At some point that month, I made a list of things I 'needed' for school, and then a couple lists of things I wanted, but wasn't likely to get. According to 12 year old me, I absolutely required an expandable 5 star trapper keeper, grippy pens (in blue, black, red and green), a brand new box of crayola markers (both skinny and fat), fat sharpie markers (all colors), mechanical pencils and lead, 4 notebooks (70 page, college ruled, four colors), a glue stick, a pair of scissors, loose leaf paper, 3 prong folders with two pockets, new clarinet reeds, a new pad for one of my clarinet keys, gym clothes, colored pencils, and a 16 pack of Crayola crayons. For the seventh grade. Wow. Looking back at myself, I feel like I was the portrait of excess. As if I didn't have enough old crayons, markers, pens, and folders lying around.
But then it gets worse. The next page is things I wanted but was unlikely to get. A computer and accessories, software, a kitten, a gerbil, a guinea pig (apparently adoption has been on my mind longer than I thought...), and a $5 raise in my allowance. Gee, 12 year old me, you don't ask for much, do you?
The last page is a short list... the things I wanted most in the world... a baby sister... and for my parents to get back together. They had seperated on June 13, 2001.
The sad thing is, I got everything on that first list, and more. By my 14th birthday I had my own computer and printer and scanner. I remember that summer well. I spent every day watching my little brother, playing at the park, chatting with people on the internet (which was completely not advisable, but the internet was so new, we weren't prepared for its dangers...) and watching my favorite shows. It was a good summer.
But it's August 23, 2001. Across the ocean, across another continent, there is a field. It is hot. Sweltering, even. The temperatures are in the 80's and 90's every day, the humidity 70% or more. Air conditioning is a luxury most people don't have. There is a woman... she is very pregnant, hot, uncomfortable, and poor. She worries constantly about how she could possibly raise this baby inside her. Then, on that hot, hot day, she goes into labor in the middle of the country. There is no time or means to get to a hospital. She delivers a little boy. Somehow, she learns that the little boy has down syndrome. Now, not only is she facing raising a child, she's facing raising a child with a disability that she doesn't feel equipped to deal with, who may never be independent. She's scared and heartbroken. She wants to run... so she does. She leaves her little boy in that field. The sweltering hot one... well, really the whole country is sweltering at this point in the summer. She lies him on the ground. Maybe she thinks he will be better off if he dies. Maybe she doesn't care. Maybe she thinks he's going to die anyways. Maybe she's heartbroken that she can't care for him. The reason doesn't really matter. She lays that baby down in the field, and she runs.
Hours pass. The baby boy continues to lie in the field, getting hotter and hotter, belly aching for sustenance, cries going unheard. He begins to dehydrate, overheat. His breathing slows. He slips into unconsciousness on and off. When he wakes, all he feels is pain.
Meanwhile, in America, a 12 year old girl goes shopping for her 5 star trapper keeper.
Back in Eastern Europe, someone is walking along the edge of the field. The little boy has just startled from his state of semiconsciousness by the sound of footsteps falling. He begins to cry. The pain is back. It is always back when he wakes up. He doesn't know how long he has been lying there, only that he needs help, that he's slipping away from this strange world he was so recently brought into.
The stranger hears a faint cry and turns in its direction. The sound stops. The stranger thinks, maybe I imagined it. Then he hears another, louder cry. This time there is no mistaking it. He knows the sound of a newborn crying. The stranger starts toward the sound, checking around in the distance for a mother and child. Then, he almost stumbles over the little bundle on the ground, the boy who has slipped back into unconsciousness... and he knows where that cry came from.
There is no one around. He calls out for help. Where is this child's mother? Who has left this little baby here, and why? No one answers; no one comes. Heart racing, the stranger picks up the fragile form of the child. He rushes to bring him to the hospital, which is no easy feat as it is quite a distance from this remote field. Upon arrival at the hospital, the baby is rushed into intensive care, given fluids and food, bathed, attached to all kinds of monitors. The doctors and nurses wonder if he will even survive. But the little boy... well, he's a fighter. With the help of those doctors and nurses, his life is saved - against all odds.
