Foreword

by Marguerite Gieseke

There is a place in the airport I will always consider sacred, an area just beyond the double yellow security tape at the foot of the escalators. This nondescript, completely undistinguished spot is connected in my mind to the power and true meaning of love. It was there that my husband and I introduced our son, Jamie, to his new family.

We had just stepped off the long flight from Guatemala where we had met Jamie and, after many complications and much legal red tape, had finalized his adoption. We were weary, excited and exhausted in equal measure by all that had transpired during our trip. As we were making our way down the long airport corridor, I saw ahead of us, a gathering of friends and family, waiting with eager faces, full hearts, and open arms. I knew then that Jamie, our son, was being welcomed into a family that already loved him mightily, that understood completely that he was now a crucial part of our lives forever.

Two years later, when we were blessed with Henry, another son born in Guatemala, I walked out of the plane and remembered that earlier arrival, the greeting in that special spot, and knew that Henry would be met with the same loving acceptance. Henry seemed to know it, too; when he looked into his sister’s eyes for the very first time, he appeared to grasp that he was completely adored. His whole face shone bright and split into a huge dimpled grin. It was the beginning of a mutual admiration that will last a lifetime.

I was blessed with motherhood in two different ways. I gave birth to our daughters, and we adopted our sons. Both avenues to parenthood are magical. No thrill comes close to that of meeting your child for the first time, be it in a hospital delivery room or in an airport or orphanage. Your heart swells — in an actual physical sense — and something in you shifts. You fall in love. You know immediately that you would do anything for this child. In the trenches of parenting, biology doesn’t matter. Genetics mean little. Love is what carries the day, what pulls you through, what holds the family together. There is no second best way to create a family.

My hope for this book is that it will show families who have adopted internationally as beautifully ordinary. Many of the children who are photographed here have stories of unimaginable despair, stories that would break the hearts of even the most stoic, stories that graphically illustrate the terrible injustices heaped upon the young throughout the world. The forces of fate that bring adoptive parents and their children together might just as easily have passed them by. It is an unbearable truth that parents feel when we kiss our dear children good night and hold them tight against pain and sadness. These precious gifts were once so close to the suffering we watch nightly on the news — the earthquakes, mudslides, devastation of poverty and disease, tumult of international conflict. The thought of it can be overwhelming.

But this book is not about those sorrows, about the terrible losses at the beginning of so many stories of adoption. This book is about the simple, remarkably ordinary ways the survivors of those stories, those amazing children, have become vital members of their families, have used their unique gifts and talents and capacity for forgiveness and love to complete their families.

Adoption is a very personal leap of faith and a journey of love. These photographs chronicle that journey.