Adoption #2 When is my Birthday?

Back in 1963, I was born sometime in late May, most likely. I don’t know exactly what date I was born on. This tiny fact is not a bad one, why? Well, I’ve always considered that since I don’t know the day, time or where I was born, I can celebrate my birthday for a whole week so at least I’ll get hit one the days I was born on. My parents didn’t really go for this concept since I wanted to have presents every day as well and cake too, but I didn’t push the cake part. This little unknown fact about me is a great conversation piece when getting to know someone, since usually at some point if you get to know someone well enough, you find out about when they were born so you can make or buy a card, or forget their birthday.

My first two years are very sketchy. I lived in an orphanage in Kowloon. The only record I have are reports from the nurses at the orphanage and the psychologist report for my adoption. The gist of my stint in the orphanage is that I was very nimble and could climb out of my crib easily and then climb into other children’s cribs and take their bottles of milk. I was labelled “the trouble-maker”. To further cement my label as a ‘trouble-maker’, I would demand the nurse’s attention when she would come into the ward and when I was older, like 1 years old, I demanded to use a knife and fork. I guess we used our hands or maybe the dreaded chopsticks for congee, but apparently I used to see the caregivers using forks and knifes and thought this was more civilized. My mom says this is why I was adopted because the orphanage wanted to get rid of the ‘troublemaker’, well at least she would have a civilized child who ate with a knife and fork!

My journey to my Mom and Dad had several bumps along the road...