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Barbara's
Story:
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P R O L O G U E:
Love and hope share
a place called home.
PAUL GRONDAHL, Staff writer - Albany Times
Union
Barbara and Amanda huddled together in the front row of the movie theater. The 8-year-old best friends leaned in close to each other. Black skin and white skin melded as one. They clutched each other's hands as if they never wanted to let go. Their giggles of anticipation filled the
Cineplex.
The movie was "Homeward Bound." Barbara and Amanda had been asking to see it for weeks. The Saturday matinee outing offered a glimmer of hope after months of illness for both girls. It was 1993.
Nurses and doctors said it would probably do more good for Barbara and Amanda than anything the medical profession could provide at this point. Let them know a few moments of joy. That was the best anyone could offer.
Sitting there in the front row, they shared a bucket of buttered popcorn and a large Coca-Cola. The two girls were electric and shining in the cool darkness. You could imagine their lives at the beginning of a long road bright with promise. Like the opening credits of a movie.
From behind, in the dark, as they scrunched down in their seats, you couldn't tell how sick Barbara and Amanda really were.
Barbara had lost so much weight she was skeletal, all jutting bones and loose flesh. She could barely stand up on her own. Nothing the doctors tried had worked. Not the central line feeding tube for id.
"They're running away. They made it. But Chance got hit by a porcupine right in the
nose."
"Is Sassy really dead?" Amanda asked.
"Wait. Wait. No. She's alive. They're all back together
again," Barbara said.
"They're all going to be OK, aren't they?" Amanda asked.
"They're going to find their family? Make it home?"
"Yeah, they'll make it," Barbara said. "They're going to make it
home."
In the end, that's what we all yearn for, isn't it? To find our family. To make it to that place called home.
Watching Barbara and Amanda watching "Homeward Bound," Mary Ann thought about the incredible journey of these two girls. Both orphans. Brought to a place far from what they might have thought of as home. Watched over by social workers. Raised by nurses and other hired strangers. And then adoption. Each by a single woman.
June and Mary Ann sat in the second row, just behind Barbara and Amanda. The two women dabbed tissues at moist eyes. Barbara was right. They found their family. And made it back home. Safe and sound.
The voice of Chance, the orphaned dog who had been adopted, ended the movie:
"A new feeling came over me. I had a family. At last, for the first time in my life, I was
home."
The credits finished, the lights came up and Mary Ann kneeled to lift Barbara into her arms and to carry her to the car.
Barbara called Mary Ann "Mommy." Others called Mary Ann by another name, Sister Mary Ann LoGiudice. She is a Roman Catholic nun, a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order. She had adopted Barbara, making her both mother and nun.
Mary Ann's friend, June Carlson, a single white woman who lived with her mother, adopted Amanda. The women knew from the start that these two girls had HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS and, in those days, so often to death. The women knew it, even if they didn't tell the girls so in the beginning. They knew it and
that's why they saw each day as a gift.
This story is about a journey. Barbara's and her mother's. It is about finding family in the most unexpected places. About trying to get home.
Even when home is someplace you never imagined.
This is their
story. One chapter at a time.
Find
Out About The Book Publication:
"That Place Called Home" |
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