A Daughter from China Ponders the Question: "Where Were You Born?"

My daughter's innocence recedes with each passing day. 

It seems only a short while ago she and I were riding about town in the family wagon, talking about the trip we would someday take to China.  At the thought of it, she'd thrown up her arms and burst out:

"Everyone will be there to greet me!"  

She is, most certainly, surrounded with love and affirmation in our protected little pocket of life here in the U.S.  So it wasn't totally surprising she'd developed a rather optimistic view both of life, and herself.  But though I loved the ebullience of her outlook and her expectations, I knew too her view of China had become a bit... inflated.

This is no longer the case, in part, because I have worked to help her develop a more balanced, more complete view, not only of our country, but of her birth country.  Certainly, no place is perfect.  After confronting the hard facts of her abandonment last spring and grieving her losses, she knows this.  But she appears to have weathered the worst of it -- and come out the other side.  The result?  My nine year old has developed a sense of humor tinged with irony.

Driving home together from school last Thursday, she mentioned one of her friends had been born at a local, neighborhood hospital.  The topic had come up at school and friends had launched into a full discussion of who was born at which hospital.  Inevitably, the question was posed to my daughter.  As I drove the last few blocks to our house, she relayed the ensuing exchange in a punchy, sassy tone with an implied sub-text:  Were y'all raised in a barn? Don't you know families struggled in China?

"They asked me which hospital I was born at, Mom.  I said, 'What do you mean which hospital?!  Where was I born?  I don't know!  I probably wasn't born in a hospital.  I was probably born... on the floor!'"

Her timing was so keen, her phrasing so pithy, I burst out laughing. 

I meant to follow-up and check in with her, but we pulled in front of the house and groceries, dinner, the dog, the demands of homework, and the flow of a busy weeknight evening carried us straight through to bedtime.  Of course, as with most unfinished business, it all came back to me the next morning -- at 2am.  The conversation echoed in my brain and I wondered if I'd missed my cue and been hugely insensitive, if this was something eating at her self-esteem.  I made a mental note to check in with her in a quiet moment the next day, when we could sit face to face, when I could see her expression.

"Remember the conversation you shared with me about your friends, about where you were born?" I ask.  "Were you upset about this?  Was it bothering you?" I pause, then wince a little, "Should I not have laughed?"

She looks straight at me and an enormous grin spreads over her face. 

"I was joking Mom." 

She was having fun with them.  She was having fun with me. 

It's patently clear she's in command of her story and how she will frame it.

Bump

She came home last Wednesday, dumped her backpack in the hall, hugged me, and headed to the kitchen for a late afternoon snack and the day’s debriefing.

I tried out for Bump today, Mom.

It’s mid-May. There are four weeks left in the school year. She’s been shooting baskets every day, every recess, alone in a corner of the playground since early last fall.

What do you mean... tried out? I asked.

At the start of the school year, she and her classmates played nothing but Four-Square. Then, for a change, they played Nine-Square. They played before school, during school (at recess,) and after school. My daughter loved it. Then, for some reason, or perhaps no reason, somewhere around mid-October, the kids all switched to a game called Bump. They lined up on the basketball court, and took turns shooting baskets. If you took a turn and missed, you could still use your ball to try and bump the next person’s shot away.

She withdrew. They’re mean to each other, she said. The kids cheer if you get ‘bumped’ out.

More and more it seemed, when I asked about her day, about what happened at recess, she chose to go it alone. She wasn’t joining in the other kids’ games, and she sat alone at lunch. This wasn’t like her. She loved to be in the thick of things, to play with the other kids.

There was a lot going on last fall. I’d been warned third grade wasn’t always smooth sailing, that the waters could be choppy.

By mid-October, this was abundantly clear. My daughter was coming home from school, three out of five days each week, in tears. What was going on?

What wasn’t going on?

One boy in her class prodded and teased her relentlessly. Like an awkward, St. Bernard puppy, all elbows and feet, he was accustomed to rougher play, to an older brother’s jostling and teasing. He was sweet, but he was also obtuse. He couldn’t read my daughter’s upset, her non-verbal cues.

One day in the lunchroom another girl from her class attempted a clumsy power play. She whispered to a cluster of girls, suggesting my daughter was mean. The good news? The girls looked at Presumptive-Ring-Leader-Girl as if she were crazy. The bad news? My daughter, sitting one table away, alone with her lunch, heard the exchange.

Another girl, needy and anxious, not knowing a better way, fought for friends, position, or playground advantage using pressure, coercion, exclusion, and threats. It’s not fair! she would cry. You’re mean! I’m telling! The girl wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not knowing how to respond, not wanting to create further conflict, my daughter gave in. This only made her more of a target. She ended up odd girl out, squeezed out of play, even friendships.

At school, she retreated to the safety of the Sad Froggy Desk, in tears. At home, she retreated to the couch, in tears. I sat with her, listened, asked questions. I tried humor. We brainstormed solutions and role played. Slowly she learned to distinguish between accusation and reality, between forceful threat and meaningless bluster. Between coercion and friendship.

Be yourself, I said. Follow the Golden Rule. Remember, what goes around, comes around.

We cycled through the same conversations over and over. For weeks this consumed the bulk of our evenings.

She had good days and bad but finally, slowly, she began to bounce back. The boy who’d been jostling and teasing stepped into her crosshairs one time too many. She looked him in the eye just as we’d practiced. She called out his name then, staring him down, said firmly and clearly, I don’t like that. Please stop it.” The boy froze in his tracks and nearly fell over. But the teasing and jostling stopped.

Soon too, she was on good enough terms with Presumptive-Ring-Leader-Girl. And she stood her ground with Needy-and-Anxious. I'm not mean, she countered. Maybe you’re the one who's mean. If you don’t like what we’re doing, sit some place else.

