My friend Apryl, who is with Antares Foundation, sent me two photos she found of Michael from July 2005. I looked at them and wanted to cry. He told us just the other day how his head was shaved when he first went to the orphanage.
Mike's on the far right. He was 9 years old and he looked about 5.
This is a photo that was made recently:
He looks like an entirely different child, huh?! [This is right before Alesia carried Coco up to bed - Coco loves being carried like this!]
I looked at the kids in the photo above and I thought, what has happened to them? Where are they now?
Michael's orphanage was one of the better ones for older children I have seen anywhere, but once the kids turn 17 or 18 and finish school, they are on their own. They usually have no family to help, no resources.
Michael is writing little "stories" - just paragraphs, really - about his life in Kazakhstan. Mother works with him every day for a couple of hours, tutoring him, and he has made strides already. I am wondering if the stories could be knit together for a book of some kind. He writes honestly and pretty well for an 11 year old who barely knew any English a year ago. He talks about playing with a friend and skipping school - in first grade. He writes about when he first went to the orphanage and they shaved his head. He has told us how he hid from the authorities when they tried to take him from his mother, even though she had been so horribly neglectful and abusive. If he can find his "voice" as a writer, I think it would be therapeutic for him to write all this down, before he forgets it or blocks it out.
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Alesia was better last night. She and Michael ate pizza for dinner, a rare treat, and we all watched Hello Dolly. I sang along to a lot of the music, and Alesia didn't complain.I did a dinner theater production of Hello Dolly when I was 17, and believe me I know every word to every song - we ran 8 shows a week for 5 weeks. It's a great show, though. Mother actually watched with us, which is a rare treat.
I felt the presence of my dad with us. He loved "Dolly." He and Mother saw it on Broadway with Carol Channing in the 1960's. Seeing it always makes me think of him.
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I was dismayed to see that George Carlin died over the weekend.
I grew up seeing him on Laugh In, and later I heard his comedy albums and memorized some of his routines, just because they were so clever and thought-provoking. I can still do part of his routine comparing football and baseball. When he did Saturday Night Live I would stay up and watch it until the end, because he always ratcheted up the humor level on the show.
Classic Carlin: We buy houses just to hold all our STUFF. We collect more stuff over the years, and we have to buy a bigger house to hold it all. // I don't take a camera on vacation. I have a trick I use - I just look at something and REMEMBER it. // I've never understood why you can't sing at the dinner table. You can stand right next to it and sing your a** off!
Carlin was raised Catholic but turned away from the church and was openly antagonistic about it, and abotu all religion, basically. Sometimes his rants in recent years were really distasteful to me, if not downright offensive. However, I still read his books and watched him whenever I could, because he always said things that were intelligent and made me think about the world a little differently - even if they ticked me off. I will miss the occasional sighting of him on TV or in print, because his voice was unique, and it's stilled forever.