Because he is a newborn, and because he has some atypical behaviors that the doctors don't know if indicate a disability or if they are simply a result of his abandonment, he is given all the routine tests for a variety of conditions. One comes back positive. The little boy has Trisomy 21, or Down Syndrome. The doctors are sure they know what this means. They may have saved his life, but it will never be normal or productive. A phone call is made. The baby is removed from all the monitors and dressed in a hospital gown. A man and a woman come in an old, rusty van. The man drives. The woman takes the little boy and holds him on her lap. She does not look at him or smile at him. She stares out the window as the weak infant in her arms fusses quietly. When the van stops, they have reached their destination. The nearest orphanage for children under 3.
The boy is taken inside. A bed that had been used by another child just days ago is stripped of its filthy sheets and the child is lain inside the crib. Then the woman walks away. The little boy is seemingly alone again. He must be wondering, is the pain going to come back? Is the heat going to overwhelm me again? Am I going to die? He cries out, hoping that someone will come to his aid, like they did in his first days in the hospital. No one comes. Somewhere else in the room, another baby fusses in response. The new boy is upsetting the other children. He is picked up roughly by another woman - not the same one that came to the hospital - and carried to a small room containing only one bare crib. She deposits him in the crib, closes the door, and walks away. This time when the newborn boy cries, there's not a single soul to hear him.
Over the days he gets used to a routine. He learns that crying doesn't bring help anymore, so he gives up and only occasionally whimpers. He is moved back into the big room full of cribs. Twice a day, someone comes and shoves a bottle in his mouth. He struggles to swallow the thick liquid flowing through the large hole in the nipple, but flat on his back, it is hard for him to swallow and most of it coats his sheets and torso. The bottle is taken away. He lies in the mess for hours. After a while longer, someone comes, lifts him roughly out of the crib, and changes his leaking diaper and sodden clothes... but they don't change the sheets that were messed earlier. He's placed back in the mess, to fall asleep and wait for the next bottle. He lives this same routine over and over for years. Then, a strange day comes.
He's much older now. He's not much bigger, he can barely sit up in his crib, he knows no words, but what he doesn't know is that August 2004 has come and gone. He is three now. It is time to be transferred to the older child internat. Yet another woman - a different one, but wearing the same sterile white coat, lifts him from his crib. She changes his diaper. She dresses him in layers. Then she carries him back to the rusty van, where she holds him much in the same way the woman who brought him here did. This time, the little boy tries to look around and make sense of his surroundings. All he can figure out is that the feel, the smell, the sounds of this place are different.
The van stops. A woman bustles out of a run-down looking building and quickly takes the boy from the arms of the woman in the white coat. Words are exchanged, but the little boy doesn't understand them. The new woman carries him toward the building, and the woman in the white coat and the rusty van roll away. Now the little boy is scared. This is a new place, he knows no one. Where is his crib, his bottle, the little girl in the crib next to his who bangs her head on the bars all day long?
Much like when he was a newborn, he is deposited into a crib. This one has cold metal bars and a thin vinyl mat, and the bars are so high that even if the little boy could stand, he couldn't see over the edge. He waits for his bottle, but it doesn't come. Instead, someone comes into the room, walks quickly around to each crib, and shovels spoonfuls of watery soup into the children's mouth. This little boy isn't used to eating this way and most of it dribbles onto his clothes. The nanny lets out a frustrated sigh and strips the clothes off the boy, but doesn't replace them. Later, when the sodden diaper he has been wearing for almost a day begins to leak all over the mattress, leaving it sticky and uncomfortable, he waits for the woman who comes and puts a new diaper on him. She doesn't come that day, or the next. Only when the saturated diaper falls apart completely does someone come to re-outfit him.
