Chapter Eight: HEALING

In the middle 1970s I went to our wonderful family practitioner, Dr Vaidya. He put me through a battery of tests - X-rays, blood tests, and something which involved my ingesting barium sulphate and swinging around strapped on a machine.

After all of this torture, Dr Vaidya's final judgment was, "The tests didn't show anything, Fred; I can't do anything for you. You're just getting old. (I was 51) You'll have to learn to live with it. I can give you something for the pain."

I accepted that diagnosis at the time, but decided against pain killers unless I was in agony. The pain was relieved by sitting or lying down.

Later on, after I suffered several particularly painful attacks in India, Bonnie was searching through THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF COMMON DISEASES. (Prevention Magazine, Rodale Press, 1976) She found that the gluten in wheat gives some people an allergic reaction something like arthritic pain.

I stopped eating wheat, and after three days the pain was gone entirely. It seems that I can tolerate a limited amount of wheat, but if my back pain starts up, I just cut down on bread and spaghetti, and the pain recedes. If it were not for Bonnie's "medical research", I might be doubled up in a chronic care hospital by this time.

Chapter Nine: ADOPTING TRAN

I said, "We have enough babies. Besides, I've been told it's impossible to bring overseas children into Canada for adoption."

"Then you don't mind if I try?"

"OK with me. Lot's of luck, Heh, Heh."

It didn't take Bonnie long to learn that another family had already succeeded. Theirs was the first adoption by proxy, of an overseas child by a Canadian family. So Bonnie followed all the same steps.

Finally we received a picture of a baby - a beautiful boy just a few months old. But because of Canadian red tape we couldn't get immigration papers for the child. We tried for months, until Rosemary Taylor, our nurse friend in Vietnam, informed us that the baby died. We were devastated and angry.

Bonnie wouldn't give up. Rosemary sent us a picture of another child. We went through the adoption procedures in Vietnam, but we ran into more Canadian obstructionism. One day four-year-old Mohan said to Bonnie, "It's a lot easier to have a baby inside you. He would get here sooner."

Bonnie said, "Well, that takes a long time, too."

"But at least you know where he is," said Mohan.

The first medical report on this second baby was not sufficient for Canadian Immigration. They wanted to test him for syphilis by taking a spinal tap. Rosemary Taylor was aghast and refused absolutely.

Bonnie was horrified. This was her baby they were violating! She said to me, "Fred, you'd better get through to Mr Trudeau, because this baby is also going to die if they keep playing around." I isolated myself for two days to compose a letter.

We mailed the four-page document to Trudeau on December 9. Bonnie told me, "I'm not going to eat anything until those guys in Ottawa open the door for my baby." She assumed that Trudeau's office would likely receive the letter on the 10th. On that day she didn't eat any breakfast or lunch. She and I were the only ones who knew about her hunger strike. But if we didn't hear anything by the following day, I would call the newspapers, show them a copy of our letter to Trudeau, and tell them Bonnie was fasting. I was eating, because one of us had to take care of the kids at home. Bonnie missed supper. At 7:21 that evening, we got a phone call with a telegraphed message:

RE: YOUR LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER DATED DECEMBER 9 AND RECEIVED TODAY, IT IS RECEIVING IMMEDIATE ATTENTION. COPY OF IT IS BEING REFERRED BY HAND TO THE MINISTER OF MANPOWER AND IMMIGRATION FOR URGENT ATTENTION. I AM SURE THE MINISTER WILL HELP YOU IN ANY WAY POSSIBLE. - WILLIAM G MORRIS, SECRETARY.

Bonnie made herself a little bowl of salad and ate it quietly. A part of me was disappointed. I was hoping for a big splash in the newspapers about an irate woman on a hunger strike! But all Bonnie wanted was her baby.

He soon arrived at Dorval airport. The immigration doctor at the airport was as horrified as we were that Canadian officials in Asia wanted to invade his spinal column. We were all at the airport to meet this precious new arrival - always a joyful, joyful event.