The tears and upset diminished. Still, she spent much of her free time, at lunch, on the playground, alone. She sat apart and played apart. Then, this spring, a new wave of sadness on a different front: the loss of her birth mother, her country and culture. I wondered if the year was all just too much, if it was taking a toll on her self-esteem. But I knew too much outward worry would make matters worse. So I watched and I waited.

I stopped by school one day to drop off some papers and decided to take a look for myself. I snuck a peek out at the playground. There were kids everywhere, chasing, racing, swinging, spinning, batting, kicking, climbing, yelling, shooting, shoving, and shouting. I spotted my daughter off on a corner of the black top, apart from her classmates -- an island of calm.

She stood there, holding a basketball.

The ball looked big, almost a quarter the size of her body. Her little girl hands fanned out, clutching the great orange orb. She looked up at the tall, far away hoop, pulled the ball in close to her chest, then hurled the beast up and out, throwing the full weight of her body behind it, stumbling forward. Sometimes the beast found the basket: Whoosh! More often than not, it didn't. It hit the rim with a dull, resounding thud: Whh-onggg! The backboard shuddered and the ball ricocheted away. She scrambled to rein in the runaway and then she returned. She dribbled. Got back in position. Collected her thoughts, took aim, and hurled the beast again.

She was neither sad nor upset. Maybe this wasn’t a bad thing...

A little while later when she mentioned sitting alone in the lunchroom, I asked why she chose not to sit with her friends. If there might be a reason. The answer? The fewer the distractions, the sooner she finished, the greater the chance she’d be out on the court, under a hoop, with a ball.

A few weeks later, she asked if I could find a basketball camp for one of her summer activities.

Did an escape turn into a passion? Or was the passion a healthy escape..?

Did it matter?

The sun shot low beams of light through the panes of our back kitchen door. My daughter sat at the counter, licking her frozen yoghurt. Trying out at Bump, she explained, meant she’d stepped into line along with her classmates to take a turn at the basket.

What prompted this? I asked.

Turns out, her friends, Emmy, Sarah, and Hannah, had pleaded with her for days, urging her to join them. Come on! Please! Just come! Get in line! So, she stepped into line and when her turn came, she looked up at the hoop, took aim and, thrusting her arms out, propelled the ball up into the air.

And guess what, Mom?

What?

I got it in! I shot a basket! She sprang out of her seat, pumped her fists high in the air, made a "V" with her fingers, and strutted about the kitchen. Kicking her knees up high, she shouted, Oh yeah… oh yeah.. oh yeah… I ROCK!

You sure do, kiddo.

But you know what?

What?

I tried Bump at the beginning of the year and -- she rolled her eyes -- I really sucked!

She cracked up.

That evening, she shared a note she'd received from one of the girls in her class.

Dear _________,
You’re a great friend. You rock! Let’s have a play date.

I looked at my daughter and marveled at her resilience, at how far she'd come. I told her as much, and she beamed.

Thirty minutes later, washed and scrubbed, the two of us settled into my high, four poster bed. Drawing the large comforter up about our chins we sank deeper into the bed. Max burrowed in between the stretch of our bodies. Black patches of curly fur appeared between the excess folds of white cotton cover. His deep measured breathing soon filled the room.

I opened Phantom Tollbooth and picked up where we'd left off. Milo, Tock, and the Humbug had leapt to Conclusions -- but now they made their way back. We lost ourselves in the rhythm of story, the puns, and word play. We peered up at each other with knowing smiles, a shared understanding. The minutes ticked by and we nestled still deeper into the bed. The comforter was so full, so thick, so high, we soon caught only glimpses of each other between the great white, billowy waves. We grew sleepy, drifting along on beautiful, calm, balmy waters. Just us three, on our great white raft.

The Charm & Challenge of China

Two and half years before I adopted my daughter, when my girl was nothing more than the germ of an idea planted, lying in wait, at the back of my mind, I decided to go to China.

I figured if adoption was feasible, if motherhood was pending, I should try and sate my appetite for adventure while I had the chance. I’d always wanted to see the Great Wall and thought, if I was going to adopt from China, it made sense to visit – to see if I felt an affinity for the people and the culture.

REI offered a bike tour through southeast China’s most picturesque country, through Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. The literature waxed poetic, painting peaceful, pastoral scenes of picturesque hamlets, villages, farms, crystal clear running rivers, and towering karst limestone mountains, scenes that inspired China’s great painters and poets. I signed on and convinced my friend Carol to join me. We embarked on rigorous training rides, imagining, anticipating the bucolic charms of China.

The reality proved slightly different.

By November ‘98, I found myself biking along a dirt path bisecting a long and narrow dike. It was our group’s first day out riding on open roads -- but all I could think was how relieved I was to leave the smog, the tension of the cities and towns, the odd looks from the locals, the stern lectures from our guide, and the ominously empty 7 Star Crag Park with its haunting lakes and lush gardens. To say the trip had strange, uneasy beginnings, that I had misgivings, was an understatement.

Our small group of six had flown into Hong Kong, briefly explored the smog-infested city, and stayed the night. Early the next morning, we boarded a commuter ferry and rode 4 hours up the Pearl River, deeper into the smog, squinting through thick layers of gray and brown haze. Factories and cranes, -- heavy industry -- hugged the shoreline.

I’m in China, I thought. So why am I thinking …Newark, New Jersey?

I exchanged nervous glances with Carol but said nothing. We landed in the PRC, in the town of Zhaoqing, and met our guide and driver. As we bumped and bounced along in our shock-absorbent-free tour van, our guide, Ji-wei, turned to welcome us. He had a solid muscular build, short cropped hair, a wholesome face, and a broad, handsome smile. Using close-to-impeccable English, he gave us an introduction, a lecture really, on modern China’s history.


China, or Chinese, he explained, was really Western nomenclature. For thousands of years, the people have called their country Zhōngguó, meaning central or middle kingdom, the world that lies between the celestial heavens and the underworld. (Hint, hint, he seemed to be saying, the center of civilization.) Mao Tse Tung the father of modern China, defeated the corrupt, debauched General Chiang Kai-Shek after a long and difficult civil war. (The notion of a Communist Revolution, again, was a western construct.) The Russians were not involved but America had meddled intrusively, backing the evil General. Mao understood and supported the people, lifting China up and out of oppressive imperial rule and medieval privilege. Deng Xiao Ping brought economic reforms and further transformed the country.