With nothing to do in his crib every day, the little boy tries to entertain himself. He bangs his head on the bars like the girl in the crib in the old room did. He grabs the cold, steel bars, pulling at them, willing them to come open so he can explore the world beyond his cage. Eventually, he figures out how to pull himself to a standing position using these bars. He leans over the edge of his crib, sometimes dangerously close to falling out as he learns to gulp down the piping hot spoonfuls of soup and grows bigger. Finally, it is decided that the crib is no longer the place for this boy. He is moved to another room. This room has mats to sleep on with no bars around them. He still struggles to walk, having only moved his feet around in his tiny crib. But in this room, the children are taken to a table for the watery soup meal every day, and slowly, he becomes steadier on his feet. Still though, he hungers for attention, good food, and stimulation. He starts to rock like some of the other children on the beds around him. Sometimes the older children hit him, so he tries to stay out of their way. When someone approaches him, he raises his arms in a defensive position to deflect any blow that might come. He lives this existence for six long years. One day someone dresses him in warm clothes and takes a photo of him. He doesn't know what she's doing or why, but when she's done, the clothes are removed and put back in a box, and he goes back to wearing the faded shorts and tank top he wears every day. Then as more time passes, nothing changes. This is all he will ever know, he convinces himself. He must simply learn to cope.
Now, it's August 12, 2012. In eleven days, this little boy will turn eleven years old... and still he lives every day the same. Wake up soaked in urine. Eat a few spoonfuls of a watery mixture. Spend a few hours rocking. Every once in a while, trying to capture the attention of a kindly caregiver. Gulp down a few more spoonfuls of watery soup. Return to the thin mattress and filthy sheets where he woke up. Rock, flap his hands, pull on his feet, bang his head... until sleep comes... and then he wakes up and it starts all over. It will be the same routine on August 23, 2012. He will have no idea he has just turned 11 years old. There will be no cake, no singing... just the same torturous routine.
Meanwhile, across the ocean, the 12 year old who listed her desired school supplies and compared schedules with her friends on that very day he was left in the field, has turned 23. There have been 11 birthday cakes, 11 songs, probably 100 gifts in pretty packages. She sits on her bed typing on a laptop computer, listening to music, staring around at her room, her things... the clothes that don't fit in her dresser, the empty boxes of sweet foods like donuts and cereal that have already been eaten. She checks the phone she carries with her everywhere, the one that can play music or surf the internet as well as call someone. She sips an ice cold Dr. Pepper.
And she cries.
She cries because what she just typed onto her computer was about a real child. The events might not have unfolded quite as she described them, but from everything she knows of this region, it's likely this child's existence was very similar to what was described. She cries, because while she and her countrymen live here in the lap of luxury, a little boy who we call 'Brett' lives every single day without even the most basic provisions... good food, the love of a family, a safe place to live. She cries because she feels like there is nothing she can do to help him. If she could cross the ocean to bring him home, she would, but because she's three years too young, she can never bring him home. She cries because she has looked at his little face every day for nine months, and no one has come forward to bring him home. She cries because just as the nannies where Brett lives have ignored him most of his life, people she knows, people she loves, people who know this child is in need... are also ignoring him. He is, once again, always, overlooked.
If you read my last post, the 'he' and 'she' in this mostly true story are easily identifiable. If you haven't, well... please do, it's right here... and in case you just can't wait long enough to read that post (although not one of my longest ones)... the little boy is Brett #19-1 on Reece's Rainbow, and he really was abandoned in a field at birth. He really was saved by doctors, only to be sent to an orphanage. He most likely received little to no care and nurturing to help him grow physically, socially, and emotionally during that time. He most likely lived most of his life in filth. And the girl? The one who HAD to have that five star trapper keeper eleven years ago? Well, she's me. It's me that's crying for this little boy right now. It's me that weeps for his abandonment, not just by his mother or his country, but by everyone who sees his face and turns away and says 'it's not my problem'.
