An email Pat sent to his family tonight...

It's difficult to convey, the concept of an orphanage, and truly pass
along any sense of what it really is. Where we live, orphanages are
historical relics, like a rotary phone. I suspect much if not all of our
perception of "the orphanage" is attributable to Charles Dickens whose
fiction we forcibly consumed in high school. A desperate place of cold,
foul food; harsh living conditions, a brutal emotional backwater where
cruelness consumes the human spirit. Perhaps then but not now, not here.


Since you have no history with orphanages( except for when we wanted our
parents to send one or the other of our siblings there) let me advise
that this one is clean, the children are well cared for(as much as one
may glean in two days ) and have all the physical basics. Its not fancy
but its working   These children are well behaved and take care of one
another. No doubt there are juvenile  rivalries(they stay here until
they graduate from the 11th grade which is the end of high school) but
the familial compassion we all assume in our lives is likewise present
among these groups of kids. They take care of each other, well, I  might
add.  

What is equally clear is that these kids, of all ages, truly hunger for
a relationship with an adult that resembles their mental picture of what
a parent is. I suppose my task here in part is to throw a morsel at that
hunger. I make no pretense that I am changing the world or even a life.
Hopefully I am changing a week of a life and if someone else the steps
into the breach after me, well, we might collectively actually change a
life.

As for the kids,             How would they know what a parental
relationship looks like any more than we would of  what an orphanage is
like. It's similarly all fiction to them.

But somewhere in the human genome is something that compels us to long
for family. When that longing is continually satisfied, the importance
of those relationships can be diminished or forgotten. Know that my time
here has made me miss all of you more than if I'd just spent another
week not connecting with you at work.  To that end I've received more
than
I could ever give.

Remember each other and be thankful for your parents in spite of our
overwhelming deficiencies.

These are really loveable children who didn't win the lottery as we did
at birth. Irrespective of the challenges, they are surviving and God
willing might just thrive.  It makes me humble since my accomplishments,
big and little, came on the backs of two great parents(and 4 siblings
who constantly knocked my rough edges off). There are really no soloists
in life.

So today be thankful for what you have however meager,    and think
about what you might do for someone who didnt/doesnt have the advantages
we do.  

Next time I'll tell you about why we have been laughing non stop for the
past two days.

Yo bro, son, friend and (most proudly) dad,

Pat