Lecture complete, the group stopped for lunch at an eerily empty resort, a place bounded by karst limestone formations and filled with pools, lakes, quiet paths, pavilions, pagodas, and lush green gardens. With little explanation (and a touch of disdain?) our guide noted the man who’d designed and built the elegant 7 Star Crag Park had paid for it with his life -- in the Cultural Revolution.

What to say? The group grew silent. Had I made a mistake? What were we doing here? I avoided Carol’s glances.

We climbed back into the van and headed deeper into the country. The van stopped again and Carol and I, and the others, tested and fitted our bikes. We set out, peddling, climbing a path up onto the dike, looking for a touch of something less …official, less ominous, more authentic.

A school girl rode her bike up beside us. She asked timidly, in broken English, if we were American. We nodded, smiled, and showed her our map. She offered to show us the way and asked if she might ride with us and practice her English. We nodded, Sure. We rode. We chatted. We began to relax.


Over the next 9 days, we biked 50-60 miles a day -- and encountered China, in all its rich, confusing complexity. We found a rapidly changing landscape, a country undergoing massive change, on a massive scale. We found a people, a culture, as charming as it was forbidding.

We biked through the country and saw paddies, fields, and farmland that glowed green and gold in the sun, even as coal factories hovered on the horizon, belching black plumes of unscrubbed smoke. We watched fishermen setting their nets, families working their fields, threshing rice, raking grain, burning the empty stalks. Those who weren’t fishing or working the land, dug ditches, lay roads, logged forests, erected new concrete and brick structures.

Everyone worked. Well, almost everyone. We passed clusters of men in small towns, lingering in pool halls, smoking, loitering in the square, leering as we passed. We noticed more often than not, that women and children worked in the fields. They carried astonishing loads, on heads, shoulders, bikes, and backs, lugging firewood, brush, persimmons, potatoes, hay, and big buckets of water. They smiled as we passed even when their bodies bowed under the loads they bore.

Some of the people were poor. Dirt poor. We passed a few places where hygiene seemed non-existent. The bathrooms were the worst I’d ever seen, putrid, open air fly-fests.

Ji-wei reminded us of China’s difficult history, of floods, famine, and quakes, of the terrible loss of life. The forces of nature prevailed. In the end, human life was fragile -- and cheap. It’s why, he explained, nature looms large in classical Chinese painting. Humans are small, insignificant figures against a larger landscape.

I looked for ways to encourage our typically tight lipped guide to share more of his life and culture. When I learned he had an 8 year old daughter, I asked for the stories he told her. He shared two examples:

The first was the story of a boy who rescued a sick, injured wolf he saw scrambling to escape a horde of hungry villagers. The boy took the wolf home and nursed him back to health. Later, when suspicious villagers confronted the boy, he hid the wolf in the folds of his coat. But the wolf chewed through the boy’s stomach -- and the boy dropped to his death.

Ji-wei stopped.

That’s it? I asked, somewhat shocked. (Where was the happy ending? )

Uh huh, Ji-wei nodded.

And.. the moral of the story is..?

If you show your enemy weakness, Ji-wei replied, he will destroy you.

Oh...!

Ji-wei launched right into his second example, a tale of a famous general. His troops had fought a long, hard campaign but ended up outnumbered, cornered with their backs to the sea. Several ships lay at anchor nearby but, as the enemy approached, the general burned every last ship, the men’s sole means of escape. The soldiers were forced to stand and fight.

So... they beat the odds and won? I asked hopefully.

No. Ji-wei replied. They were slaughtered.

I paused, eyebrows elevated. And, the lesson is…?
True patriotism is when you stand and fight to the finish -- even in the face of terrible odds.

It was the last story I asked for.

We continued along open roads, biking from town to town. We passed men peddling to market on rattling, rusted bikes that creaked and groaned with the weight of 200 pound pigs, or huge 100 pound sacks of grain slung over the back of the bike. We passed women hacking raw boulders out of the hillside. They wore straw hats, thin blouses, cotton trousers, and flip flops and worked with young children seated beside them.

It dawned on us what a sight we were -- in our space-age helmets, special shoes, spandex shorts, and padded seat pants. We rode brightly colored bikes with aluminum frames and fat tires, using fancy sprockets and shifters. We carried maps and a camera.

And yet, while a few people hid, or averted their gaze, others stopped and stared at us openly. More more often than not, the stares turned to grins, then smiles. They welcomed us with great curiosity and warmth. Mothers held up their children and waved. School boys rushed to greet us while the girls, more bashful, held back, wide-eyed, soaking in the sight of us.

One small girl with dirty hands, dirty face, dirty clothes, ran to bring me a present: a single, soot-covered taro. I was loathe to take it (was it dinner?) but I couldn’t refuse her.

We passed through local “hamlets” -- towns of 200,000, small cities of 500,000, and mid-sized cities of millions. We dodged pedestrians, pushcarts, pedal carts, pigs, bicyclists, buffalo, cars, cats, trucks, ruts, boulders, ditches, and dogs. The sheer number of people was staggering.

At the end of the trip, I traveled north to see Xian and Beijing. Streets and shops with neon signs promoted modern life’s amenities, from designer clothes to electronic gadgets. Young women wore make-up and tight trendy clothing. Men sported suits and cell phones. Still, signs of poverty and ill-health remained. I don’t recall seeing anyone with a weight problem and the smiles of many, especially the elderly, revealed crowded teeth, crooked teeth, missing teeth, even blackened yellow teeth. Beggars, some deranged, some deformed, wandered at will.

