CHAPTER ONE:
Grey mist-shrouded mountains gradually lengthen and stretch and flatten out, like a cat laying itself out in the sun, relaxing and opening. Silent peaks transform into the structured squares and rectangles of rice paddies, shimmering with brilliant green and the sparkle of water. What was dark and mysterious, secretive even, has become vibrant and colorful and full of life.
“It is not permissible to take photographs from the airplane.” The human voice over the intercom contrasts vividly with the raw scene of nature below us. I continue to rest my cheek on the smooth plastic covering the window, my eyes taking the pictures that I will keep with me forever. I have spent the past 24 hours in the air, transferring three times: in Chicago, Seoul and Hong Kong. I have come to meet my daughter. She doesn’t know that I am coming yet. I sit and think about Lily, close my eyes, and try to home-in on her little body. In my mind’s eye I travel to a crib in a room in an orphanage in a city called Lang Son in the north of Vietnam. I have made this mental trip many times during the past four weeks while sitting on the couch in the living room of my home in Norfolk, Virginia. In my wallet is a photo of a round-faced one-year-old girl, with a pointed little chin and a serious expression on her face. It is a photo that I have fallen in love with and looked at many times a day, devouring the tiniest details hungrily. Her Vietnamese name is Ly Thi Thanh. We will share our lives together. She doesn’t know that yet, either.
...read more of chapter oneHERE...
Much more than a story of International Adoption, Finding Katherine is a rich travelogue of, and pilgrimage to, modern-day Vietnam. In this remarkable and absorbing tale, the author, Ellen Fitzenrider, journeys to Vietnam to submit the paperwork to adopt a one-year-old girl from an orphanage in Lang Son province near the Chinese border. Planning on touring Southeast Asia for six weeks while she awaits the official adoption ceremony, she is stunned when a child different from the one in the picture that she had received is placed in her arms. The orphanage director then tells her that she may take this new little girl with her on her travels.
So starts the family of mother and daughter for Ellen and Katherine Huong. Together they explore their new relationship with each other as well as the rich culture of Vietnam. From Hanoi in the North, to the Imperial City of Hue, to mystical Ha Long Bay on the South China Sea, their wondrous journey takes them from the heart of the city to the remote countryside, from temple and pagoda to former American prison. Along the way they meet shopkeeper and cyclo driver, Buddhist monks and nuns, other adopting families, and even a ghost. Throughout their journey, Ellen explores her spiritual roots, and how motherhood is redefining her Buddhist practice, and discovers that destiny is not always what you expect it to be.
Trade paperback, 240 pages
Includes map and adoption resources.
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ISBN 0-9745694-3-7
Thanks to all the readers who made a second printing of
Finding Katherine possible!
