Greetings!

We designed this site in order to keep in touch with friends and family who are far away and in order to communicate with other adoptive families from around the world.

When we first started researching this wonderful way to become a family we read everything we could get our hands on. Even though there are a lot of great books out there, nothing was as informative or touching as the blogs we found by adoptees, biological parents, and adoptive families. So we are writing this blog now in hopes of returning the favor. We hope that if you are dear to us you will enjoy keeping up with our adventures. If you are someone out there involved in a part of the adoption triad we hope you will find information and comfort here and provide us with some of your own!

If you would like to get in touch with us we can be reached at: becomingafamily@gmail.com
Feel free to stop by anytime. We're happy to share our family story.

Take care,
Brian and Rosemary

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Rainy Season

Today it is pouring down rain in New York.  On a thoroughly wet day like this I always think of Thailand and rainy season at the girl's home.  Endless rounds of duck-duck-goose in the play room with the littlest ones.  Laying on bunk beds in the high school dorm listening in wonder while the girls sing Akha harmonies in rounds.  I remember turning the fan on high and putting hot, sweaty, preschoolers to nap with a book.  Laying in bed at night listening to the soothing plunkety-plunk-plunk of hard rain on a tin roof.   Inevitably, the boredom and cabin fever become too much, and one day we simply take the girls out into it.  Even our house mother, the golden gatekeeper of rules, can be seen dancing on the basketball court; soft, warm, rain coursing over her face.

One afternoon, I found a group of imaginative young girls playing "ship" in one of our drying sheds.  These sheds are merely tin covered cement patios criss-crossed with clothes lines so we can dry bedding and school uniforms during the weather.  On this day, the sheets blowing in the wind and the sprays of rain sneaking in the open sides of the shed suggested the deck of a ship to happy young minds.  When I discovered the girls there and asked what they were doing they shyly told me looking embarrassed.  I remembered a quote by writer Kay Boyle - "I had the most satisfactory of childhoods because my mother turned out to be exactly my age."  I could see I had only one choice.  I sat down, hung onto a post and begin bailing "water".  The delighted girls  made me their Captain and we spent the rest of the afternoon snug among our blowing sails.  It remains one of my fondest memories.

So here I sit, huddled by my barely working heating unit, watching the cold slush terrorizing the upper east side and I wish I was in Thailand.  Even though I never imagine saying this while living through it:  I pine a little for rainy season.  There is just something about hot days, rainy nights, damp clothes and all those little girls who have spilled fingernail polish inside my suitcase.  

- Rosemary

1 comments:

Melissa Ens said...

What sweet, sweet (sticky) memories! The rain here in my part of CA is NOTHING like the rain in Thailand. The way it comes and goes and POURS without freezing anyone. I can totally see how you could miss it.