I saw the Terra Cotta warriors, the Great Wall, the Imperial and Summer Palaces and marveled. But I cringed at the sound of long throaty wind-ups, at men flinging their phlegm. I watched in amazement as parents held out their babies to pee through split pants at the edge of a public sidewalk. And I winced at the treatment of rabbits, chicks, cats, and dogs in various public markets.

We arrived back in the States and it felt good to be home. I looked through my pictures and saw China had so many different textures, so many different faces: people like Ji-wei, the official face of China. But also everyday people, the men, women and children we passed in farms, on fields, by the rivers and roads -- the unofficial China, the people trying to eek out a life, all the while smiling and welcoming us with a warmth that was hard to forget.

My favorite photo remains the one I took of the school girl we met that first day on the dike. She looks back over her shoulder and holds up her finger, as if she is pointing the way, beckoning me on toward my future.

Now my daughter and I join other FCC families. We celebrate Chinese New Year, Egg hunts, Moon festivals, and Heritage Camps. My daughter loves learning the language. She loves the martial arts, the dances, the costumes, the chance to perform. I watch her partake with pride. But part of me wonders if she’s learning Chinese culture or, if really she’s learning what is, for the most part, white, adoptive America’s take on Chinese culture. And I wonder someday if, when she travels to China, she will discover a deep rooted connection but also, a dissonance -- confronting that part of herself that is, like her mother, deeply American.

One Small Step After Another

She brought home an assignment from school and it read: My Family’s Journey West.

My daughter’s social studies teacher had been teaching the class about the hardships families endured on the Oregon trail: about rutted roads and rusty wagons, about couger, coyote, snake, bear, wolves, withering desert, disease, frigid mountains, frostbite, and of course hostile natives.



It's now your turn, the teacher wrote. She wanted to know how each of their families came to live in the West. It was time, to tell your family story … and to share a family heirloom or treasure… Bring in your essay and heirloom to share with the class. It will be fun.

Fun? I thought. Fun?! Was the Oregon trail .. fun? Is root canal .. fun?

Okay, so perhaps I was feeling just a wee-bit cranky. And a tad worn out. Worn out from the upset and worry of the past few weeks. Worn out from fighting a phantom birth mother. Worn out from fighting a horrible cold or flu I was still trying to shake.

I adore history. But now I see I love history, in part, because I didn’t have to live through it.

Of course, the teacher couldn’t have known what had been happening at home these past few weeks. So I told my daughter she had lots of choices. She could draw from any number of family stories. But she was decided. She wanted to share her story. She liked the idea of flipping the assignment on its head. She crossed out the words Family’s and West and wrote East so it read: My Journey East.


But that’s as far as she got. The notepad lay on the dining room table with its glorious title and empty page, waiting. Days passed. The weekend came and I asked her to take some time and focus. I suggested again she could write about something else, but she remained firm. I suggested she use her homecoming book (i.e. her life book) as a guide. She liked this idea and asked to sit and review it together. We sat on the couch and revisited each page, each photo, and reveled in happy moments. But when it came time to write, she fell apart and the question poured forth once more: Why did they leave me?

We set the notepad aside. I thought maybe more context would help. I tried to explain that people in China aren’t free in the way we are here. We talked about what freedom meant. We talked about the terrible penalties imposed on those exceeding the one-child quota. I told her a little of the Cultural Revolution. Of Tiananman Square. Of how dangerous it was and is to speak out against the government. We talked. We cuddled. The notepad page remained blank but I let the essay go.

The next morning, the pad sat there waiting for her on the dining room table right where she’d left it. I asked yet again if she wanted to write about something else. No, she wanted to tell her story. So I suggested she write a short, single sentence about how she came to the orphanage and leave it at that. She could focus on the journey, our becoming a family and finally -- the essay unfolded. She wrote a page and a half. All that was left was the heirloom. But she looked tired and I suggested she finish later that day.

She played long, hard, and happily with a buddy. It was good to hear laughter.

That night, as I started on dinner, she sat down again with the essay. Of all the mementoes I’d saved from our trip, she liked best the little yellow cloth sandals she’d worn the day I met her. She studied them now. They were frayed and soiled with delicate yellow leaves on the instep and tiny doll faces smiling sweetly. A pale pink rosebud clung tenaciously by a thread to the left shoe while its mate had long since vanished. The sandals had squeakers embedded in their soles to encourage one small step after another.

I don’t know what to write Mom.

She says this a lot with her homework. Mostly it means: I’m not in the mood to deal with this, Mom. Can’t you tell me what to write? We’ve joked about this. She is highly capable. (This is your homework, honey. You’re supposed to take it home, sit with it, and give it some thought. Your teacher didn’t say -- Here, take this home! Give it to your mom!)

This was no time to joke.

Think about what the shoes mean to you, honey. What do they make you think about?

Nothing. I don’t know. She was tired, resistant.

I searched for ideas and thought, Maybe its time to emphasize the happy part of her story -- as Jonna suggested.

Well… maybe you could think of the shoes as a memento of the day you started a whole new chapter of your life… with me.

She dissolved. Why did you have to say that...?

We were back again in the primordial swamp of her grief.

That’s not happy..?

No! The tears poured out. I wish you’d left me there Mom. I wish you’d never taken me from China. I wish I was back there now.

Back in the orphanage? Really..?

Yes!

I wanted to argue with her, to remind her how lovely our life is, how much we have, how much I love her, how there was no future for her in the orphanage. That she couldn’t have stayed with her foster mom. But I saw she was genuinely distraught and realized I was wrestling with a demon thing, raw inconsolable pain. It defied expectations or any known form of logic. I rubbed her back, squeezed her arm weakly, and told her I was sorry. And suddenly, I was too wounded, too tired, to argue. I removed myself to the bathroom.

I was talked out. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe there’s a point where talking is no longer helpful.

We got through dinner -- I don't know how -- and spent a quiet evening. I read. She bathed. I tucked her in bed, kissed her good night, and told her I loved her.

