Epilogue! aka The Final Entry!
Nineteen years. It’s been almost 19 years since my very first LiveJournal entry kicking off 3 months in Romania, and exactly 20 years ago this month since my very first Romania trip with Global Volunteers in May 2002!
Fourteen years. It’s been almost 14 years since my last Livejournal entry ending my 2 ½ year stint living in Romania. I last wrote in September 2008, then went radio silent for the rest of my trip…and for the next fourteen years, apparently!
Geordie and I moved out of Strada Minerva in December, and traveled as far as Amsterdam together before saying the saddest of goodbyes there in Schipol Airport. We went to our separate gates and cried like babies. We hoped, but we never knew if we were going to see each other again. Or be back to Romania again. Or how our kids were going to do without us. Or how we were going to do without our kids, or without Romania, or without each other. It was an extremely rough transition back. My initial plan was to write a wrap-up post when I got back home, but it was too hard. Writing that post would have been admitting it was done. I poured myself into making a masterpiece of a Shutterfly photobook instead, chronicling every aspect I could think of of me and Geordie’s 2 ½ years in Romania. It took me months, and poring through thousands if not tens of thousands of pictures, and so very much reminiscing - it was therapeutic, and also made me happy because I knew I was making this book not only for myself, but a second copy for Geordie as well. It is a true work of art, if I may say so myself! It has sections on our kids, our friends, our different apartments over the years, our Dacia, our love for food, our trips, all sorts of little stories! And brain dumps we’d gifted each other with on our last day of ALLLL of the memories we could think of of our time in Romania!! It probably is my most prized possession, even now!
What have I been up to those last fourteen years? Have Geordie and I seen each other again? Or been back to Romania? Or seen our kids again? Where to begin?!?
I’ll cut to the chase and say at least this much for starters: A pesky little ocean was never going to keep Geordie and I apart! We should never have doubted!! For a long while we still managed to see each other every single year after we said that “final goodbye” at Schipol, making it up to 15 years straight we’d seen each other! Due to COVID and other reasons I’ll get to, we now haven’t seen each other in person in almost four years, BUT we’re in touch regularly from across the ocean (yay technology!) and I have tickets bought for a visit to Wales in October! She's got three little ones, and I haven't seen them since the youngest was an itty-bitty newborn - can't wait!
The first few years our reunions were in Romania, with one amazing year she visited the US for her birthday, until 2012 when our reunion was in the UK where I was a bridesmaid in her wedding to Alex, who she incidentally had met in Romania. The next few years then were mostly in Wales because she started having babies! But during that time, we were busy with another project: Running our own charity! We decided to start our own charity named STAR International - Support through Therapy, Advocacy and Resources. At first it was just Geordie and I with Jo (from TAPA ’04) as an additional board member who has since dropped out since she started a family of her own; other members added are all TAPA-related from later trips….with the exception of…..the one and only….JODIEHONEY from my TAPA ’03 trip!!! She’s an ABA therapist now and joined us as one of our board members and has been on some of our return trips with us!! If you would’ve told me 19 years ago that my teenaged roomie would someday be helping me run a charity, I never would’ve believed you! But she fits right in with the rest of the crew and I love it!!!!!
One other thing I’ll add while I’m thinking of it - that 2012 trip I made to the UK - I made a grand tour around and saw a whole bunch of old Ro folks!! And Tansy from Guate!!! From the Ro crew I saw Tom (who we sadly lost last year to depression ☹), Rachel Anderson, Rach Howard, Lydia, Lorraine, Kate (caught part of the Paralympic marathon with her and her little daughter Autumn!), Rachael Buffham, Celia, Jo, and of course Geordie!
I’m never going to be able to write every single update from my life, so I’ll just try to hit a few key points:
Family: I lived with my parents for a few months after getting home until my tenant Andrew Cherry was ready to move out - since then, I’ve been back on dear old Waterfall Glen Blvd! Aiden is now 14 and just graduated 8th grade. My other nephew Duncan came along a few years later and just turned 11. George had a bad stroke a year or two after I got back, and my mom has been his full-time caregiver ever since - lately I go over there every weekend to help with getting him changed and up to the recliner with a hoyer lift. We lost a bunch of aunts and uncles since my last entry, unfortunately - Uncle Al, Aunt Carol, Uncle Charlie, Aunt Barb, Uncle Steve, Uncle Pat, Uncle Johnny. And Aunt Bridget is hanging on at a memory care facility with Alzheimer’s, went to visit her last weekend with my mom. Lots of new additions to help fill the voids - Maggie has a new little one Stella (Cavan is a great big brother), and loads of other cousins are now married with kids.
