Adoption is Amazing

First of all, let me say that this is a shameless info-mercial regarding my love for Cary Grant.  This is the cutest move starring these two Hollywood idols ever!  Boy meets girl.  Boy marries girl.  They adopt a baby.  Tear jerker drama in the middle of the movie. They live happily ever after.  I love Cary Grant!  Anyone who calls someone 'Dahling' and is that good looking can come into my living room any day!  There are so many great lines in this movie!  At one point, the inexperienced new mother is trying to stop the baby from crying in the night.  Father looks on and says, "Do something!  Can't you see the baby's suffering?!"  We love that line! 

We went to the State Fair about two weeks after returning from our honeymoon in 1978.  At the fair we walked through the education building where we saw an Adoptive Parents' organization display of small black and white wallet sized photos of babies in Korea waiting for adoption.  No long talks, no infertility, no reason other than love for children and the belief that we could parent any child, by birth or any other method.  We looked at each other and said, "Do you want to adopt a baby from Korea?"  Yes, we did.  

In 1981 we applied to adopt a baby girl, we felt there might be less prejudice toward a girl.  We wrote 30 pages of essay questions on why we could parent a child that didn't look like us, how our family felt about the idea, what we would do to help the child understand her heritage and lots more that I don't remember any more.  

We waited and in August we got a phone call, the agency had a set  of  little black and white pictures of the baby girl that would be ours!  Daddy-to-be drove to the adoption agency to pick up the information then sped to the place I was working and showed me the three pictures that I would carry (and stare at) for the next two months while we waited for the baby whose name was Hyung Lan (which means Scented Orchid) to get a visa and a ticket to fly to the U.S.A. and become our beloved daughter, Susan Lynn.

We waited, impatiently,  I worked two jobs and Mr. Wonderful worked two jobs to pay for the adoption expenses.  I embroidered a cross stitch Bambi quilt, we bought a crib and a playpen, a swing and a high chair.  And finally, the adoption agency called to say her flight was scheduled!

My parents, my sister and some other friends came to the airport to meet the Northwest Airlines 747 stork.  The adoption flight aide met us and went into the aircraft to bring the baby out to us.  When he spoke to us he said, all the passengers will disembark and THEN I'll go in and get her.  There are over 400 passengers on a 747 so imagine my shock when he reappeared at the end of the jetway just a few minutes later holding a pink bundle!  I screamed, "That's my baby!" The crowd parted like the Moses and the Red Sea and I ran up and grabbed that baby girl right out of his arms!  Home at last, the baby I had prayed for, dreamed of and imagined for four years!  The waiting was over.

It's not her birthday, it's not her Family Day (arrival anniversary), it's not Mother's Day; it's just a love story that I thought I would tell you today.  My beloved black haired, almond-eyed beauty is now a Mommy herself, a teacher, a wife, a wonderful young woman and more than I ever dreamed of in a daughter born not under my heart, but in it.

The Chosen Baby, by Valentina Wasson is a sweet little storybook written in 1939 about adoption; I altered it with pictures by Becky Kelly, a wonderfully talented artist who always includes Asian girls in her group scenes because one of her childhood pals was a beautiful almond eyed, little black haired girl!