Laughter (and hugs, and walks, and pets) Is the Best Medicine.

History of a Romance

Year 1 Love at first sight. Well. Since we had been in classes together for six years, and had worked side by side for several months at the movie theatre, perhaps not "at first sight". But instantaneous, light-switch-flipped love, how 'bout that? As we gazed at each other over the shoulders of our respective prom dates.

Year 2 Adjust to the whole long distance romance thing. We attended colleges several hours apart from each other.

Year 3 "Will you marry me?" Maybe not on bended knee on a mountaintop with a 4kt diamond, but a simple college student's ring presented without fanfare in my college dorm.





Year 4 The love letters continued to pile up as we wrote to each other several times a week. In the days before the myriad options for how you wanted to contact a person, we were relegated to love letters and Friday night phone calls. We saw each other only a handful of times during the school year, but made up for it during the summers.

Year 5 First comes love, then comes marriage. We finally tied the knot five years and a month from when we began going together. I had at long last finished college and he had both finished college and gotten through his first year of med school.




Year 6 Time to play grownups with our first apartment, a one bedroom 2nd floor unit in East Brunswick, NJ. Mr., Mrs, dog and cat.

Year 7 I worked at my job as an Occupational Therapist, plus a little moonlighting, while he continued his studies at medical school, practicing his stitches on our hand-me-down couch.


Year 8 Medical school cap and gown time! And we loaded up the truck and we moved to Delaware.

Year 9 Fred started his residency, I started my new job, and our friends moved in with us. Our friends, plus their two little children, their newborn baby, and their Great Dane. Good times, good times.....

Year 10 We never found out what our landlord was doing with the rent money we paid him, but it wasn't paying the mortgage. Came home to a sheriff's auction sign in the front yard and so we moved again, to an old farmhouse in MD.

Year 11 An old farmhouse needs a horse to go along with it, and I was happy to oblige.

Year 12 Our first child, our son Patrick, was born. We were spanked hard as we entered the world of parenthood.

Year 13 Fred graduated his residency program as chief resident, and began his fellowship in Trauma and Critical Care.

Year 14 When he was all done being a good fellow, he took a job with this hospital where he did his residency. No moving required.



Year 15 We moved into our first boughten house just weeks before our 2nd child, our daughter Rosie, was born.

Year 16 Marked our 10 year anniversary. "Ten years and never had a fight".


Year 17 Two wasn't enough. One girl, one boy wasn't enough. We had our third child, our son Daniel. We were officailly outnumbered.

Year 18 This boughten house I mentioned? It was a 250 year old farmhouse on 11 1/2 acres. We (meaning I) continued to pour animals into the house, the barn, the fields. We (meaning I) added goats, sheep, ponies, and a pig to the property. For ambience.

Year 19 Kept busy fixing up the old house, mending fences, caring for critters, burying old pets.

Year 20 Kept busy wiping noses, wiping bottoms, changing diapers, cutting sandwiches into fun shapes, arranging playdates, tending boo-boos, nursing babies, learning to function on a 1/2 hour of sleep, and cleaning up after Hurricane Children on a daily basis.

Year 21 Apparently three wasn't enough. Two boys and one girl wasn't enough. We adopted Bella, who turned six one month after arriving in America from Kazakhstan.

Year 22 Apparently four wasn't enough either. We began hosting exchange students. Enter Milly from Taiwan, who spent her junior year in high school living with our crazy family. She also got to move with us as we loaded up the trucks again and moved to our bigger house on a smaller property. Fred laughed nervously and said, "You're not planning on filling up those extra bedrooms, are you?"


Year 23 Exit Milly, enter Eun Hae and Felice, from South Korea and Hong Kong, respectively.

Year 24 Took a year off from adding students to our family, but worked on building up the animal headcount once again.

Year 25 Oh what the heck, I'll take another. Enter Nadya from Germany.


Year 26 Two empty bedrooms means two more kids. We adopted James and Julie, also from Kazakhstan, and when they came home to us they were 10 and nearly 14.

Year 27 OK, no more exchange students. But let's host a Fresh Air Fund kid. A little boy from the inner city to stay with us for a week in the summer.

