to light in countries from China to Canada to Argentina toBritain. Each speaks to horrors that make international protections of vulnerable children understandable.  In 1997 we could not have imagined following the dots from the need for such protective…

Checklist: get landed Taking Yasik through immigration, Dave was asked, “Is your wife landed?”  Dave assured him, “Yes, yes, she is just over there, waiting by the luggage”.  The customs officer tried again, “No, is she landed?” And Dave proudly repeated, “Yes, we both went to get our son and she is waiting by the…

And then it was time to take one last trip through Moscow in the middle of the night, arriving at the airport when a full moon was filling the waiting room.  The airplane offered even more technical curiosities for Yasik.  We caught the wonder of earphones in the picture included here. While waiting in Frankfurt…

Morphing into Parents Unsurprising I suppose. Leaving Yaroslavl for Moscow, Yasik’s maiden voyage in his new family, he sat quietly in Dave’s arms at first. I sat quietly as well but Dave knew where my quiet was coming from. He bent to my ear to encourage me not to be shy while he and Yasik…

Of course, fireworks were exploding. Just not in celebration of a birthing bathed in mothering hormones.  It was becoming a family by adoption, exploding with happiness hormones.    I end Bonding/Attachment suggesting that while writers I have read may use the words ‘bonding’ and ‘attachment’ somewhat interchangeably, I may as well stick with the one…

We left the last entry hugging and kissing a child after knowing him three hours, barely comprehending that tomorrow he would be our child. Whether the words ‘bonding’ or ‘attachment’ were in wide use at the time, or whether the pre-adoption seminars at the time used these words, I do not remember.  Scanning my journal…

I regularly ask myself why I am writing in such detail about a ten-day adoption process from as far away as the ’90s.  The adoption process in Russia and many other countries has improved.  John Brooks, in his memoir of his and his wife’s adoption experience[i], notes this as well about Poland’s treatment of orphans,…