Life is Beautiful

A new ball

2010-09-07T21:12:00.000-07:00

The-Boys'-Home

Click on this link and watch this video. It is amazing to think of how much joy a ball brought one of those little boys and to realize that I have 3 flat basketballs laying around the house. Lately I have been itching to leave the country again and go play with orphaned children. I don't know why, but that is one thing that I think almost constantly about. Since I don't have the money or the means to do that right now, I plan to find some volunteer work at Shiloh house for boys or with boys and girls club of America. I know there are plenty of children right here in America who also need help, but for some reason I get a travel bug:) I am convinced there is no better reward than brightening a child's future.

Dear Andrei

2010-09-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I have written you, although I still think about you every single day. I think your name crosses my mind at least once every day as does this picture of you. I love this photo; I keep it on my laptop so I see it every time I flip it open. I like the serene and quiet look on your face even though my favorite thing about you was your toothy grin and gruff laugh. This photo captures your peaceful handsome look. You are about 4 years old now! It is so hard to believe that you are a whole year older already; you are growing up so fast. I imagine you are potty trained and no longer wearing those ridiculously big blue diapers you wore at Sfanta Maria's! You must be jabbering away in Romanian and talking up a storm to all within hearing distance. I imagine you also talk to yourself like I saw you do a few times when I peaked through your hospital room window several times. Remember those magazines you would look at as you would mumble away about who-knows-what? I wish I could have understood what you were saying...

Sometimes I catch myself imagining what my life would be like right now if you were mine to raise. I have a college degree now and am exploring some different career paths I could take. I would almost be in a perfect situation to raise you as my own. I wonder if you are still in the same foster home you went to when you left last summer or if you have ended up in an orphanage. I hope you are in a home with people who love you. You would be pretty hard not to love, although you did throw some mean tantrums, bebe. You were quite impossible at times! You would get along great with our jack russell terrier. You both can be pretty stubborn, you know.

Do you want to know something crazy? Last fall when I went through a major depressive episode, I was scared out of my whits. I lost all desire to be alive and getting out of bed and facing a whole day was a battle. And all along the way I kept thinking if I had been able to bring you home, I would have been fine. I would have had Mom and Dad care for you while I finished my last semester of school and then found a good job, got an apartment, and raised you on my own. Andrei, I would not have been able to do that. I would be on government aid and you would be in daycare or with Mom all day while I was working. Life would have been a struggle and I would have been exhausted and frustrated at being a single mom. Why did I hold on to the notion that having you in my life would have made everything just great? That I could have conquered anything easily if I just had you? I kept telling myself at least you wouldn't be in a foster home in Romania. What right did I have to think that living with a 21-year-old single American girl would make you that much better off than a foster home in Romania? It wasn't about you. It was about me. I just couldn't let you go.

I think you represented something to me, Andrei. You represented a life I want so badly right now. I want to be a mother. I want to be a wife first, of course, and then a mother. I want a toothy-grinned toddler who throws tantrums one minute and then falls asleep in my arms the next. I want to rejoice in my child's first steps and feel the warmth of my baby's breath on my neck as I rock him to sleep. I want someone to teach and to love like nothing else in this world. And I want a supporting and loving husband who plays with his children when he gets home from work and who is ecstatic to be at home with his wife and children after a long day. I want to be loved and I want to love. And the longer that dream isn't becoming real, the more the fear creeps in that there is no husband and there are no children waiting for me. That I'm going to be alone and providing for myself and watching all my friends and my siblings have children and knowing that I will never know what it is to hold your own baby in your hands and kiss their sweet little face. That fear is real and it is scary. Thus, I hold on to you and long for you as though you are the only child I will ever have had the pleasure of loving that much. I'm trying not to be afraid, Andrei. I trust in God and I know he wants me to be happy. I'm trying not to be afraid.

I love you always and forever,
Alyssa

I did it!!!