She left for school the next morning. Alone at last, I lost it. But then, I wiped my tears, and sat down at my desk to work. I had the whole day before me. Quiet. Peaceful. Healing. I went for a long walk. Soaked in the warmth of the sun.

My brother called and offered to pick her up from after-school sewing. They’d been planning this special night for a while. Wednesday was my birthday and my daughter was dying to surprise me, to bake me a cake. Did I care about the cake? Did I need a cake? No, not really. Did I love the thought? Absolutely. And, a free day that stretched into the evening? It was rare, very rare. It hit me I needed to take more breaks. I decided, if friends asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I’d come clean: Take my child for an afternoon. Or an evening. I needed a little more breathing room. We both needed it. It was healthy.

Her uncle picked her up. They went and bought ingredients. Then he watched while she baked the cake on her own. Me? I took myself out for a simple, blissfully quiet dinner. By the time I arrived home, the two were sitting on the living room couch, waiting. My daughter was smiling broadly, bursting with excitement, with joy.

Happy Birthday Mom!

The cake was gorgeous and we served up three huge portions.

Two days later, again with the aid of her uncle, my daughter surprised me with breakfast in bed, a bagel, coffee, and fresh squeezed juice.

Happy Birthday Mom!

So now, it’s official. I’ve left an entire decade behind and started in on a new one. I turned 50 this week. Good friends with kind hearts (and poor vision?) say, No! Can’t be possible? You can’t be 50. No Way!

In my head, I think: Way. Oh, way, way, way, way, way, way….

Half a World Away

I was thinking we were through the worst of it. Silly.

Less than a week after my daughter admitted her fears I stole her from China, a story from the New York Times online edition appeared April 5th on the first page of the site, above the fold, announcing itself with a heavy black headline: Chinese Hunger for Sons Fuels Boys' Abductions, by Andrew Jacobs.

I wait till late at night, when I hear long, deep in and exhalations emanating from my daughter’s room, when she’s deep asleep, when it’s safe to click on a story without fearing two small eyes peering over my shoulder. Idle worry? Not when your daughter’s in third grade. Not when she was reading at a 6th grade level in the fall of 1st grade. She misses nothing.

The bulk of the story revolves around China’s demand for sons. Lacking any form of social security, Chinese families, especially poorer, rural families, yearn for a son, for someone who won’t marry and leave, for someone who will care for them in old age, for someone to continue the family bloodline. But the one-child-one family policy has frustrated this yearning. So now, more than ever, boys are in demand, in danger of abduction. Heartrending stuff in its own right. But then, a quote stops me cold:

A grieving father of a four year old boy, Peng Gaofeng, started an ad hoc group for parents of stolen children. His claim? Girls are abducted as well -- and some of these girls are sold to orphanages. They are the lucky ones Peng says. These girls often end up in the United States or Europe after adoptive parents pay fees to orphanages that average $5,000.

It feels like a punch to the gut.

The claim makes no sense. To even entertain the possibility, that I could have been an unwitting accomplice, that I could have taken a child from her family, sickens me.

I finish the article but there is no further mention, evidence, or explanation regarding these supposedly abducted girls. The focus returns to the issue of boys and China’s desire for sons.

I write Jacobs to ask (politely) what this claim is founded on. If it makes any sense for China’s orphanages to pay for girls when the orphanages are flooded with more girls than they can handle. Does he have any idea how this claim might hit adoptive families in this country? Can he substantiate the claim with hard data? Answers would be helpful.

I have yet to hear from Jacobs.

Adopting a child from this country, as a single parent, was never an option for me. I’d never thought about adopting, much less looked to China, till a friend graciously served up the idea. I’m not one to move into big decisions lightly (an understatement... I can hear friends chortling.) I weighed my decision carefully, asked the hard questions, gathered the data over months, in truth, years.

Was it right to pull a child from her country, her culture?


My understanding was that there were hundreds of thousands of girls in China, that domestic adoption was uncommon in a country where families held an overwhelming bias and preference for blood ties. Hundreds of girls needed families, loving care. Orphanages were underfunded, understaffed, and overwhelmed.

It all made so much sense: me, wanting to love and raise a daughter. All those girls in China needing a home.

I adopted my daughter in 2001 and these larger existential, philosophical, moral questions were instantly relegated to the furthest recesses of my mind as everyday demands overwhelmed me: bottles, diapers, Desitan, formula, feeding schedules, nap schedules, bath routines, bedtime routines, books, teddy bears, dolls, nursery rhymes, nonsensical rhymes, hand games, finger games, food games, numbers, colors, letters. Such joyful days. An innocent interlude.

Eight years later we’ve come full circle. But now it’s my daughter asking these questions.

How could I have been born to one family, … and ended up with another, half a world away? How could my parents have given me up?

Knowing her as I do, loving her as I do, I hear these questions in a new light. They have new meaning, new urgency. Worse, a harder question confronts me:

Could I somehow be …culpable?

Its insane to consider. But I don’t like avoiding hard questions. In the face of bad news, I want to know the worst, confront the truths, then deal with them.

I dig out Kay Ann Johnson’s book, Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son. Johnson, a professor of Hampshire College with her own daughter from China, spent ten years researching the elusive story of abandonment, adoption, and orphanage care in China. She published her book in 2004. A friend recommended it. I’d promptly bought it – and shelved it.

Johnson’s book is full of hard data. I’m a former MBA. Hard data is my friend.

China’s one-child policy was initiated under Deng Xiaoping in 1979 in an effort to control China’s population. Resistance to the one-child policy was most widespread in the countryside – where 75-80% of the population then resided, scraping a difficult existence off of the land.

In the 80’s, desperate families developed private work-arounds. Yes, some aborted. Yes, some left their daughters out in a field or on the roadside to die. But many others hid their girls or quietly, informally, adopted their girls out to family, neighbors, or friends. In the early 90’s, authorities responded to this subterfuge with what appeared to be greater leniency, offering a “one-son or two-child” policy for the countryside. But they matched this leniency with stricter laws going beyond a narrow focus on births to address the loophole: informal adoption.