There had been no milk in the orphanage. Our six-month-old son had been raised exclusively on rice water - the water the rice is cooked in. Into our home he brought head parasites, skin parasites, and intestinal parasites. But he was healthy, and at long last, we had him safely with us - the most beautiful baby in the world.

Chapter 10: VALENTINE FUN

In the week before Valentine's Day, 1974, five-year-old Tran came home singing:

"When you give a val-en-tine
That's the time for fun, fun, fun!
Slide it under-neath the door,
Ring the bell and run, run, run!"

Kahlil (age 3), didn't say anything, but pondered this song in his heart and waited patiently for Valentine's Day.

When the day arrived, he asked, "Is this Valentine's Day?"

His mother said, "Yes, Kahlil, it's Valentine's Day."

He said, "Good," and went into the front room. He came back to the kitchen, then to the front room again. He went back and forth many times, and by 8:30 A. M., he was beginning to lose his patience. Bonnie asked him what was the matter. With some urgency he took a breath and said, "I'm waiting for the valentine people to put a valentine under the door and run, run, run."

Bonnie explained to him, "That's just a song, Kahlil. It doesn't REALLY happen that way."

Little Kahlil looked up at her, frowned, and with hands on hips stammered forcefully, "You don't know anything about Valentine's Day!" and stalked off. (The older kids were all in school by this time)

He kept looking at the front door, getting more and more bothered: "When are they going to bring the Valentine?" he demanded of his Mother, who up to this point in his life had provided fairly well. She had been a good mother to him. So she thought of a plan of action.

Bonnie went upstairs and found some extra valentines in a drawer, took three cards, one for Tran age 5, Kahlil age 3, and Shikha age 2. She signed them: "from the Valentine People!" I went out the back door, hurried around the house, and slid the valentines underneath the front door. Then I rang the doorbell and ran, ran, ran - back around, came in through the kitchen door, and Bonnie and I casually strolled into the front room just in time to see the three children opening their valentines. They weren't really curious to know who had brought the valentines. They were just satisfied that their unbearably long wait of two hours was rewarded, and the universe was unfolding as it should.

Chapter 11: DO YOU WANT HIM?

On the morning of May 9, 1975, Bonnie got a telephone call from Naomi Bronstein in Montreal: "There's a Vietnamese baby in Denver who was just air-lifted out of Vietnam. Do you want him?"

"Do I WANT him!!!" hollered Bonnie, and then the wheels started to spin. If I didn't see it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it. 45 minutes after the call Bonnie was leaving the house for Montreal airport. She flew to New York City, and had the baby back in Montreal the same evening.

We had applied for a child at one particular orphanage because there were a lot of abandoned mixed-race children of American soldiers who hadn't been placed yet for adoption, and it was urgent to get them out, because the Viet Cong would soon take over. The war in Vietnam was concluding, and the workers in Vietnam were making heroic efforts to get the many orphaned and abandoned children out of the country who had already been processed for adoption abroad.

We didn't know anything about this particular child. He had been in the orphanage for a year. Because of medical problems he was considered hard- to-place. He had no known living relatives. He was amongst one of the last groups of children to leave Vietnam, who had been put on a ship to Guam, an island in the South Pacific. From there he was brought by plane to Denver, by a group who were arranging adoptions to the USA. These people also knew Naomi Bronstein and figured from the wristband that Rosemary Taylor, a nurse working in Vietnam, was sending him to Families for Children in Canada. And because he was disabled Naomi was sending him to Bonnie.

The baby had a wristband identifying him as "Jonathan Bronstein". He entered Canada with no papers whatsoever, through the skilful help of our organization, Families for Children, which indicates the good rapport we had built up with Canadian government officials. The papers followed later and were duly processed.