Year 28 Has it really been 28 years together and 23 years of marriage? Looking back I can see that since we started this romance we've lived in six places, starting in Fred's Dad's attic and ending in our current seven bedroom home. We have cared for countless critters and have 42 currently. We have hosted four exchange students and one Fresh Air Fund child. We have added three kids to our family by birth and three by adoption. We have weathered the deaths of beloved pets. The births and adoptions of our children. We have lived through times with no money and times of comfort. We have attended the funerals of grandparents, of siblings, of parents.

We have sometimes faced adversity head on, rowing our lifeboat sitting shoulder to shoulder, but there were also times we sat at opposite ends of the lifeboat, scarcely looking at each other as we weathered the storm.
But through it all we've grown stronger, closer, more in tune with each other than we ever would have thought possible when we were first gazing at each other over the shoulders of our prom dates that night so many, many years ago.

Till the one day when this lady met this fellow ....

...and they knew that it was much more than a hunch....

Yeah, well, you guys get the idea. Short story: A long time ago Fred and I met, fell in love, got married, had a bunch of kids.

Long version:

A Prolonged Beginning
Fred and I have been in classes together since our days in middle school, 7th grade. Didn't really get to know each other till senior year, when we worked in the movie theatre together (he an usher, me the cashier). We got to be good friends. Then the prom came, and although he went with E and I went with S, we somehow experienced love at first sight that night, five years after our first meeting (we're a little slow). We slow-danced to the prom theme song, Endless Love, and that was all she wrote. The next day a whole gang of us went to Great Adventure, and Fred and I walked the park holding hands, all lovey-eyed for each other amid much wretching and puking from our friends.
A few short months later, it was off to seperate colleges and the beginning of a long-distance, long-term relationship. This was before the days of e-mail and texting, so we actually had to write letters to each other a few times a week. On paper. I know, gasp. We talked by phone once a week, but saw each other only a few times during the school years. Still, we managed to keep the love alive in our hearts, as well as the nausea alive in the stomachs of our friends.
Because I worked through school, I took the "5 year plan" and finished college with a BS in Occupational Therapy. Fred finished with a BS in Chemistry and started med school. So after his 1st year of med school and my last year of college, we tied the knot. As per the regulations of the 1980s, the wedding was a pink and grey pastel affair, with much layering and lace. We had a 3 day honeymoon in an inn not far from Atlantic City, then got back to work.

Movin' On Up
When summer was over, we moved out of Fred's Dad's attic and into our 1st apt in Central Jersey. I finished up my internships and got a job, Fred kept plugging away at being a med student. I can remember him practicing his stitches on the back of our 2nd-hand bile-green sofa.
After graduating from med school, Fred landed his surgical residency. So we loaded up the truck (and all our collective friends' trucks) and we moved to Delaware (are you singing this to the Beverly Hillbillies tune?). We rented what seemed like a palatial split-level, 3 bdrm 1 1/2 bath house. We had so much room that we invited some friends to move in (unbeknownst to our landlord). B was in residency with Fred. They had sold their house in VA, but hadn't yet bought a place in DE. So we said they could bunk with us till they found a place. So B and J, and their children ages 4, 2 and newborn, along with their Great Dane, moved in with us for a bit and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Ahhh, good times, good times ....
Our friends weren't there long before they found a place, and life went on. Then one day we came home to find a sheriff's sale sign in our front yard. Whatever our landlord was doing with our rent payments, paying the mortgage wasn't it. We quickly scrambled and found an old farmhouse for rent in nearby MD. It was the beginning of the end for poor Fred, in his losing battle against me and the animals. This old house had a barn and 5 acres, and I promptly put a horse in the pasture. Our critter count was upped considerably in that house. Our landlady there was a quirky old character. We could only guess her age at that time to be anywhere between 60 and 80. She smoked like a chimney and always had a floppy-eared drooling Bloodhound in tow. She kept all her important papers stuffed in Ziplock baggies and had a habit of talking to you as she was walking or driving away.