2010-08-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

I did it! I graduated with a four-year degree from Brigham Young University last weekend. I must say that I feel very accomplished and proud of myself for sticking it out all four years and pressing forward through the tough times. Looking back on my freshman year, I am shocked to remember how discouraged I was. I made a 2.9 my first semester and struggled greatly with all the reading and tests that I had. To say the least, BYU was nothing like high school. I actually had to study for hours and hours each day just to get a C on some of my finals, and boy did I celebrate those C grades that first semester! My grades got a little better as I became a sophomore and declared a major that I really enjoyed learning about and my confidence in myself grew as I worked as a teaching assistant for three of my professors. Junior year, I applied for an internship in Romania working with orphans, and despite all the opposition, I made it to Romania and back. Harder times lay ahead of me when I returned home to the States, but I pressed through them and returned to school this summer after a 2 semester absence to finish what I started! I did it!!

Everyone has a different path to travel in life, and everyone will face different challenges and upsets as well as accomplishments and celebrations. All along the way, we learn important life lessons which force us to grow in ways we never expected. Life is certainly something to celebrate!

It's So CLOSE!

2010-05-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Today I received an email from Brigham Young University congratulating me on my upcoming graduation in August. After four long years of spending hours and hours in the library, reading textbooks and journal articles, writing research papers, taking tests, and sitting through lectures, I am almost DONE.

Words cannot describe how good it feels to be graduating with my college degree. Do I know what I'm going to do with it? No. But that's not the point. I, Alyssa Cook, will soon be able to say, "When I was doing my undergraduate work at BYU . . . (enter rest of sentence)." And man does that feel good to think about!

I am going to bring up the fact that I am a college graduate with everyone I talk to after August. In fact, I already do say, "After I graduate this summer..." as often as I get the chance to. Why is that? Why am I so obsessed with graduating college? Because I had to work HARD for it. I passed my classes in high school with flying colors, but when I got to BYU I had to learn how to study and think hard for the first time in my life. And man, does that feel good! I am a new person. I have lived in another country and used my knowledge of child development to enrich my life and others. I am capable. I am strong. I can finish the race.

Buna bebe (hello, baby).

2009-12-14T19:14:00.000-08:00

Buna Bebe! Ce faci acum? It has been several months since I have thought of you and become overwhelemed by emotion. Tonight I was lying in bed picturing myself walking down out of the apartment bloc behind the Hala Centrala and all the way up to Sfanta Maria's to visit you. I tried to picture each street and what it looked like and the way the hospital looked from down the hill. I tried to smell the smell of medicine and food that was always present the minute I walked in. I pictured myself changing into my scrubs in one of the bathrooms that wreaked like nobody's business in ten seconds flat and then charging off to the staircase to head up to the 3rd floor, right wing to see my boy:)

I would already be sweating at this point due to a lack of air conditioning, the exercise of walking there in the heat and then walking up stairs, and probably from the extra stress associated with the language barrier and not knowing if we would go looking for one of our regular kiddos only to be told they're gone. I almost had a panic attack one day when I thought they were taking you away. You were getting in a wheelchair to get on the elevator with some doctors and as I came up the last stair you said, "Uite! Feta!" I waved at you and then they took you on the elevator. My tears followed the downward path of the elevator. I was a zombie that afternoon until later I discovered they had just taken you out back to get some fresh air and let you play!

Tonight as I laid in bed I pictured your face in my mind over and over again and that toothy grin you have. I have dreams, Andrei, where Teo is flying you from Romania to America to come live with me after I get married. I am pacing the waiting area until the carpet is rubbed off and I'm wearing my blue scrubs with the white Y on the left pocket. I feel panicky and anxious and excited so much that I'm sure I'm going to pass out or get sick. I just can't wait to see you come through that gate and exit the plane and into my arms. First, you don't seem to recognize me but then I show you the Y, and I can see the light bulb turn on in your head as you run at me with a big toothy grin and yell,"Feta! Hai, hai, mergem afara. Nu-ei frig afara!!"

