4th of July

Today is the fourth of July. My son is with me today and we will enjoy the fireworks tonight with friends and other children. I love family holidays. The agency I have chosen has placed me on a waiting list to register....so the wait has begun. It is very exciting. It is strange to think that the little girl I am going to be adopting hasnt even been born yet. I am beginning the process of learning more about the Vietnamese culture. I have several books. As a 44 year old, I remember the country well....through television news images, Newsweek and Time magazine covers and seeing the list of killed in action in the newspaper every week. I was ten years old in 1972 and the war was still on. The images were horrible. The fall of Saigon is so clear in my memory. In 1974 my mother talked about adopting one of the many orphans in Vietnam but it never happened. How ironic I am planning now to adopt one of the many orphans today.....perhaps a descendant of one of the orphans of 1974. Who knows? I guess anyone who grew up in that time period feels a strange connection to Vietnam.