Brett needs two things. Just two things. Compared to my long list from when I was just a year older than him, what he needs is simple, and far more important.
First, Brett needs a family. He needs a Mommy, or a Mommy and Daddy (his country allows single moms to adopt as well as couples. There is also no upper age limit or limit on your current family size). He needs parents to call his own, who won't abandon him, who will give him the love, safety, and nurturing he has deserved, but been deprived of, for so long. If you even have the slightest inkling that adopting might be in your not-so-distant future... YOU could give him that.
Second, Brett needs money. Adoptions from his country generally cost around $20,000, give or take based on the season and a variety of other factors. Brett has only $112 in his grant fund. If that number were, instead, say, $1,112... would a family be more likely to step up for him, knowing that 1/20 of the money had already been raised? What if his grant read $11,112? That leaves less than $10,000 for a family to raise. I've seen auctions and giveaways raise three and four times that amount to bring children home.
Brett has been given a unique opportunity to meet this second need, which may help him reach the ultimately most important first need. He is listed as a choice for boys over 10 with Down Syndrome who can be part of the Angel Tree program on Reece's Rainbow this year. Last year, $1,000 was raised for every child on the angel tree. But it's not automatic that Brett will be on the angel tree. There are ten other boys, all of them deserving, but none of them laid on my heart so strongly as Brett has been... none of them with quite the same story... and people have been given the opportunity to vote for which two children from this category will land on the angel tree. Brett is doing fairly well, but there are a lot of beloved boys on that list, boys who parents have met, who have strong advocates, who don't live in places like Brett does where we don't really know what is or is not going on. Brett... is easy to pass over, because of this.
He needs your vote. You can vote here at Reece's Rainbow by clicking on the little star above his photo, next to the word 'vote', one vote per IP per category (ie you can vote once for a child from the 10+ DS boys category, once for a child from the 10+ DS girls category, etc.) You can also donate a meager $5 to be entered in a drawing to hand-pick which child gets a spot on the angel tree... and of course, I'll be begging that person to notice Brett if he doesn't make it in the voting. He's spent far too long being ignored, overlooked and neglected. No more. Voting closes on Thursday 8/16 at 5 pm ET. Let's make sure has a place on the angel tree when that hour comes.
Please. Look around at your life, the things around you, and imagine them all gone. Imagine living Brett's life. Imagine what will happen to him if he is not adopted. Children DIE in these institutions. If they live to the age of 16, they are turned out on the streets or transferred to adult mental institutions, where they will live every day for the rest of their miserable lives, no hope of ever finding a family. God delivered Brett from what would have been a certain death in that field. He did not do that so he could suffer for years longer and finally die in an institution without ever knowing the love of a family. He did it to give us the opportunity to see, know, and advocate for Brett... to find him a family. And when he does find a family? I personally promise to do everything in my power to fully fund them as quickly as possible. I will sell all these earthly things I don't need, the shirt off my back, I will launch fundraiser after fundraiser, I will give up luxuries, meals, new things, and give to his family instead. I promise you, the obstacle in Brett's adoption will NOT be financial... especially if we get him on the Angel Tree. It is URGENT.
Please vote. Please share this post and the last one and Brett's story with everyone you know. You never know who might look at his picture and realize they're looking into the eyes of their son. You never know what a difference you could make, until you try. We are Brett's only hope. Everyone else has let him down, his whole life long. Let's not simply be more people to let him down... let's be the ones who change his life. That poor boy has suffered enough. He needs us, and I, for one, will NOT let him down. Please, will you stand with me in making a difference to this sweet boy?
Hi Katie! Thanks for your comment on my post. We are submitted and hope to travel in October, according to the current timeline.
ReplyDeleteThank you! (and great job on this post, BTW. I am constantly looking around at all of our things and feeling awful for 'needing' stuff. I've seen it, my daughter lived it.