Bonnie accepted him not knowing what his disability might be. He slowly recovered from chronic ear infections, but was otherwise in excellent health. We immediately obtained treatment for his ears, but unfortunately he had already suffered some hearing impairment in both ears.

When he first arrived it took quite a while to find appropriate names for him, and the children began to refer to him as the "New Kid." This tag stuck for several months, even after he was named. When he woke up in the morning, Shikha would say, "Mommy, tum up and det New Tid."

VODINH NHAT HANH CAPPUCCINO WAS NAMED AFTER TWO FAMOUS VIETNAMESE PEOPLE. VODINH WAS A VIETNAMESE ARTIST WHO WAS AN ACTIVE CONTRIBUTOR TO THE PEACE MOVEMENT and THICH NHAT HANH IS A BUDDHIST MONK ALSO ACTIVE IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE WAR.

Since we had no birth certificate for him, we didn't know Vodinh's exact birth date. The orphanage said he had come as a tiny infant, and he had been there about a year. So when we got him we figured he was about 14 months old. We took him to Dr. Vaidya, who agreed that he was likely born in March of the previous year, so we should pick a day. The three of us agreed on the first day of Spring, and set March 21, 1974, as his date of birth.

Chapter 12: FRED'S TALK AT EVENFEST 4: Nov. 20, 2004

Tonight, since Bonnie is not here, I want tell you something in confidence. Please don't tell anyone outside of this group. And especially, don't tell Bonnie. I want to talk to you about marriage. I want to tell the young men here: Don't make the same mistake I did fifty-one years ago. When I got married, I was totally and naively unaware that she was afflicted with this incurable condition, called "Cerebrum Infantum," some kind of Latin for "babies on the brain." She kept bringing babies into the house - more and more babies. And it wasn't just to visit. They came to stay. I would plead with her to be reasonable. But she always had her own logic.

I made the mistake of suggesting to her once that maybe she should do what Lotta Hitchmanova did when she was running the Unitarian Service Committee. Lotta got herself a uniform so she would be recognizable to the public. Some time later Bonnie showed up decked out in this Indian sari and 14 bracelets on her arms and 40 medallions around her neck. I have to admit, she is recognizable to the public! In her hand-me-down saris. She has this friend in Toronto who sends her hundreds of used saris for India, and tells Bonnie to take any for herself. So Bonnie's wardrobe costs less than any of yours.

And I must day, she IS recognizable. Every now and then some woman comes up to her, gives her a big hug and says, "Bonnie - I haven't seen you for a long time!" Afterwards Bonnie says to me, "Who was that?"

St Paul says, "Wives, be subject to your husbands." Among all those medallions she is wearing, not one has any connection to St Paul.

One day a friend told me he was walking in downtown Cornwall. He heard a crash. Apparently some pour guy was looking at Bonnie walking and he plowed into the car ahead of him. Bonnie kept walking. She's deaf on that side, so she was blissfully smiling, unaware of anything amiss. I'm married to a traffic hazard.

So my advice to young men is, if you have to get married, marry someone who is easier to live with. Bonnie more than once said to me, "Fred, go to the bank and borrow $5000. They need money for food and salaries in Hyderabad." So, my advice is, think carefully before you get married.

And don't marry someone who will hypnotize you with all those religious medallions and smiling hazel eyes, so that you get mesmerized and fall into her power. If you do, all is lost. There is no hope for you.

You'll be a lot better off if you can find some normal woman who thinks more locally, about what colour to paint the hall way, and what kind of decor to have in the Living Room. At least you will have a nice comfortable mansion, and you can spend your life by the fireplace and the barbecue and shut out the troubles of the rest of the world. If you are wise you will harken to the voice of experience. My words are absolutely 87% true. [The Cornwall story is true.] Thank you again for listening to my anguish and suffering, and, I ask that you keep all of this in strictest confidence.

"Let me light my lamp, says the star, and never debate if it will dispel the dark"
Rabindranath Tagore