Mrs. Im, Michael's Foster Mother

When Michael was just two weeks old, he was assigned to a foster family in Seoul. Whether or not you believe in angels, you might come away from meeting Mrs. Im ready to swear that she is one.
She's in these old clips from the referral videos they sent us:



Michael was uncommonly quiet on the morning of the day we were to meet her (last Friday) although when we asked him if he was nervous, he said no.

After having had some trouble finding our originally planned lunch place, we were exactly one minute late walking through the door at Eastern. I was immediately hit with a rush of memories just walking up the flights of stairs and recognizing various doors. Our social worker met us and informed us that Mrs. Im was already there waiting for us. She looked just the same as I remembered from six years ago, with the same huge smile that lit up the whole room.







Belinda had put together a really great photo album of Michael's life for Mrs. Im. She enjoyed looking at it, and you could tell it was emotional for her. Mrs Im knows very little English (about as much as we know Korean), so our social worker stayed with us for the whole meeting and interpreted.



She had gifts for Michael as well.








A really beautiful polo shirt, which Michael has worn twice since Friday, and a super cool set of pastels that he has used several times.















Belinda found this beautiful scarf, which we gave to Mrs. Im. She said what sounded like the English word "scarf", which I thought was an interesting English word to know if you didn't know much else, but then in looking later, I realized that the Korean word is 스카프, which sounds a little like "scarp" when said quickly.



She wagged her finger at me, knowing that I was taking a bunch of pictures of her. :-)

I showed Mrs. Im the little of referral video montage from above, but I know for certain that the strongest memory trigger for her was when I showed her this photo that I carry in my wallet.


Mrs. Im cared for thirty babies in the eight years that she was fostering, and this photo seemed to really give her the 100% recognition of exactly which one Michael was. She told us the story of getting this photo taken, and how difficult it was to get Michael to lie still for the picture. We were of course not surprised.


For the last twenty minutes or so, we just chatted. Mrs. Im commented on how happy Michael seems, and Michael asked her a few questions about how old he was when he came to stay with her and how old he was when he left with us. Those are both in his adoption story book, but I think this was the first time he really felt like he needed some perspective on that. It was very cute.
At my suggestion, Michael had memorized a Korean translation of "I play chess", so that he could say something in Korean to Mrs. Im, but apparently the translation was not quite right. Both Mrs. Im and the social worker were quite confused by it, even when I showed them the actual Korean spelling I had copied down. :-)














Michael gave Mrs. Im some very sweet goodbye hugs.