Cadres of birth planning workers blanketed the countryside to monitor household head counts and reproductive behaviors. Penalties for violating birth planning laws were as harsh for adoptive families as birth families and included stiff fines (anywhere from one, to five, to even ten years’ worth of wages,) lost promotions, lost jobs, forced abortions, sterilizations, as well as public humiliation via tv and radio. (How easily we forget what it means to be free...)

Still, babies were born.

Thousands of brave families continued to adopt abandoned girls in the face of great personal cost and risk -- and another problem emerged. None of these girls could be registered at birth or beyond. They weren’t supposed to exist. But lacking formal registration, they also lacked basic civil, legal, and medical benefits: the right to go to school, the right to basic medical care, innoculations, or the right to reside in a given region or district. Those girls who made it to school were targets of derision – as if in fact they had no right to exist.

With fewer options to hide or care for the children, the number of abandonments soared.

State orphanages maintained a low profile to obscure their purpose. Signs suggested a preschool, or kindergarten, or children’s dance institute. Or there were no signs. Or the entrance was hidden. The fear was that if these places were discovered, their purpose known, they’d be flooded with babies.

They were flooded anyway. And flooded with healthy children. In the years preceding the one-child policy, Johnson estimates roughly 90% of abandoned children in orphanages were disabled. But by the 1990’s Johnson found that, for example, in her daughter’s state-run orphanage, fewer than 20% of the children had any known disability.

Overwhelmed with children, China's state-run orphanages grappled with mortality rates as high as 40%. In smaller, more remote areas, mortality rates approached 80%.

Foreign adoption was viewed as a way for the government to release some of the pressure, to provide some of the children with homes, to bring in much needed funds -- while still masking the problem.

Conditions in China’s orphanages have since improved. The government has slowly owned up to the problem and turned to the public for funds while also easing some of the restrictions on domestic adoption. Foreign money has helped. Over the last decade, Johnson estimates international adoption fees brought in more than $100 million. (Part of the cost of my daughter’s adoption was a required donation of $3,000 in support of her orphanage.) But, in her book, Johnson also raises a troubling possibility. Would China become dependent on foreign adoption? Was it too lucrative?

I wrote Johnson to thank her for her book and ask about recent developments. Had she seen Jacobs’ New York Times article? She is currently working on a grant to pursue further research in China. With a scholar’s caution, she was reluctant to be quoted. She generously shared her sense that the situation in China hadn’t yet changed in the time I adopted my daughter (2001.) But she also senses things have changed in the past four or five years. Domestic adoptions have increased. And now, there are far fewer healthy girls in orphanages. She is wary.

I confide my worries to a friend, a mother of two. What kinds of things will my daughter read as she grows older? What will she think? Did I contribute to something, in some small way, that’s beyond my wildest imagining?

She’s not an adoptive parent. She tells me we can’t control what happens in the world or what our kids hear. I know she is right. I can’t change what happened or what’s currently happening in China. And I can’t protect my daughter (protect myself?) forever. I can only hold her and love her.

Still, I never truly understood the extent of my vulnerability as an adoptive parent. Till now.

Two Mothers

It’s close to midnight and, as I get ready for bed, my mind returns to the start of the day with my daughter.

I'd woken her that morning and rubbed her back and she’d mumbled something about a bad dream. In the rush to get ready for school, I said I was sorry and urged her to tell me more -- once she was downstairs, dressed, and ready for breakfast. But breakfast came and went in a blur. We finished our morning routine and I sat on the stairs to wait with her for her carpool. She tossed her lumpy, blue book bag -- bulging with books and a snack -- down by the door, then jumped and danced about the living room with her usual light-hearted spirit.

She was dressed in a boy’s blue and white, striped t-shirt, baggy, bright red, athletic shorts that hung over navy leggings with a giant hole in one knee (she likes the hole there,) and running shoes. She prefers the “boyish” look even while she often complements these outfits with a ponytail tied with a large, lavendar, sequined scrunchie.

She is lucky her mother doesn’t give a rip about fashion.

She was silly, almost slapstick, striking funny poses. One minute, the sultry mystery woman, the next, a ninja spy, a karate master, a fierce warrior woman, then a swash buckling feminine sword fighter. (Oh… to be nine again!)

We'd had a great week together the previous week, over break. She spent a day skiing with her beloved uncle – and arrived home exuberant, full of tales schussing down the slopes. (And I got to sit in the front seat on the way home, Mom!) We picked out a new bike -– her first with gears -- and spent sunny days pedaling around town. When the rain returned, we spent lazy mornings reading books, playing piano and card games, and watching movies cuddled on the couch (including a wonderful old Danny Kaye movie: The Court Jester. Hilarious. Run, don’t walk to your local video store.) She enjoyed play dates, sleepovers, and a special evening performance of HMS Pinafore. She loves Gilbert & Sullivan, the language, music, rhythm, poetry, and patter song. She's memorized the lyrics to most of their productions.

As I sat on the stairs and watched her happy, high energy dance I thought, It's been a good week.

Then I realized: I never checked back in about that bad dream.

Did you want to tell me about your dream? We have time now.

She came and sat down beside me.

This was a strange one Mom! We were cuddling in my bed like we always do. But when I looked around, it wasn’t you! The hair was frizzier than yours, (sorry -- hard to imagine) and the eyes weren’t green. I jumped up and found you in the closet -- tied to a stake. When I untied you, the woman in the bed sat up and said, (pointing with dramatic flair) “You have betrayed me!”

Then, my daughter, imitating the woman from her dream, made the motion of someone slitting their throat.

Wow! I said. Was that your birth mother?

Yeah. she said. I think so.

She didn't seem the least bit upset. She seemed more surprised by the strangeness of the dream.

Do you feel torn between two mothers? I asked.

No. It was just weird, Mom. Really weird!

Did you wake with your heart pounding?

Yeah!

