One year ago today, we met Ethan for the first time in his foster family’s home where we spent an hour together, getting acquainted — well, technically it was February 11, 2008 (10:00 am) in Seoul, Korea, but it was February 10, 2008 (8:00 pm) in the Eastern Time Zone, which is the time zone recorded for the posts we wrote in Korea.
This blog now has nearly 600 posts and 1,000 Words, where we simply posted the photo (above), is one of my favorites. We came back later and shared some details after we had a chance to process the experience of the morning.
In that post (see The Meeting), Joleen wrote …
At first, he wondered who these strange people were.
Several months later, I reflected on that first moment of seeing and meeting Ethan. It was an interesting experience, one that’s hard to communicate well. When we saw Ethan, we saw an 8-month-old baby boy that we had come to know through photos and reports by the social worker, but at the same time, it was clear that he did not know us!
Ethan got to know us a little and when we showed up the next day at the Social Welfare Society Hospital to bring him into our lives, he smiled at us (a smile that would later be replaced by panicked screaming, though!).
Wow. Lots of memories. All good. Except for the panicked screaming.