The baby was a blond blue-eyed boy weighing 3.5 kilos. We held him twice and decided we had better not be with him any more lest we change our minds. Our lawyer presented the proper legal papers and physically removed the baby from the hospital before turning him over to his new parents. The adoptive family sent Linda a big bouquet of flowers with a card "from your Arkansas family". Two weeks later the adoptive father phoned to tell me that he had that day put the first funds in the bank for the baby's college education. My daughter returned to university to get her degree, met her "Mr Right", married and had four more children.
Some 22 years later I was in Arkansas visiting my lawyer brother before returning to China to teach for another year. My sister-in-law telephoned the adoptive family and asked if they were interested in meeting me. The next day I received an excited phone call from that "baby": Could he come over for a visit?
When Bryan and his adoptive mother arrived the next day, we spent two hours sharing photos and stories and exchanging e-mail addresses. His parents had always made it clear to him that he was adopted; indeed, how else to explain pale skin, flaxen hair and blue eyes in a family of dark-haired olive-skinned descendants of southern Italians?
Bryan had become an extraordinary young man.He was an Eagle Scout at the age of 13, Arkansas's youngest ever. (The Boy Scouts are a character-building organization, and few boys rise to the top level; to become an Eagle Scout is like receiving a grand testimonial to one's virtue and versatility.) He had been a football star in high school. After attending Brigham Young University for one year, he had served a two-year stint as a representative of his church in South Korea. Now he was preparing to return to university. I told his mother that I believed we had made the right decision 22 years earlier; the next day she called to say how much the comment meant to her.
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