See You Tomorrow . . . Reclaiming the Beacon of Hope

A true story about resilience, and the journey of a lifetime for a pair of brothers and their new father against the sometimes all too uncompromising realities of international adoption.

When Dr. Gary Matloff reached out halfway around the world in Brazil to adopt a pair of brothers as a single father, already a seasoned child psychologist, he thought he was prepared in ways most adoptive parents might not be. But the journey that ensued for the three of them was fraught with life lessons of love, patience, and humility none of them had bargained for.

After many years dreaming, then more years persevering through one door slam after another in seeking to adopt, this single dad-to-be found waiting for him brothers, Matheus and Davi on the other side of the equator. Well-practiced in working with maladjusted children, Dr. Matloff thought he was supposedly knowledgeable, and equipped to manage children with emotional disturbances and their temperamental behaviors. Yet he discovered all too soon that textbook prescriptions and a personal storehouse of professional skills in working with other troubled children and their parents in the past did not necessarily apply to his own sons. As their three strong-willed personalities navigated together the all-too-formidable twists and turns of forging a new family, transient language and cultural barriers quickly gave way to reinterpretations of relationships, love, and the rekindling of life's potential.

Dr. Matloff is a licensed psychologist with his Ph.D. in school psychology. He has specialized for the last fifteen years in counseling children and adolescents, including many who had been adopted or were in foster care. He is well-versed in handling a variety of their behavioral and emotional challenges, and has been successful in helping their parents to work through many of these challenges. Dr. Matloff has had original studies and literature reviews published in academic journals, and has presented at local, state, and national conferences on a variety of psychological issues pertaining to children's mental health and emotional adjustment. Yet he is anything but the perfect foil for the unpredictable attitudes and behavior of his two adopted sons; Dr. Matloff is just an ordinary person who is eager to share the joys of bringing up these boys, and the challenges of picking up from where their lives, as they had known it, had been taken from them. But his experiences as a professional in child behavior make this more than simply a memoir.