EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of a two-part series about Adoption Advocates International.
PORT ANGELES — One Sunday, Mary Kay and Mike Acheson locked eyes with a stranger who would draw them across the world.
It was January 2003, and they each turned to the same page in the newspaper, a page containing a small photo of an 11-year-old girl.
This was inside the Peninsula Daily News, in section C, a part of the paper Mike usually skipped.
‘I thought we were done’
At the time, the couple had no plans for more children; they’re the parents of three sons, Danny, now 23, Kyle, 21, and Tim, 17.
“I thought we were done,” Mike recalled.
But then there appeared the picture of Wubayehu, Wubi for short, an orphaned girl living in Ethiopia.
Adoption Advocates International, the 27-year-old agency based in Port Angeles, was seeking a family for her. AAI runs a photo of a child or sibling group in the PDN most Sundays.
Mary Kay and Mike looked at the paper at separate times that Sunday, then got together for another look.
‘The one’
Though they hadn’t talked much about adoption before then, Mike remembers simply looking at his wife and saying something like, “This is the one.”
And though they had made no such plans before that day, he and Mary Kay found they shared the same hope.
So they set out together on the odyssey of adoptive parenting, a long, strange, thrilling trip that would repeat itself when the family least expected it.
With Adoption Advocates director Merrily Ripley and counselor Gay Knutson guiding them, the Achesons learned more about Ethiopia, made travel plans and wrote checks, and again, things seemed to align: Mary Kay was able to cash in a tax-sheltered annuity from a previous employer that covered the $10,000 cost of the adoption.
Mary Kay is a teacher at Queen of Angels School, while Mike is a quartermaster on the MV Coho, so it was easier for him to take time off work in spring 2003. In April he flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to see the girl he hoped would become his daughter.
He still marvels at the memory of arriving at Layla House, Adoption Advocates’ orphanage, where he immediately recognized Wubi.
“It was a surreal experience, meeting her for the first time,” Mike said.
‘Really liked Dad’
“I really, really liked Dad,” added Wubi, now a tall 18-year-old. They hit it off, playing cards, watching Ethiopian television, just talking.
After five days Mike returned to Port Angeles, his heart full to bursting.
Then, in August, he, Mary Kay and their son Kyle, then 15, went back to Africa to bring Wubi home.
The girl from Layla House — where some 150 African children live — had to learn English, adapt to American customs and suddenly become a sister to Tim, Danny and Kyle, Port Angeles boys whose childhoods couldn’t have been more different from hers.
Wubi’s biological mother had died in childbirth; her father had never been around. She lived for a time with her uncle, but ultimately moved to Layla House, where Wubi said she fended for herself.
At home in Port Angeles, Wubi has learned all about being the daughter of strict parents, and about the consequences when she, like any teenager, pushes the envelope a little too far.
Athlete, avid reader
She has also become a cross-country star at Port Angeles High School, an avid reader whose favorite novel is Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and, she hopes, a woman bound for a Northwestern university.
Then, about a year later, a simple twist of fate brought another big change — again — to the Acheson family.
One afternoon, Mary Kay had some books she wanted to donate to Adoption Advocates, so she drove to the agency’s Peabody Street office. She thought she’d just stop in for a minute.
Knutson, seeing Mary Kay, sped over to tell her about Emma, a girl adopted by a family in South Carolina.
Things weren’t working out with that family; Emma was a smart, healthy 11-year-old, but the household dynamics had made it difficult for her to adjust.
Knutson sent Mary Kay home with a video of Emma, plus information about her.
Emma’s mother had died of tuberculosis in Ethiopia; the girl had lived at Layla House and had then been placed in South Carolina.
Again, Mike and Mary Kay leaped together onto the same page. They — and Wubi – wanted Emma to be part of their family. But their sons, Mike said, were less than enthused.
“Danny said, ‘Why are you even asking me? You’re going to do it,'” he remembered.
They did it. Mary Kay flew out to meet Emma and bring her home.
The trouble was that Emma was not informed of her move until the night before she boarded a 4 a.m. flight to Seattle.
“It was a very hard ride back,” Mary Kay said.
Welcome for Emma
Waiting at home were Mike, with a dozen roses, and Wubi, who had eagerly decorated the bedroom the adoptive sisters would share.
Things got better fast, parents and daughters agree.
“The minute she walked in, it was like she had always been here,” said Mary Kay.
Lest this picture seem unrealistically rosy, Mary Kay added that the road to raising these girls, as anyone who’s parented a teenager knows, doesn’t run smooth.
Wubi, who is about to graduate from high school in June, and Emma, now 16, still cope with anger and loss born of their childhoods in Ethiopia. Both spent years without parents watching over them.
“They’ve been flying on their own, and they come here and it’s ‘The Waltons,'” said Mary Kay, referring to the 1970s TV series about a close-knit family.
Mike said he and Mary Kay vividly remember what it was like to be restless adolescents.
“But at the same time,” he said, “we want to protect these beautiful girls.”
“Having to listen to parents has been a challenge,” Wubi admitted. “I never listened to my uncle, or to anyone at the orphanage.”
“We have our bad days,” Mary Kay acknowledged; days when they fight over household rules.
But “we realized,” Mike added, “that we were helicopter parents,” hovering overmuch.
Knutson, who’s counseled hundreds of adoptive parents, told them to step back a little — and the frictions lessened.
“We have to be patient with each other,” said Mary Kay, adding that when an child starts feeling comfortable in his or her adoptive family, that’s when long-buried feelings of resentment can come surging forward.
When asked what they might tell a couple about adopting older children, both Mike and Mary Kay say to take it slow.
‘Just love them’
Don’t plan on instant bonding, Mike said. “You can’t force it . . . You just have to love them,” without expectation.
Mike and Mary Kay acknowledge that their sons were skeptical toward the idea of adoption. But Wubi and Emma have gradually built relationships with their brothers. They’ve become friends, said Mary Kay.
When all five children were together for Christmas, they clearly enjoyed one another’s company. And that, Mary Kay said, “is a blessing.”
School sports have been a saving grace for Wubi, who frees herself from stress — and bossy adults — through running. And Emma, a sophomore at Port Angeles High, has gotten into soccer this year.
She’s also a fan of the Twilight saga — the four-novel series about vampires set in Forks — and she and her sister recently enjoyed the movie version of “New Moon.”
Now Emma and Wubi are not so far from the days when they will take flight from this household, to further explore the world and their places in it.
Their parents seek to find the fine balance, between providing a strong foundation and giving them space to grow.
Devout Catholics, Mike and Mary Kay want the girls to decide for themselves which faith to embrace as adults.
They also urge Wubi and Emma to look far beyond Port Angeles as they envision their futures, and perhaps connect with the Ethiopian community in a city such as Seattle.
This family’s life, said Mary Kay, is “a journey,” that has joined two continents and seven hearts.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.