Sometimes I ache for you so much I'm not sure it's healthy. How do I explain my love for an orphaned child like that? I fear that I won't even love my own children as much as I loved you, although I'm sure that is an irrational fear. It's amazing how to feel the most joy with someone you have to feel the most awful pain upon separation. I wonder if you remember me now. I wish I had given you my scrub top to keep when you left for your foster home. Someitmes I wonder why God put you in my path on this earth life. I have a feeling my memories of you and the things I recorded in my journal about you will help me through so much in the life I have ahead of me. It already has. I was so depressed when I came home I could hardly get out of bed before noon. I ditched half of my classes in the first week of school (TOTALLY uncharacteristic of me. You can ask ANYONE). I felt such an overwhelming loss in my life. I cried for my babies in Romania and I cried because I could not function well enough to do school at that time. I was a mess to say the least.

It has been a long hard journey pulling out of that and figuring out how to cherish precious memories but rise above the depression and see the world in a good light. I was given so many gifts while I struggled: Friends (Cate, Katherine, Russ, Drew, Erich, Matt, Megan, Bre, Rosie, Branda, Trisha, Brit, Rachel, Keilani), Family (Matt, Michelle, John, Mom, Dad, Mary, Kudos (the dog)), a great therapist who guided me in my emotional recovery, a bishop who listened, a full time job offering at an early childhood learning center, and of course, the ultimate gift of all: the Atonement of Christ.

Tonight I ache for you, Andrei, because I want to hold you in my arms one last time. I want to literally have you in my arms. I'm tired of dreaming about it. I want it to be REAL. And it makes me cry so hard because I know it can't happen. I will have a lot of money saved up by next summer after I graduate. Maybe I could come and live with Teo for a bit and see if we could track you down somehow. Maybe the nurses kept records of where you went or know the woman who took you. But what then? Then I just have to leave you again and try to come to terms with this all over again. I've tried to decide whether or not to use your name for one of my boys' names when I have children. Part of me wants to keep it separate so your memory is not erased with a real Andrei. The name has so much meaning to me. I've thought about putting your photos up on my house wall and having a whole family section for you and your "baby" photos with your name stenciled across it. That way you are a part of the family and we aren't recycling your name. You are still the only you.

I miss you so much, bebe. I would have done anything within my power to bring you home with me and figure out a way to adopt you after I get married and can better support you. No child's spirit ever penetrated through my heart quite like yours and I'm not certain why. One of my goals in going to Romania was to fully open my heart of service and truly love those I served. You taught me what love really is. And the best part is I bet you didn't know it. You were too busy eating biscuits and checking out how many crayons I brought you to color with.

Just know that tonight I ache and cry for you because I miss you so much. All I ever wish for in life is that you are given the best opportunities possible and that you grow up a good man who treats women with respect and that you start your own family. I pray that you stumble across the gospel somehow and that you become one of the faithful priesthood holders in Romania. I love you so much and I think of you always.

Cu Drag,
Feta

Here I am in Preschool again

2009-12-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

Friday was my first day in preschool since . . . about 17 years ago. Actually, it is a daycare/ early childhood learning center where I was just offered a job, so I get to help take care of 14 3-year-olds from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. I would have thought after going to Romania and working in the orphanage that childcare would never seem difficult again. Friday proved me wrong. Thank you, Friday, for keeping me humble.

Within the first hour a little boy had stuck a pebble up his nose and then we had to have a group discussion with the head teacher about how we never stick ANYTHING in our body parts, to which the little boy kept saying "I did." Then all 14 of them had free play and toys and books were scattered throughout the room amidst plenty of episodoes of yelling and crying and "He hit me's." The potty is in constant use and there is nearly always a child waiting on another outside the door, followed by a 15 minute hand-washing ritual during which they sing their ABC's but have to start over every time they forget what comes next.

Since I'm new a lot of the children think I will go easy on them and not make them clean up or get in trouble, so when HT (head teacher) tells them to do something they come shyly to me to get out of it. I don't know how manny times I said, "you need to listen to miss HT. She told you to ___. Nap time is a blast trying to get all of them lying quietly on a mat so they can fall asleep. Miss HT took her lunch break and left me alone with them while a few were still awake. This was when they decided to get up and walk around waking some of their friends up while I reprimanded in a whispered voice and frantically tried to keep order. The afternoon was full of chaos and snack time and more chaos, which was followed by a potty accident and finally all the children grabbed a book and read quietly (or looked at pictures) by themselves as parents kept picking more of them up.