Career: Probably my biggest change to come out of my time in Romania - a career change! I came home at the end of 2008 and felt like my soul was being sucked out of me every time I applied for an IT job. I hoped I wouldn’t get it because I just couldn’t see myself working an unfulfilling desk job after all the good we’d been doing in Romania. Abridged version, I looked into all sorts of career change options until my old Ro friend Jenny suggested I look into OT. Hesitant at first because I thought it was the same as PT, she eventually convinced me it was a good fit because it was so similar to what we did with our kids in Romania - helping them become more functional and independent to improve their quality of life. I started taking pre-requisites at COD, wrote a kick-ass application essay to UIC, and got early acceptance to start in August 2010! Two years later (including internships in pediatric mental health, a school district, and a hospital), I graduated and got my first job in acute care at Edward Hospital. I’m about to hit my 10-year anniversary and have the best co-workers around! There’s even a nurse on my ortho floor, Cristina, who is from Moldova but speaks Romanian so we talk fairly often in Romanian, and every six months or so I get a Romanian-speaking patient so I can show off my language skills that I haven’t *completely* lost yet!
Starting my own family: After coming out of denial and recognizing that the reason I never dated guys is cause I dig chicks instead (how did I miss all the signs?!), I waited a few years to see if Miss Right would appear (she didn’t, not yet) before deciding to tackle the parenting thing solo. I knew international adoption wouldn’t be an option due to the gay thing, so I looked more seriously into fostering, the final kick being when I read an article that DCFS was specifically seeking LGBTQ+ foster homes for LGBTQ+ kids. My time to step up and shine! The application process took close to a year, and then once licensed I had to postpone accepting my first kid for another 6 months to save up vacation time, as I’d had to use it all up for a long and serious George hospital stay. But everything happens for a reason, and I got calls for my two kids within a couple days of each other in August 2018. First I got a call on Nick, and I expressed interest but I never got a call back. Then I got a call for Kaitlyn (I’ve got audio clips from my phone voice mail somewhere with the initial calls for both <3 ). Nick was 16 at the time, Kaitlyn 17 (and non-LGBTQ but she sounded like a good fit!). I talked to Kaitlyn the next day, we agreed to go for it and she would come live with me as long as I let her visit her then-boyfriend Anthony in Rockford…and then within a couple of hours I got a call back from Nick’s caseworker saying she heard I was interested in him and wanted to give me more information! I couldn’t go back on my word to Kaitlyn, so it broke my heart but I had to say no on taking Nick - I only had one spare bedroom, and knew it wouldn’t be good for me to take two teens right off the bat as a first-time single foster mom. Kaitlyn settled in well, then a few months later the day before Thanksgiving I got a call from Nick’s caseworker again - they were still trying to find him a home, and did I have any availability now? I put my thinking cap on because how could I pass up a second chance at helping my Nick!? After discussing with Kaitlyn to make sure she was on board, I ended up hiring a contractor to build a wall to turn my loft upstairs into another bedroom. We had visits December through March, and April 1st 2019 Nicky moved in with us. Kaitlyn moved out about a year later (we got coordinating sun-moon-stars tattoos in Jan 2020, just before COVID started, to commemorate 18 months of having my two 18 year olds in my life) … and within a month of officially moving out, got pregnant (on purpose) with a guy she’d known for two weeks. Adalina Louise is now 14 months old and the light of our lives! I watch her every Thursday night through Saturday night, and she is the biggest sweetheart - and a pretty fast runner now, too! Uncle Nicky (who moved out in August 2021) has stepped into the uncle role amazingly, and Kaitlyn is a great mom. So even though neither technically live with me anymore, I still have the honor of talking to both of them just about daily and seeing them both 2-3 times a week, infinite texts in between. The three of them bring me so much joy…and stress, but mostly joy!!! Life is good 😊
Pets: Sadly I lost Racal a year or two after I got home from Romania. I think he was around 14 if I remember right. A couple of years later I rescued Angel (looked like Rascal, only a lot bigger!) who turned out to be 10 years old! I had her for four years, the last two of which overlapped with my next rescue Freddie, who was four when I got him. Now Freddie is here sleeping on the couch with me and very gray but plugging along! Ty is the latest addition, a “covid dog”, that I got about 2 years ago now and is currently sleeping on the other couch! Nick also talked me into a hamster he named Cookie Dough a couple of years ago that I’ve been taking care of for the past year since he moved out, and after a rescue fish from Aiden didn’t make it, I revamped his tank here with more fish and frogs, and they’re mostly all hanging on a year and a half later!
