Baby Update

Mirabella, the girl who loves to stare at her fingernails, had visitors. Her parents came, bearing flowers & religious icons, which they put near her crib.



We tried primal scream therapy with Io, the boy who can't be touched. This entailed swaddling him in a large blanket, holding & hugging him very tightly, & walking around & around in circles for an hour. He screamed bloody murder throughout. The nurses thought this enterprize extremely strange. Back in his crib afterwards, though, his body was more relaxed. The next day, he let a volunteer sit him on her lap for a few minutes. The day after that, he let a volunteer stroke his head gently for quite a while. And he hasn't been biting himself.



Christian Andre, the boy who began to discover that the world is not all bad, is gone. The authorities moved him to a children's disabled center to await a judicial hearing to determine whether he will return to his parents (a.k.a., live in a shed with the cats & dogs). At the disabled center, he will lie in a crib all day with little stimulation. He surely will not receive foot massages & fresh oranges slices, as he has with us.



They removed the IV from Delia's scalp & put it in her foot. Is that progress? Don't know.



-- la reverdere

She Sews Those Intricately Embroidered Blouses From Eastern Europe

-- la reverdere

Painted Monasteries Are Not What They Seem

From afar, the pictures painted on the exterior & interior of Romania's Painted Monasteries around 1415 look like orderly processions of saints, but up close there are a lot of beheadings going on.



-- la reverdere

Men Going Out To Chop Down Trees For Firewood

-- la reverdere

Sometimes I Want To Get Out of Dodge Too

-- la reverdere

Sometimes You Need To Get Out of Town Even When You're Doing Good In The World

On the Road in the Wilds of Northeastern Romania, About to Pass a Horse & Cart




Clothes Ice-Stiff on Clothesline in Front of Mud House



Landscape Passing Fast is Dizzy & Romantic



-- la reverdere

Delia's Feeling Better Today

-- la reverdere

Down The Hall in The Isolation Room

Down the hall, there are 3 babies in isolation because they have retroviruses. They sleep in those infamous iron cribs from the communist period. 




Mirabella is 3 months old & has Down Syndrome. She has a family, or so they say, & was brought here because her family's village house is so cold, they feared for her life. There are some doubts about whether her family will come back to get her. Hospital rules here dictate that mothers must stay in- hospital with their sick kids, in the same bed, throughout the hospitalization, so the fact that Mirabella's mother has not been here is notable. Her droopy eye is a birth defect. Her hands are like starfish & she loves to hold up her hand & gaze at her nails, as if assessing a fresh manicure. She's a serious, fast, noisy eater. If you hold her against you, she'll fall asleep -- a soft, warm puddle of baby. 



Little Mouse weighed 1.2 pounds at birth. Now he is 3 months old & weighs 4 pounds. He has serious heart defects. His fanny & legs are streaked dark blue, due to circulatory problems. He likes people to talk to him. He watches who comes & who goes. His family, too, is in absentia. 



Marius is dying. He's 10 months old, with profound, multiple birth defects. He cannot see & does not respond to sound or touch. He's scary-delicate, & scary because you can see the angel of death hovering over him, but we pick him up & pace the room with him, whispering to him. Even in the face of inevitability, people press on, as if. 



-- la reverdere

Delia Is So Surprised To Find Herself In This Situation

This is Delia, origins unknown. She was abandoned right after being born. No one has claimed her. She has no arms or legs. She's 11 months old. Right now she has an IV in her head & she's bandaged because she has an upper respiratory system infection that is not responding to treatment. Her temp ranges from 102-104. When the fever hits her hard, she cries piteously. The nurses soak a dishrag in rubbing alcohol, then pin it around her waist, keeping her clothes soaking wet all day.

Delia is an institutionalized child & likely always will be. This is most unfortunate, because her cognitive development seems normal. With prosthetics, she could live some kind of life out in the world. Now, she exhibits the signs of institutionalized children; she rocks herself to sleep by lying on her back & whipping her head from side-to-side for long periods. She has been so habituated to being fed in a crib, that if you cradle her in your arms to give her a bottle, she's crabby & flaily & won't eat.

Delia has many mothers here at the end of the hall in the hospital in Barlad, Romania. The staff & volunteers love her & are generous with their kisses. She provides hours of entertainments with her repertoire of babbling. She sticks her tongue out & makes a wet pfffffft sound. If you do the same back to her...well...you look mighty foolish, but you are, in fact, having a scintillating conversation with a girl without arms or legs.

Delia Kissing Her Baby So Sweetly



-- la reverdere

Christopher Wonders Where He belongs

-- la reverdere

The Boy Who Can't Be Touched

The thing that breaks you into little pieces while working with the disabled children of Romania is the trust in their eyes as they look into your face. Even the kids who were unutterably abused & have no reason to trust...if you hold them gently & speak in a soft voice, they do trust.

Most of them do, anyway.

This little boy, IO, cringes when touched, when spoken to, when picked up.  Despite his many developmental & medical problems, this reaction doesn't seem clinical. It seems like a cry: "Something so bad happened to me that I want out of the human race." His best & only comfort is himself...his thumb, his repetitive rocking in his crib.  Will he ever come out? Does anyone know? Whether he does or not, he still eats your heart with a little, tiny spoon.

-- la reverdere

Learning That The World Is Not All Bad

This children's residence is not an orphanage. Orphanage is a bad name.  Humans do a thing & name it & see thereafter that it's terrible. Seeing that it's terrible, they call it by another name. Is that terrible thing now gone then?

Is a child without parents any more an orphan than this boy, Christian Andre, whom authorities just removed from his home because his parents had him living in the barn with the cats & dogs? He is 4 years old. He cannot walk or talk or sit or see well. Yesterday morning, new at this children's residence in the wing of the hospital in Barlad, Romania, he held his body rigid, negatively reactive to all stimuli. He flailed, drew back, swung his head vigorously from side to side for hours as he lay in a crib.

Then, over the course of one small day, yesterday, he unwound due to pure human love & the gentle touch & tender words of strangers from America. He lolled! He luxuriated as we massaged his bird-like limbs. He leaned against our bodies like a little potentate, king of this new world of nice people & full bellies.

-- la reverdere

Todays Can Look A Lot Like Yesterdays

Horses & carts are a big part of life here.

-- la reverdere