source The Christian Science Monitor
I have never been a fan of platitudes, but \”Only in America\” was the first thing that came to mind as I sat in the bleachers at the Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, N.J., this past June, watching my son, a newly minted Coast Guardian, pass in review.
Alyosha\’s story is not so simple or unremarkable as a kid growing up and joining the service. His beginnings were difficult, and certainly inauspicious. As a small child, he had been found wandering in a tiny Russian village, dirty and malnourished. Who would have thought that my life would eventually intersect with his? But it did, at an orphanage a couple of hours south of Moscow. By then Alyosha was 7, healthy and rambunctious. He had not been told that I was coming to adopt him, but when we finally met, his first word was \”Papa?\”
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