That’s intense…

Yeah!!

Well… I paused. (What to say?) Thanks for untying me.

Sure. No problem.

She shared this all in a completely matter of fact way. Her ride came and she hugged me with enthusiasm before running down the steps to greet her friends and take on the day.

I checked in with her once more when I picked her up from school that afternoon. We chatted about lots of things, then I referenced the dream, reassuring her she didn't need to pick sides. She could love two mothers -- and even love them in different ways if she chose. She knew this. She was cool about it. The dream was already, so... yesterday.

That night, I flash on an image of myself tied to a stake, stuffed in my daughter’s closet.

I guess it was my turn this time.

Part of me wonders if I need to call Jonna again. Or, if I’ll need to lock my door when my daughter reaches her teens and hormones kick in.

I remember Jonna's words:

This will come up again and again.... the first time is usually the hardest.

Then I can’t help but smile as a voice in my head whispers,

It's the battle of the mothers...

Or… is it the mother of all battles?

I give silent thanks again for my daughter’s honest, open heart, and climb into bed.

Gratitude

We could be in someone’s living room. There are two big armchairs in the corner and the coffee table and walls are decorated with brightly colored Latin American dolls, textiles, and totems. There are plants, a lamp, and a nice spread of magazines. But there’s also a large desk in the corner piled with papers and the lights are turned down awfully low for 4:00 in the afternoon. A large box of tissues sits conveniently within reach on a low table to my right.

Thankfully, I don’t need the tissues today.

I am sitting in a large cushioned armchair talking with Jonna, a child therapist I tracked down and met with last spring. (My daughter met her back then too.) She’s a petite, brown haired woman probably in her mid to late fifties with a lean, angular body. She sits in the other oversized armchair facing me. Just like our visit last spring, she’s slipped off her shoes and tucked stocking feet up snug under her thighs. She leans to one side, balancing a small notebook in her lap. Her arm lies casually draped over her thigh and a pen dangles loosely between two fingers. She listens intently, focusing round, birdlike eyes on me. Her face is lined with wrinkles -- as if she’s taken on the cumulative cares of her clients. I like this woman for her compassion, for her work with children, but even more -- for her direct, no-nonsense feedback.

I tell her about the events of the past week. About my daughter’s fears and worries. About confronting the truths of her story. Then too, I tell her of the night my girl asked to re-read her Homecoming story, outloud, together. How it felt like coming full circle, a joyful celebration.

Jonna tells me it’s common for adopted children to have these fantasies and fears. What’s more unusual is for grade school children to share their concerns so openly with their adoptive parents. Many are afraid to air their feelings. They stuff them and hold them inside, then wrestle with their confusion, or anger, in their teen years. (I’m afraid of the teen years.)

Jonna reaffirms what she told me last spring. That my daughter is perceptive, and emotionally solid. That abandonment is the most profound, fundamental fear we face as humans. That she needs to be able to grieve, and that grieving is a process. That these issues will come up for her again, in different ways, but that the first time is usually the hardest. And, that it’s a testament to her courage, our relationship, she can be so honest with me.

So… how are you doing in all this? Jonna asks.

I concede it hasn’t been easy but, with each passing day, I am grateful – indeed immensely grateful -- for my daughter’s courage, her willingness to trust in me. It tears me up to witness her pain and yet, I stand in awe of her strength.

I admit, with trepidation, I’ve been writing about our journey, sharing our story -- anonymously – in a blog I started. I’m scared Jonna will tell me I am betraying my daughter’s trust. Which is the reason why I know I should tell her about the blog. To get her candid assessment. Do I kill the blog? I don’t want to kill the blog. Writing about all the ups and downs of this journey helps me make sense of it all.

Jonna’s answer is not what I expect.

This is your story too. You’re entitled to a life as well.

I pause, and swallow an unexpected lump.

Damn. I do need one of those tissues today.

Of Loss and Joy and Desiring

She takes distinct delight in reviewing my criminal record. Fortunately, the record is clear.

She sits up high and proud in my big swivel desk chair in my office. I am seated below her, on a footstool by my files (okay, a bank of files,) and have pulled out our adoption paperwork. It’s been three days since the night she asked me about secrets. When she shared her fear I might not be who I say I am. That maybe I locked her birthmother away. I’d offered, when we had the time, to show her these papers.

Now, it’s Sunday morning and we have no plans. We can take what time we need. My goal is to be open with her, to show her I’ve nothing to hide, that I am who I say I am, that my intentions were and have always come from the heart. How else can she trust me?

She gets a kick imagining me as supplicant. Now I am the one reviewed and graded by the authorities, social workers, government bodies. She reads my application essay and references aloud. She raises her eyebrows discerningly at my medical report and giggles over my financial statement. But it’s the criminal check she really enjoys.

I share excerpts from random notes and letters, then discover the fax I wrote from the hotel to family on the day she became my daughter. I read it aloud.

... She has the sweetest little moonface!

Moonface?! she sputters, indignant.

Well.. sorry. I thought it was sweet at the time.

I go through file after file of our US paperwork, then remember a separate place I stored all our Chinese documents. She is fascinated by her passport.

Can I keep this?

Of course. I say. I kept it for you.
Later, she will store it in a special keepsake box in her closet and show me what she has done.

I find our Chinese certificates. There is one for the actual adoption, one that identifies me as the person I say I am. And one that certifies who she is. We read each in turn, silently together, including the last:

This is to certify that ___________, female, was born on January 17th, 2000 and was found to be abandoned at the No. 13 of Huangzhoudadao, Huanggang City, Hubei Province on January 25th, 2000. So far, her innate parents and other relatives could not be found.
I look up. She is crestfallen. It’s as if the light has left her face. She spins the chair round and starts playing frantic tug of war with Max and one of his fluffy toys. But there’s no joy in her play. Only nervous, upset energy.
That had to hurt, I say. Pause. You know… Its okay to be sad.

Nothing.

Are you sad?

A nod, yes. Tears.

