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By Samuel O'Neill
Through adoption, Maura
Walsh-O'Brien '81 and her husband, A.J.,
formed the family they always
wanted.
 It
is 10 a.m. and already above 90 degrees on a typically hazy, lazy midsummer
day in Old Lyme, Conn. Despite the heat, the vacation cottage where the
O'Briens are staying is awhirl with activity. Excited by the prospect
of sand castles, sea shells,
and the Long Island Sound's chilly blue waters, Andrew Joseph Min Hae O'Brien
IV, age six, and his sister, Rose Kim Walsh O'Brien, three, are already in their
bathing suits and darting from room to room, eager to embark on the short walk
to the beach. Maura Walsh-O'Brien '81 and her husband, A.J.
(Fairfield '80), meanwhile, are busily gathering beach furniture, towels, suntan
lotion, and books. Everyone is in a buoyant mood, and it's easy to see why: they
are all together, and a carefree summer day awaits.
Maura, on vacation from her job as an attorney with the Travelers Insurance Company
in Hartford, has another reason to
be happy. Days like this-and the family around her-are the fulfillment of a long-held
dream.
"I grew up as one of six children, and I always assumed I would get married and
have children-and more than one," she later
explains to a visitor. "In fact, at Holy Cross, my nickname was Maura 'Mom' Walsh.
There was something about me that made people think I was going to be a mother
someday."
The title of Mom became official in 1993, when she and A.J. welcomed their first
child, Andrew, into their family.
But Maura's journey to motherhood was unlike any she had anticipated-one that
confronted her with challenges and detours that took her deep inside herself
and as far away as South Korea.
That journey began, Maura says, in the early '90s, when she and A.J. decided
to have children, "and I just didn't get
pregnant."
As time passed the couple began to seek consultation from
medical specialists and to explore methods of enhancing the
chances of conception. They also started talking to a variety of couples-not
only those who had pursued fertility treatments, but also those who had
chosen
to adopt children.
At one point the O'Briens began a course of
early-stage fertility drugs but soon "took a break." One reason, Maura says,
is that they were "not comfortable personally with the science." Their decision
to stop also grew out of a conversation they had had with "a very wise person
who said to us, 'You really need to think about whether you want to be parents,
or whether you want to have a baby. Because they are not necessarily the same
thing. You can do one without doing the other. So you need to determine what
your goal is.'
"Asking myself that question-Do you want to be parents, or do you want to have
a baby?-was an absolute turning point
for me," Maura says. "I realized that what I really wanted was to be a parent,
and once I focused on that it was a lot easier to let go of the desire to have
a baby. I felt then that adoption wasn't just a viable option, but that it was
the only option for me. That was how it was going to work."
For A.J., the certainty came after attending a Holy Cross communion breakfast
in Hartford. At the breakfast, he and
Maura visited with Betsy and John Quinn '73, their daughter, Jennie, whom the
Quinns had adopted from South Korea, and their son, John Jr. '02. Several weeks
later, A.J. called the Quinns and asked them to reflect on their adoption experience.
Informed and inspired by the Quinns' example, A.J. told Maura that he, too, wanted
to begin building a family through adoption.
The couple then contacted Wide Horizons for Children, a
Waltham, Mass.-based agency that arranges both domestic and
international adoptions. The O'Briens chose to look to South Korea for a child, Maura
says, because at that time, of all possible locations, the Asian nation
promised the fewest impediments to adoption. The subsequent application
process-prospective parents must write several essays and sit for a series
of interviews-was long and intense, Maura says, but helpful. "It forces
you to really picture what your family is going to be like and how it
is going to live. "
After their application was approved, the
O'Briens were notified that a Korean child had been identified for them, a boy.
As part of the referral, the agency provided two snapshots of the child. When
the O'Briens held these pictures in their hands, Maura says, their sense of parenthood
became palpable.
"For us, having the pictures made a huge difference. It took the baby out of
the world of fantasy-dream-wonder. Once I saw that picture, once I knew where
that baby was located, he wasn't abstract-he
was my baby."
They named the boy Andrew and awaited his arrival "home," which
took place at Boston's Logan Airport on Sept. 27, 1993, a
day the O'Briens call Happy Day and celebrate each year as a family. A crowd
of relatives and friends gathered at the airport for Andrew's "delivery," an
event Maura recalls with a smile: "A greeter from Wide Horizons is on hand to
actually get the babies off the plane," she says. "The greeter comes off the
plane with your baby and says your name and hands you your
child and that's it!"
Three years later, on July 12, 1996, the O'Briens returned to Logan to welcome
their second child, a daughter, Rose, who
also was born in South Korea. "The agency had advised us to adopt from the same
country or at least from the same part of the world, so that neither child would
feel like he/she is 'the only one,'" Maura explains. "I see that as our kids
get older. They will talk about the fact that they were both born in Korea and
that they look like each other."
As the children have grown, the O'Briens have encouraged them to be proud of
their Korean heritage and, at the same time, to know that they are no different
from anyone in their class or neighborhood. This message is supported, she says,
by the children's experiences: Andrew's
school is "very diverse," and strong role models with whom the children come
into regular contact, such as pediatricians and teachers, are often people of
color. By being in touch with other families built through adoption,
the O'Briens also are trying to teach the children that "there are a lot of other
families out there that were created the way ours was, that we're not the only
family that looks this way or came together this way," Maura
says.
The O'Briens have always been very open with their children
about where they were born and how the four of them became
a family. "There has never been a moment when Andrew and Rose didn't know they
were adopted," Maura says. "It has just been a part of the fabric
of our family's life." Nevertheless, in 1997, Maura and A.J. felt it was important
for them to be able to tell their children about their earliest origins with
greater depth and specificity. And so, in June 1998, Maura joined a group of
other parents who had adopted Korean children on a "Homeland
Tour" of South Korea.
"It was an absolutely phenomenal experience," Maura recalls. Among her many stops
was the town of Jinju, where she met the doctor who delivered Rose. She also
visited the foster mother who took
care of Rose in Masan City prior to Rose's departure for America (it was the
first time any parent of a former charge had come to see her and "she
was thrilled").
For Maura, the goals of the trip were accomplished
in abundance. "When Andrew asks, 'Where was I born?' we can point to photographs
and say, 'Well here's the town, here's the building, and here's the front
door.' They're tiny little details, but having them makes things a lot less mysterious.
Those details say, 'You came into the world the way every other kid in your class
came into the world.' The lack of those details, however ordinary they may be,
is bigger than the presence of them."
The O'Briens know particulars about the children's birth parents as well. They
plan to share this information with Andrew
and Rose "as they grow and are able to understand more." Until then, they are
keeping it private because, they say, the information belongs not to them but
to their children. "When they want to know this story, we will tell them, and
they can decide whether or not to share their personal history," Maura says.
For the O'Briens, parenthood has brought the same
personal and professional challenges it would bring to anybody else.
In order to spend
more time with the children, Maura has switched to a four-day
work week and spends less time out of town on business. A.J., a public
school teacher,
now spends his summers at home.
Along with the demands, however, have come many joys, like sunny days together
at the beach. In addition, Maura says, "it's getting easier. Rose is out of
diapers. Andrew can make his own bed. This is the first summer I've been able
to read on the beach again."
Sam O'Neill is a communications consultant from Brighton,
Mass.
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