Everyone kept asking me how the babies were doing. I was running out of answers because I hadn’t seen them.
August in my household was a fun but flurried month of arrivals and departures. We welcomed both of our grown sons home for separate visits from Washington, D.C.. and reveled in the chance to catch up with their friends who stopped by to visit. We helped my cousin’s daughter from Pennsylvania get settled at ASU. We hosted family gatherings so everyone could spend time together.
Work was busy, too. We were still upacking and resettling after our two-month evacuation following The Great Office Flood of 2010. Then we experienced a second, though smaller, flood on Aug. 17. This time, thankfully, just our conference room was affected when refuse water from the hair salon above us rained down for several hours. (Note to self: Next time we move, make sure the business above us is not so water-dependent.)
My Ethiopia experience was feeling increasingly distant and I was not finding the time I’d hoped to spend sifting through notes and recorded conversations in an effort to document more of that journey. I knew the deGuzmans were busy, too, adjusting to life with four children under the age of 4, getting the older two back into a preschool routine and hosting their own friends and family members who wanted to meet the babies.
Then, in yet another instance of “small world” coincidences and surprising connections that have entered my life since I first met Brian and Keri deGuzman in March 2009, I got an email from Keri.
She’d just run across the book Both Ends Burning: My Story of Adopting Three Children from Haiti, by Craig Juntunen of Scottsdale and wanted to make sure I knew about it. Keri was excited about the book because it paints a positive picture of international adoption.
Raising Arizona Kids ran an article about the Juntunens last December and mentioned the book. Scottsdale writer Sue Breding is still following their story; she is writing a “one year later” update for this December’s magazine and is planning a trip to Haiti with Kathy Juntunen at some point early next year.
When I wrote back to share that coincidence with Keri, we made plans to get together. I told her I needed a “baby fix.” Time, like the now quick-crawling Solomon, was getting away from me.
Next: Pictures from my visit and an update on the babies.
