My Forever Family, Take Two

The background story of my current family waiting for me. My parents decided on adoption after they had trouble conceiving again after having their daughter. They requested an older child and so with that request, their social worker told them about me and the situation I was in and would they be up to adopting me. Their answer was yes. This is the picture they received of me:

No other pictures were available since this was such a touchy situation regarding the first parents. The adoption agency requested that the parents surrender me and that the adoption would never be finalized. The parents refused to surrender me.

Now the waiting began for my new parents. I am not sure how many months they had to wait, but they were told that they could receive a call any day and when that day came, I would be in their home that day. That day came on December 1, 1972. This was the little coat I was wearing that day:

I have written about this coat before on my blog. You can't tell really how small it is, but it is a size two toddler, I was 5 1/2 years old. I am not one to keep a lot of things from the past, but I still have this little coat. It's a reminder for me of what I came from and what I survived.

I remember going into my new family's apartment, now my new home. Everything smelled so different to me. I looked all around and didn't know what to think. I've been told by my mom that I didn't talk for a long time. When I would eat, I would eat so much that my stomach would balloon up, that made my mom worry so she asked some friends of hers if she should be concerned. My stomach blew up from the food because I still had malnutrition, even with being in the United States for 15 months. Guess my first mother was force feeding me bananas too, no wonder I don't like them. But I like banana bread!

I asked my mom how they dealt with me trusting them and bonding with them. She told me they held me a lot and spent a lot of time with me the first month I was with them. I also received a lot of attention at school from teachers and the principal. I was so small, I couldn't see over the counter in the cafeteria so the principal would carry me thru the line. My parents told him he had to stop doing that and treat me like everyone else.