I was serving as a volunteer for an international adoption program, assisting professional social workers in welcoming children as they arrived in the United States and uniting them with their new families. There were usually eight to ten infants and a few toddlers arriving on a flight from their country of origin. A volunteer was required for each child. We had to take them off the plane, go through the US customs process, and care for the children in the airport until we were able to connect them with their new families.
The evening before I was to spend my day on one of these adventures, I received a call from the agency explaining that the lead social worker was unable to meet tomorrow’s flight. I had been recommended to handle the logistics and legal procedures for the group, since I’d gone through the routine several times before. I agreed to help, to arrive early to coordinate the new volunteers and get the documents that would be couriered to the airport terminal.
That night, while looking forward to a good night’s sleep, I unexpectedly found myself wide-awake and somewhat frantically going through a mental checklist of all the details I needed to remember. And then came the fear that not getting enough sleep was going to make this task even more challenging. Then another intruding thought took over—the memory of once experiencing several totally sleepless nights that virtually incapacitated my ability to perform my job as a teacher. While the situation at this point was nowhere near that extreme, I still felt growing concern.
