Journey to Adopt by Cathy Gibbons
From the time Jerry and I met, I knew I wanted children. After 2 and a half years we had our first “healthy” son whom we named Andrew Paul, 16 months later William Scott was born, also “healthy” then Joseph Dean 23 months after Will. The adventure of our lives had begun. These three wonderful little boys brought our family more joy then we had ever imagined possible and we knew we were blessed. Unfortunately our little Joey was not as “healthy” as his brothers, several stays in the hospital later at the age of 8 months he was diagnosed with many allergies. However, after that first year he was relatively healthy, but the words of our obstetrician kept coming back to remind us that due to our RH factor incompatibility, we really should not have anymore biological children or if we did we needed to realize that their health would continue to be compromised.
This is where in my mind the choice of adoption became a reality, unfortunately it took me 8 more years to convince Jerry that our little girl was waiting for us somewhere overseas. When he agreed I didn’t hesitate to begin the paperwork and on October 31, 1996 we were notified that we had been accepted as the family to adopt Mindra a beautiful child from Tigru Mures, Romania located in the Transylvania Mountains. It would take us 21 months before Jerry would travel to bring her home to her brothers and mommy, July 17, 1998. Jerry was the first to declare that this small, sweet little girl should be the poster child for International Adoption, and the reason we continued on to bring even more joy into our lives through the adoption of Ana.
The process to bring our beautiful Ana home came after the loss of our wonderful Joseph, October 31, 1999 after a vigilant battle with cancer. It took a while to decide to adopt again but we did. We contacted an agency and explained we were interested in adopting a little girl with the special need of cleft lip/cleft palate and they sent us two pictures of little girls. One a sad 7 years old and an infant. Jerry took one look at the pictures and admitted that his heart had already been stolen by that lonely, sad little 7 year old girl and 10 months later he traveled to bring home Ana Angelica another Romanian beauty from Bazau City, Romania. Ana came home August 17, 2001 with a sense of humor and curiosity that has charmed her brothers and sister.
But even with two wonderful sons in high school, a heavy heart from the loss of our handsome Joseph and the thriving lives of our two daughters, we did not feel that the family was complete and in June 2005 we traveled to Narva, Estonia to meet our two chosen adopted daughters only to discover that because they had already turned 16, an age that the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services has determined to be ineligible for adoption. We were devastated but not necessarily deterred, Sasha and Anja were depending on us and we were determined to find a way to bring them to America, maybe not as our adopted daughters but as our daughters just the same. Jerry and I continue to raise the necessary funds to bring the girls home, first for a visit then to continue their education in high school and beyond.
In October we received word that we had been cleared to travel to Orenburg, Russia to meet our son Ivan and a second child who we had yet to meet. We travel first to Moscow for a day of sight seeing which, was a walk to the Kremlin and sights surrounding this historical spectacle. The next evening we traveled across Moscow to the domestic airport where we boarded a plane to travel to Orenburg the region where our son was waiting.
After arriving in Orenburg we were allowed a brief rest before venturing on to Orsk, a city about three hours from Orenburg and to the orphanage where we met a giggling little boy. Ivan came bounding into the room to meet his mama and papa then asked if we had been lost and that is why it took us so long to find him. I don’t think he has stopped giggling yet. We were able to visit Ivan at the orphanage for about 2 or 3 hours before we traveled back to Orenburg. The next day we traveled to a local orphanage where we met Ramil, a 13 month old baby boy. At the first meeting, before even seeing the baby, the orphanage Director announced that he looked just like Jerry. Ramil, was then carried in and we were allowed a very brief visit and about 10 minutes to decide if we were interested in adopting him. Of course we said yes! The rest of the trip was a whirlwind of signing documents, notary signatures and coming up with the official names for the boys. We decided on Ivan John and Benjamin Ramil Gibbons.
Jerry and I returned to Orenburg December 3, 2005 where we were introduced to the host family that we would be staying with. A wonderful family who shared their home with us for the next week. On December 5, we entered a court room where we answered questions on why we were willing to accept two children with special needs (Ivan has limb differences, and Benjamin has lost a kidney), I explained to the Judge that in my opinion there is no such thing as a healthy child. Jerry and I had three biological sons that were born “healthy” however we had lost Joey to cancer and Will was now a quadriplegic due to an auto accident, so we would love these children and cherish them and their uniqueness, and not let it hinder their future. The Judge granted our petition after 2 hours of questions, and that evening our wonderful Ivan, giggling like always was delivered to the apartment of our host family. Benjamin did not join us until December 7, as he had a fever and they wanted to be sure that he was healthy before he came to us. We stayed in Orenburg until December 8, when we returned to Moscow to visit the Embassy and receive the necessary papers for the boys to return with us to the United States as our sons and on December 10 we flew with our new sons to Atlanta, GA and onto Denver, and drove home arriving with Ivan and Ben at around 2:00am December 11 to meet the rest of the family their brother Andy and his wife Dawn; brother Will; and sisters Mindy and Ana.
Are we finished adding to our family? No, we still wait for Anja and Sasha to join us someday, and in the meantime we will bring home two other daughters this year. Marina is 16 and a beautiful young lady who came to visit our busy family over Christmas 2006, we fell in love with her and hopefully she will be joining the Gibbons family this Spring along with Nan YuSu or Jade as she will be renamed. Jade is from China and will be 3 in April, she has a repaired cleft lip/palate and is beautiful. We are so excited!
I continue to find more children to love in Countries all over the World. Who knows where the next child will be from, and really it doesn’t matter to us, we will know them when we see them.
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