The pink shirt

When we first started looking for orphanages and considering children, this one little guy in a pink shirt kept smiling up at me. When we committed to J we asked another adoptive family who was visiting their children to snap a pic of J for us. This is the pic they took. J was in the same pink shirt. I started looking at pics that others had taken at the O and I could always pick out J by the pink shirt. The kids at the O have 3 different colored shirts that they wear to school and they all wear the same color on the same day. J calls it his uniform. But when they're not in school they can wear what they want and J was always in that pink shirt. We sent some clothes to him and found pics of other kids in the clothes we sent. We sent him a Spiderman shirt with another adoptive mom and she took a pic of him in the shirt and then there are pics of another boy in the Spiderman shirt. He promptly gave it away. About 3 months after our dossier was in Haiti we finally got a pic of J in a blue shirt. And not long after that we got a pic of him in a green shirt. Yay! By the time R and I went to meet J in July '06 there was no pink shirt. I didn't even wonder about it at that point. When T and I were down there in June '07 I said something about the pink shirt. The O director told me that J was wearing that shirt when he arrived at the O. She said they just let those things be, whatever things the kids are attached too, even if they are ratty looking it's the kids only link to their previous life. She assured me that the shirt was red at some point and then turned pink. They just let him wear it until it died in the laundry one day. I'm so glad she told me this because I didn't like our son wearing hot pink. How vain of me and oh how I wish I had the pink shirt now.