Welcome to Parenthood
Our first son was born in that house in 1995.
We moved b/c our landlady had one of her many sweet real estate deals pop up: the company that owned the adjoining land wanted to buy her property. So she sold it for millions and we moved. Again.
Instead of renting this time, though, we were able to buy our first house. Fred had finished his surgical residency, as well as a fellowship in Trauma and Critical Care at Baltimore's Shock-Trauma. He took a staff job as a trauma surgeon. I was about 7 mths pregnant with our second child when I quit my job and we moved into our first boughten house in in October of 1997. It was an amazing 260 year old stucco over stone farmhouse with 11 1/2 acres, a pond and a stream. The driveway alone was 1/2 mile long. It needed a lot of work, and was on the small side, but we loved it. We moved in and I gave birth about two months later to our little girl.
Our days seemd too short as we struggled to find the time to parent our two small children, fix up the old house, maintain 11+acres, make fencing repairs, take care of the growing array of critters, and for Fred to work the many hours of a young surgeon. But we managed, and soon added a third child to the mix, in the summer of 1999.
With three children under the age of four, I really felt we were done growing our family. So when I had to have surgery to remove my rebellious gallbladder, I opted for the 2-for-1 discount and got my tubes tied in a pretty little package. With two little boys and one darling girl, I had it all. And wanted to stop.

Stupid Sisters
It's all my sisters' fault. Mary and Veronica are like my best friends. We've been through a lot together and it's made us close. One day it dawned on me that my Rosie would never know the joy of a sister stealing her clothes or hogging the phone or taking too much time in the bathroom. I wanted to have another daughter, but knew that even if I had a reversal of my surgery, there were no guarantees I'd get pregnant again, and certainly no assurances I would ever have another girl. So we (meaning I) decided to add to our family by adoption.

Adoption Pregnancy
So after convincing Fred I wasn't interested in adopting a baby (he wanted no more middle-of-the-night feedings, dirty diapers or teething), we started the research in January of 2003: Domestic or international? Which country? Which agency? What age child? Are we crazy or just eccentric? We finally signed with an agency in February, sent them our completed dossier in May, and beleive it or not, travelled to Kazakhstan in August and brought home our little five year old girl Bella in September. Never even got any stretch marks.

Life Goes On
We settled into some sense of normalcy for awhile with our now four kids. We also hosted some exchange students and I decided we needed to move to a bigger house. So in April of 2005 we said goodbye to our old farmhouse and hello to our new farmhouse 15 mins up the road. We more than doubled our living space, and went from 3 bedrooms to 7, but we downsized our property from 11+ acres to just shy of 7. Fred, laughing nervously, said he hoped I wouldn't decide all those rooms needed to be filled.

Just One Little Problem ....
There was this boy I met while I was over in Kazakhstan visiting our daughter. He was an amazing kid, but since I had no thoughts on adopting a boy, I thought I could find him a forever family through the network of adoptive parents I had met. But as it turned out, they told me he was not available for adoption. So sad, but OK, what can I do? So I thought we would just stay in touch with him. Problem is, the first time I sent him anything, I learned he had been transferred to another orphanage. We lost touch for more than two years, but we finally found him by hiring an in-country PI of sorts. We were still told he was not available for adoption, but at least we could finally begin writing to him as we had hoped. He remembered me, and we began writing letters to each other, and I would send him small packages from time to time. Two years passed this way, and I was finally told I could "try" to adopt him. Yes, they told me if I was crazy enough, I could spend months of my time and an exorbitant amount of money to prepare a dossier and fly halfway around the world so someone could review the case and decide if we could adopt him. Unfortunately for Fred, I am indeed crazy enough, and that's exactly what we did. I started preparing the dossier in October 2007, and was finally given my Letter of Invitation (aka greenlight) to travel to Kazakhstan in October of 2008. Five years and two months from when we were there before.

Just One More Little Problem
Of course, things are never simple. Because along the way of this second adoption journey, we learned that Borya had a younger sister, and that they could not be separated (though they were already placed in two different orphanages and never had any contact with each other). So it was decision time. If we wanted to adopt Borya, we would also need to adopt his sister. Could we adopt a 10 year old child we knew nothing about? Could we go from 4 kids to 5 to 6? Could we one day handle three 15 year old girls all living under one roof? Once we met her, all doubts flew out the window. She's a lovely child, and just, shall we say "interesting" enough to fit into our crazy crew seamlessly. So end of October 2008, Fred, Bella and I flew to Kazakhstan (again) and stayed there about a month to complete the adoptions of Borya and Yulia. Adoptions in Kazakhstan are different today than they were five years ago, so after court, we flew home to await the arrival of Borya and Yulia a month and a half later.

And that, in the biggest nutshell you've ever seen, is how we went from one kid to two, then three. Added a fourth, then brought home the fifth and sixth. As my kids used to say when they were toddlers, "All done!". Fred can only hope ....