Friends: Life is so tied up with my kids and grandbaby and parents and work that I don’t have much of a social life these days outside of coworkers! I barely even see my nephews! Christina is still very much part of the family, haven’t talked to Jenny a ton since she also got busy with her family (she and Shad adopted a girl from India) but we’re on each other’s radar screens. We’ve had a few Guatemala reunions with most of the crew (except Tansy and Chris) - most recently was over zoom (thanks, Covid), but others were in Mississippi, Cape Cod, Long Island. I’ve also been down to visit Angie on her own a couple of times - the first time in 2009 when she gave me the final push to change careers with her infamous words: “Bridge, you’re done with that shit!” As for old Romania pals, I obviously keep most in touch with Geordie, Jodie and our other STAR board member (Rach, Jules, Erin) over our charity business, and most others more peripherally through Facebook. I mentioned I’ve made several trips back over the years (and have seen Steffi and co. several times), and on my UK trips to see Geordie I try to also see a few other VIPs like Kate and Lorraine. I even saw Niko on one of my visits, who has been living in the UK for a visit - it happened to be the week the Cubs won the World Series!!!! I was bummed to be leaving when all my Cubs dreams were coming true, but happy to be seeing my Ro peeps!
I’m trying to think of there are any other tidbits. While I was preparing for and in grad school I took in a few roommates, some better than others! I had Renae and Jenny (good ones!), Joy and Sarah-with-an-h (not so good ones!), and then Carissa (who to this day I still thank the Craigslist gods for bringing us together - we’re still good friends and even though she lives in the city now, we’ve road tripped across state lines 9 years running, plus a trip to Romania and Wales together - go, Cabrizzle!). I’ve tried to do volunteer work in my spare time where I can, it’s been slow lately because of the kids and Addy but until then I was most involved with Youth Outlook staffing drop-in centers for LGBTQ youth - met a lot of great people there! And after a break due to COVID, I’m back traveling more again! Minnesota, Wales and Romania are my fallbacks that I visit more than any one person should lol, but I try to sneak in other adventures when I can - so far this year I’ve done the Dells with the kids and Addy, St. Louis with Carissa, and Seattle/Olympic Peninsula with Nick (on a Twilight-hunting trip!). I can’t think of anything else major, but overall life is good!
I talked to Jonathan from my second GV trip in 2002 on the phone for a couple of hours today, and then posted this post on Facebook:
“Long post, but I'm feeling reflective! Twenty years ago this month I went on an adventure that would change my life in ways I never could have imagined. I jumped on a plane by myself to volunteer in a failure-to-thrive clinic in rural Romania for 3 weeks...and never looked back! My trips to Romania grew from weeks to months to years, then to starting our own non-profit with "Romania soul mates" I'd connected with over the years. The experience also lit a spark in me for volunteering in general, inspired a total career change from IT to OT, and helped prepare me to be a foster parent. I feel like 95% of the [good-hearted and fabulous!] people in my life who I'm not related to - from fellow volunteers (Romania to Guatemala to locally) to grad school pals to coworkers to folks we've met through our non-profit to everyone I've met on my fostering journey, and even some kiddos we used to work with and have reconnected with - have all crossed my path as a direct result of that one random little decision 20 years ago to go hold babies in Romania for a few weeks! Point being: be adventuroushen you can because you never know what amazing places the road may take you and what even more amazing people you'll meet along the way!! The little ones are always in my heart, and I appreciate all of you grownups, too, for making my life richer!!"