I came home wondering why I wanted a job and reminded myself that a paycheck will be nice to get every 2 weeks. Plus, the first day is always the hardest right? I love career exploration:)

Raspberry Picking

2009-09-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

Today I ventured into the backyard to do the unthinkable. I picked raspberries. Allow me to explain why this used to be the unthinkable. When I was a little girl I found it amusing to step on bees when they were buzzing around the little weeds in our backyard. Then somehow I developed an irrational fear of them and of being stung, which has pretty much stayed with me until now (at the age of 21). Most people stay really still when a bee is near them and wait for it to buzz off. I am the type to go ballistic and start running in any direction whatsoever until I get away from the thing, which often results in quite an embarrassing moment, as it usually occurs when I am in public. The worst is when I'm baby-sitting somebody's children and I actually desert the children in an attempt to save myself from an insect smaller than the size of my pinky toe. There are some things in life that just are the way they are, I guess.

Anyway, throughout the years I also developed a love for raspberries. There is no taste better in the whole world than the taste of a lucious, red, ripe rasberry. When my mom decided to plant raspberry bushes in the backyard a few years ago I was overjoyed to say the least. I waited in anticipation for the day that they would grow big and strong and start producing little sweet delicacies. My world turned upside down one day when I realized that bees really like raspberry bushes too. They were always swarming around my raspberries and doing absolutely nothing except hopping from leaf to leaf like they have nothing better to do in life. I felt threatened. I felt defeated. For too many years I let those bees deter me from my precious fruit. For too many years I snuck up on the bushes only to grab a few raspberries, hear the threatening sound of buzzing in my ear, and take off running, tripping over the sprinkler in the yard and nearly breaking my toes.

Today I conquered my fear. I took a bowl outside and picked raspberries until I had filled it to the brim (well it was full until the dog snuck up and started eating out of it while I was busy avoiding bees and staying still in the middle of the bushes while I spotted clusters of ripe berries). I even recovered from a heart attack after I saw a snake on the fence, which is actually fake and meant to scare off birds (that was the neighbor's idea apparently). And now I'm going to eat my raspberries and enjoy every one of them!

I dreamed a dream

2009-09-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

Last night i dreamed a dream. This is significant because normally i just dream about the color black. Or else i forget my dreams as soon as i wake up...Anyway, i dreamed and remembered it.

i was on a train riding through the country in Romania, only it wasn't the kind of trains we took while we were there. it was a train where i stood outside on the platform and i was holding onto a metal rail and trying not to get blown off the platform by the wind which was hitting me really hard. When the train stopped i would run past a bunch of gypsy women and grab my duffel bag and throw my belongings in it and then run back to the platform before it took off again. i didn't know anyone i was with and i was just trying to get all my stuff together and hold onto the metal rail so I wouldn't get thrown off the train.

My life is like that dream right now. im just trying to get my stuff together and hold on until the ride slows down a little and i can stand on my own two feet again. i am trying to figure out how to balance myself and become more comfortable along the way. It was really scary in my dream when the wind actually picked my feet up off the platform and the only thing keeping me on that train was holding onto the rail. The result of letting go would have been devestating, except not really because you can survive anything in a dream. i have even breathed underwater in a dream without any scuba gear (1 of probably 5 dreams i actually remember) . . . but still it could have been bad.

Sometimes life is hard and you just have to hang in there. Sometimes it feels like we are scrambling to pick up all the missing pieces and throw them together again but we just can't quite get it together. We always forget something. But it's okay. God is watching over us.

"Bear with patience thine afflictions and I [God] will give unto you success."

Alma 26: 27

The Book of Mormon

I am so blessed:)

2009-09-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my brother got married to a beautiful girl in the Phoenix, Arizona temple. I have been blessed with such a good family and now it is one person bigger. I have never appreciated my family as much as I do now after returning home from Romania. I love them so much!