That about sums things up! I’ve had so much fun with my Romania chapter (and love that it still continues in a different capacity through STAR), and have met so many amazing people as a result of the twists and turns life has taken me on! Closing out the LiveJournal chapter of my life adventures, but hope there are many more to come! <3
Fourteen years. It’s been almost 14 years since my last Livejournal entry ending my 2 ½ year stint living in Romania. I last wrote in September 2008, then went radio silent for the rest of my trip…and for the next fourteen years, apparently!
Geordie and I moved out of Strada Minerva in December, and traveled as far as Amsterdam together before saying the saddest of goodbyes there in Schipol Airport. We went to our separate gates and cried like babies. We hoped, but we never knew if we were going to see each other again. Or be back to Romania again. Or how our kids were going to do without us. Or how we were going to do without our kids, or without Romania, or without each other. It was an extremely rough transition back. My initial plan was to write a wrap-up post when I got back home, but it was too hard. Writing that post would have been admitting it was done. I poured myself into making a masterpiece of a Shutterfly photobook instead, chronicling every aspect I could think of of me and Geordie’s 2 ½ years in Romania. It took me months, and poring through thousands if not tens of thousands of pictures, and so very much reminiscing - it was therapeutic, and also made me happy because I knew I was making this book not only for myself, but a second copy for Geordie as well. It is a true work of art, if I may say so myself! It has sections on our kids, our friends, our different apartments over the years, our Dacia, our love for food, our trips, all sorts of little stories! And brain dumps we’d gifted each other with on our last day of ALLLL of the memories we could think of of our time in Romania!! It probably is my most prized possession, even now!
What have I been up to those last fourteen years? Have Geordie and I seen each other again? Or been back to Romania? Or seen our kids again? Where to begin?!?
I’ll cut to the chase and say at least this much for starters: A pesky little ocean was never going to keep Geordie and I apart! We should never have doubted!! For a long while we still managed to see each other every single year after we said that “final goodbye” at Schipol, making it up to 15 years straight we’d seen each other! Due to COVID and other reasons I’ll get to, we now haven’t seen each other in person in almost four years, BUT we’re in touch regularly from across the ocean (yay technology!) and I have tickets bought for a visit to Wales in October! She's got three little ones, and I haven't seen them since the youngest was an itty-bitty newborn - can't wait!
The first few years our reunions were in Romania, with one amazing year she visited the US for her birthday, until 2012 when our reunion was in the UK where I was a bridesmaid in her wedding to Alex, who she incidentally had met in Romania. The next few years then were mostly in Wales because she started having babies! But during that time, we were busy with another project: Running our own charity! We decided to start our own charity named STAR International - Support through Therapy, Advocacy and Resources. At first it was just Geordie and I with Jo (from TAPA ’04) as an additional board member who has since dropped out since she started a family of her own; other members added are all TAPA-related from later trips….with the exception of…..the one and only….JODIEHONEY from my TAPA ’03 trip!!! She’s an ABA therapist now and joined us as one of our board members and has been on some of our return trips with us!! If you would’ve told me 19 years ago that my teenaged roomie would someday be helping me run a charity, I never would’ve believed you! But she fits right in with the rest of the crew and I love it!!!!!
One other thing I’ll add while I’m thinking of it - that 2012 trip I made to the UK - I made a grand tour around and saw a whole bunch of old Ro folks!! And Tansy from Guate!!! From the Ro crew I saw Tom (who we sadly lost last year to depression ☹), Rachel Anderson, Rach Howard, Lydia, Lorraine, Kate (caught part of the Paralympic marathon with her and her little daughter Autumn!), Rachael Buffham, Celia, Jo, and of course Geordie!
I’m never going to be able to write every single update from my life, so I’ll just try to hit a few key points:
Family: I lived with my parents for a few months after getting home until my tenant Andrew Cherry was ready to move out - since then, I’ve been back on dear old Waterfall Glen Blvd! Aiden is now 14 and just graduated 8th grade. My other nephew Duncan came along a few years later and just turned 11. George had a bad stroke a year or two after I got back, and my mom has been his full-time caregiver ever since - lately I go over there every weekend to help with getting him changed and up to the recliner with a hoyer lift. We lost a bunch of aunts and uncles since my last entry, unfortunately - Uncle Al, Aunt Carol, Uncle Charlie, Aunt Barb, Uncle Steve, Uncle Pat, Uncle Johnny. And Aunt Bridget is hanging on at a memory care facility with Alzheimer’s, went to visit her last weekend with my mom. Lots of new additions to help fill the voids - Maggie has a new little one Stella (Cavan is a great big brother), and loads of other cousins are now married with kids.
Career: Probably my biggest change to come out of my time in Romania - a career change! I came home at the end of 2008 and felt like my soul was being sucked out of me every time I applied for an IT job. I hoped I wouldn’t get it because I just couldn’t see myself working an unfulfilling desk job after all the good we’d been doing in Romania. Abridged version, I looked into all sorts of career change options until my old Ro friend Jenny suggested I look into OT. Hesitant at first because I thought it was the same as PT, she eventually convinced me it was a good fit because it was so similar to what we did with our kids in Romania - helping them become more functional and independent to improve their quality of life. I started taking pre-requisites at COD, wrote a kick-ass application essay to UIC, and got early acceptance to start in August 2010! Two years later (including internships in pediatric mental health, a school district, and a hospital), I graduated and got my first job in acute care at Edward Hospital. I’m about to hit my 10-year anniversary and have the best co-workers around! There’s even a nurse on my ortho floor, Cristina, who is from Moldova but speaks Romanian so we talk fairly often in Romanian, and every six months or so I get a Romanian-speaking patient so I can show off my language skills that I haven’t *completely* lost yet!
Starting my own family: After coming out of denial and recognizing that the reason I never dated guys is cause I dig chicks instead (how did I miss all the signs?!), I waited a few years to see if Miss Right would appear (she didn’t, not yet) before deciding to tackle the parenting thing solo. I knew international adoption wouldn’t be an option due to the gay thing, so I looked more seriously into fostering, the final kick being when I read an article that DCFS was specifically seeking LGBTQ+ foster homes for LGBTQ+ kids. My time to step up and shine! The application process took close to a year, and then once licensed I had to postpone accepting my first kid for another 6 months to save up vacation time, as I’d had to use it all up for a long and serious George hospital stay. But everything happens for a reason, and I got calls for my two kids within a couple days of each other in August 2018. First I got a call on Nick, and I expressed interest but I never got a call back. Then I got a call for Kaitlyn (I’ve got audio clips from my phone voice mail somewhere with the initial calls for both <3 ). Nick was 16 at the time, Kaitlyn 17 (and non-LGBTQ but she sounded like a good fit!). I talked to Kaitlyn the next day, we agreed to go for it and she would come live with me as long as I let her visit her then-boyfriend Anthony in Rockford…and then within a couple of hours I got a call back from Nick’s caseworker saying she heard I was interested in him and wanted to give me more information! I couldn’t go back on my word to Kaitlyn, so it broke my heart but I had to say no on taking Nick - I only had one spare bedroom, and knew it wouldn’t be good for me to take two teens right off the bat as a first-time single foster mom. Kaitlyn settled in well, then a few months later the day before Thanksgiving I got a call from Nick’s caseworker again - they were still trying to find him a home, and did I have any availability now? I put my thinking cap on because how could I pass up a second chance at helping my Nick!? After discussing with Kaitlyn to make sure she was on board, I ended up hiring a contractor to build a wall to turn my loft upstairs into another bedroom. We had visits December through March, and April 1st 2019 Nicky moved in with us. Kaitlyn moved out about a year later (we got coordinating sun-moon-stars tattoos in Jan 2020, just before COVID started, to commemorate 18 months of having my two 18 year olds in my life) … and within a month of officially moving out, got pregnant (on purpose) with a guy she’d known for two weeks. Adalina Louise is now 14 months old and the light of our lives! I watch her every Thursday night through Saturday night, and she is the biggest sweetheart - and a pretty fast runner now, too! Uncle Nicky (who moved out in August 2021) has stepped into the uncle role amazingly, and Kaitlyn is a great mom. So even though neither technically live with me anymore, I still have the honor of talking to both of them just about daily and seeing them both 2-3 times a week, infinite texts in between. The three of them bring me so much joy…and stress, but mostly joy!!! Life is good 😊
Pets: Sadly I lost Racal a year or two after I got home from Romania. I think he was around 14 if I remember right. A couple of years later I rescued Angel (looked like Rascal, only a lot bigger!) who turned out to be 10 years old! I had her for four years, the last two of which overlapped with my next rescue Freddie, who was four when I got him. Now Freddie is here sleeping on the couch with me and very gray but plugging along! Ty is the latest addition, a “covid dog”, that I got about 2 years ago now and is currently sleeping on the other couch! Nick also talked me into a hamster he named Cookie Dough a couple of years ago that I’ve been taking care of for the past year since he moved out, and after a rescue fish from Aiden didn’t make it, I revamped his tank here with more fish and frogs, and they’re mostly all hanging on a year and a half later!