Pa, Alyssa

2009-09-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

My little fireball of energy,

I thought about you and Andrei a lot today as I drove home from Utah. I wish you could have been in the car with me and sitting beside me playing hand games and looking at my fingernails like you always used to do. I imagined you walking around the playground outside and riding that big bike you used to ride outside of the orphanage. Remember how you used to sit in the big basket and yell at Maria to pedal but she couldn't because you were too heavy...and once you went in oras to get apples with Simona and you came back with a succor in your mouth and an apple in your hand. Before you left the playground I asked you where you were going and you said, "in oras" (in the city) and then you said "pa, Alyssa" (bye) to me. The first thing you did when you came back was give me a sticky kiss and show me the prized apple in your hand.

You used to throw yourself against me and hug me so hard it hurt. It kind of scared me at first because you were a big girl:) By the end of the summer I was getting somewhere around 15-20 of these hugs on certain days and I loved it; I couldn't get enough of it. I loved the way you held on tight and stroked my fly away hairs and breathed on my neck and gazed into my eyes for a few seconds before you ran off and went back into your own little world, rocking back and forth on your feet, riding your bike around dangerously because you always looked straight down, and hitting the toddler's bums because that was your way of showing them affection.

Before I left for Romania I read a quote that I thought was brilliant:

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adina, Ralph Waldo Emerson can say beautiful things, but I think he is wrong. I was never out to win your affection so I could claim success as my own. I remember your tokens of affection now with such fondness. It brought so much joy to my heart to see you skipping back to the main room after lunch time and turn around for a split second and yell, "pa Alyssa" and "mine tu?" (you are coming tomorrow?) before I left the orphanage for the day.

Adina, To earn your affection was BLISS. It was a BLESSING. It was BEAUTIFUL. I love you and miss you every day. Take good care of Maria.

a friend's tear

2009-09-17T23:53:00.000-07:00

This is a tribute to my wonderful friends. I came back to Provo feeling like an emotional mess and not knowing how I was going to face my life again after leaving Romania. God showed me just how much He loves His children in the last few weeks that I have been here in Provo. On the first day of school I happened to run into one of the fetele I served with in Romania and we hugged and cried in the middle of a busy hallway on campus while people stared and walked on by. So many friends called and texted to see how I was doing. Talking to friends in person or on the phone kept me distracted and helped me to feel something when I was feeling nothing. Another friend bought me pizza and sat with me in the park for a few hours and told me about how he got through hard times in his life. Another friend talked honestly with me about how she felt when she got home from the very same program nearly a year ago and what got her through the transition period.

Possibly the sweetest and most tender of all these moments, and the one I almost failed to see or recognize, was one silent tear that fell from the eyes of one of my fetele as I told her of the struggles I was dealing with. What more can I ask for in life than sweet friends who feel my pain and cry with me and for me and strengthen me so that I can stand on my own two feet again and reach out to others?

And even though these friends have been huge blessings in my life, there is one more friend I have who is even greater. One of my friends loved me so much he suffered every affliction known to mankind so that He would always know exactly what I was feeling. He promised to always be by my side and to carry me when I am too weak to go on. All I have to do is reach out and take his hand; He will never leave me comfortless.

Life is BEAUTIFUL. Everyone alway has at least one reason to live.

Dear Andrei

2009-09-17T12:04:00.001-07:00

dear andrei,
i miss you. i think about you every day and i imagine your face in my mind and i hear your laugh in my ears. it has been 3 months since you left the hospital and i watched you run down the hallway and out of my life. i stood there in shock with tears silently streaming down my face and tried not to think about how long it would be until i see you again. since i have come back home to America i have found that life lost a lot of its meaning for me. i dropped school this semester because i couldn't sit in a classroom and pretend like research papers and textbooks were my top priority right now. i couldn't commit myself to group projects and to the other students.

i lay awake at night and cry for you and for all the children who filled my heart with so much joy this summer. the sun set on my life when you left, but i survived. the sun set again when i returned home. but i am surviving. do you remember when the nurses used to make you cry because they made you sit on your potty or refused to give you food? remember how you wiped your tears and your snotty nose with a tissue and then regained composure and laughed and played with the fetele? i know how that feels now. i am wiping my eyes and my snotty nose and finding a reason to laugh and be happy again. i love you andrei. i miss you every day.

i hope you are playing and laughing right now.