Friends: Life is so tied up with my kids and grandbaby and parents and work that I don’t have much of a social life these days outside of coworkers! I barely even see my nephews! Christina is still very much part of the family, haven’t talked to Jenny a ton since she also got busy with her family (she and Shad adopted a girl from India) but we’re on each other’s radar screens. We’ve had a few Guatemala reunions with most of the crew (except Tansy and Chris) - most recently was over zoom (thanks, Covid), but others were in Mississippi, Cape Cod, Long Island. I’ve also been down to visit Angie on her own a couple of times - the first time in 2009 when she gave me the final push to change careers with her infamous words: “Bridge, you’re done with that shit!” As for old Romania pals, I obviously keep most in touch with Geordie, Jodie and our other STAR board member (Rach, Jules, Erin) over our charity business, and most others more peripherally through Facebook. I mentioned I’ve made several trips back over the years (and have seen Steffi and co. several times), and on my UK trips to see Geordie I try to also see a few other VIPs like Kate and Lorraine. I even saw Niko on one of my visits, who has been living in the UK for a visit - it happened to be the week the Cubs won the World Series!!!! I was bummed to be leaving when all my Cubs dreams were coming true, but happy to be seeing my Ro peeps!
I’m trying to think of there are any other tidbits. While I was preparing for and in grad school I took in a few roommates, some better than others! I had Renae and Jenny (good ones!), Joy and Sarah-with-an-h (not so good ones!), and then Carissa (who to this day I still thank the Craigslist gods for bringing us together - we’re still good friends and even though she lives in the city now, we’ve road tripped across state lines 9 years running, plus a trip to Romania and Wales together - go, Cabrizzle!). I’ve tried to do volunteer work in my spare time where I can, it’s been slow lately because of the kids and Addy but until then I was most involved with Youth Outlook staffing drop-in centers for LGBTQ youth - met a lot of great people there! And after a break due to COVID, I’m back traveling more again! Minnesota, Wales and Romania are my fallbacks that I visit more than any one person should lol, but I try to sneak in other adventures when I can - so far this year I’ve done the Dells with the kids and Addy, St. Louis with Carissa, and Seattle/Olympic Peninsula with Nick (on a Twilight-hunting trip!). I can’t think of anything else major, but overall life is good!
I talked to Jonathan from my second GV trip in 2002 on the phone for a couple of hours today, and then posted this post on Facebook:
“Long post, but I'm feeling reflective! Twenty years ago this month I went on an adventure that would change my life in ways I never could have imagined. I jumped on a plane by myself to volunteer in a failure-to-thrive clinic in rural Romania for 3 weeks...and never looked back! My trips to Romania grew from weeks to months to years, then to starting our own non-profit with "Romania soul mates" I'd connected with over the years. The experience also lit a spark in me for volunteering in general, inspired a total career change from IT to OT, and helped prepare me to be a foster parent. I feel like 95% of the [good-hearted and fabulous!] people in my life who I'm not related to - from fellow volunteers (Romania to Guatemala to locally) to grad school pals to coworkers to folks we've met through our non-profit to everyone I've met on my fostering journey, and even some kiddos we used to work with and have reconnected with - have all crossed my path as a direct result of that one random little decision 20 years ago to go hold babies in Romania for a few weeks! Point being: be adventuroushen you can because you never know what amazing places the road may take you and what even more amazing people you'll meet along the way!! The little ones are always in my heart, and I appreciate all of you grownups, too, for making my life richer!!"
That about sums things up! I’ve had so much fun with my Romania chapter (and love that it still continues in a different capacity through STAR), and have met so many amazing people as a result of the twists and turns life has taken me on! Closing out the LiveJournal chapter of my life adventures, but hope there are many more to come! <3