Are you mad?
Why didn’t they come back for me?!

I hesitate.

I don’t know honey. I’d guess the government penalties were too severe. They were afraid. Or they couldn’t care for an infant. What if they couldn’t feed you, or clothe you, or bathe you? What if... this was a way to keep you safe?

She is silent.

I don’t know.

She lets me hold her for a bit, but then pulls away and wanders up to her room. The rest of the day is subdued. She does homework. We watch a movie. “I’m just not myself today” she offers. She seems older suddenly. I reach out reflexively, to touch her shoulder, to stroke her hair, to rub the nape of her neck.

She goes to the piano and sits. For her, this is usually play and her fingers literally fly up and down over the keys. She’s learning Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, a favorite. I love the piece too, but today, she plays it so slowly I think,

Even the piano sounds sad.

I realize how foolish it is for adoptive parents to think we can make all the pain go away by showing our children they’re not alone, that there are thousands of girls like them, that this has been happening in China for decades, and continues even today. Everyone loses a parent. Does it make it less painful when it happens to you? When our girls discover this loss for themselves… that loss is loaded down with something more crushing: abandonment. It’s the most profound rejection there is… that of a parent, when you are new to the world, when, body and soul, you’re as naked as you’ll ever be.

I look at my daughter’s face, the sag of her shoulders, and wonder when, if, how, she will recover. I find it hard to eat.

I am not religious but I do have great faith in the power of love, in the power and resilience of the human soul. My life as a parent has taught me that much. So why do I feel like I’m walking on eggshells, watching, waiting. That night, I fall into bed exhausted, unable to sleep.

She wakes the next morning, well rested. There’s a hint of the old bounce as she heads out the door to catch her ride to school. I need the day to breathe, to run errands, to catch up on the mountain of work at my desk. But I take time to search the web for books and resources that might help us on this journey. And I place a call to a counselor.

She returns home that night the exuberant child I remember. She dances and babbles on about the day, sharing fun word puzzles and math problems, hoping to stump me. It’s a relief to see her lighthearted again. But I am slow this time to trust it.

I stand fixing dinner and she marches into the kitchen with her old, well-loved, well thumbed Homecoming book. It's both photo album and story. Our story, drafted by yours truly, of how we became a family.

Come on Mom! she announces. Let’s read this aloud. Together.
I shove dishes, half chopped vegetables, a bottle of oil, a tray of butter, a container of cheese and a large cutting board off to one side -- and sit down beside her. We take turns reading the text (Sassy lass! She corrects my grammar!) and we pour over the photos. She is full of happy questions, curious questions, probing questions, some old and some new. We laugh and crack jokes. As we get to those first shots from the morning we met, she laughs at her mom’s face, red with emotion, then points to the healthy, pink-cheeked cherub held and fussed over by two adoring Ayis:

Look at that little moonface, Mom!

We bust up -- and never get to the end of the book. It doesn’t matter. We know the story by heart. We end up sporting giant red oven mitts, fencing, sparring, and slapping at each other, dancing, dodging, and bopping about the kitchen till suddenly my girl dissolves in a fit of giggles onto the floor.

Warriors

The rain has been relentless. It's gray and cold and late in the day and we’re driving home from Chinese class. My daughter reminds me I promised to buy her a book from her favorite series, The Warriors. I joke about being a softie, then pull into the parking lot by the grocery store. The bookstore lies across the way. As I turn the key in the ignition, the car grows quiet except for the slow, steady tap of the rain. My daughter confides:

Mom, I worry you’re not really who you say you are.

This is the second time she’s offered this. The first time we talked was three nights ago, in my bed. She asked if I had any secrets, if I was hiding things from her. If maybe I’d locked her birth mother away in a cabinet.

I'd paused. Stroked her arm. Asked questions. I tried to explain – gently -- that I never met her birth mother. That I didn’t come along till later. She arrived at the orphanage a 7 day old baby and was placed in her foster mother’s care. I arrived a year and a half later. We went into her room and I pulled Kids Like Me in China by Ying Ying Frye from her book shelf and asked if she’d seen it. If she wanted to see it. She wanted to. So I scootched in behind my daughter on her bed and held her as she turned the pages, reading, studying every picture. The photos of the children are sweet, but they’re sobering. The room fell unnaturally quiet. My heart throbbed in my throat. We talked a little more but she was subdued and I knew I shouldn’t push. So I tucked her into bed, kissed her, hugged her, and told her I loved her.

I hated she had to face that.

For the next three days it felt as though my stomach had flipped and couldn’t quite right itself. It rattled me to think my daughter could think me evil or possibly hurtful. That she might lose her sense of trust. That she might be afraid. Of me.

This is a child who’s watched me gingerly capture lady bugs and bees in glass jars in our house so we could free them from her window.

My first reaction was to second guess myself. She is so very sensitive. I try incredibly hard to be patient, to communicate, to be logical, loving, and fair. But I’m a parent. I get frustrated, and I get testy. Her radar is so acute. She takes it all to heart. It doesn’t leave a lot of room to be human.

Was I really that awful? That scary?

A part of me wanted to ask her more questions, to reason with her, yes, even argue with her. I wanted to defend myself. Then, a small voice in my head whispered: This is not about you.

I stepped back and tried to ponder if there might be another reason for her to think this. Perhaps she’s not thinking evil or scary. She knows I love her. We have our own little mutual adoration society. Maybe… maybe she saw me as …desperate? A single mom so wanting a child she might steal from another…?

I struggled but knew I had to hold off, to be patient and offer quiet hints of support. And wait. I had to make it safe for her to talk and let her choose her moment.

The rain drums harder on the roof of the car now. I twist round and look back at my daughter on the seat. I feel, I hope, if I am still, very still, perhaps she will tell me more.

You worry I’m not who I say I am?

Yes. I worry Mom.

Tell me more, honey.

I worry you’re just being nice to me but that… maybe you might hurt me…

My heart feels almost too big for my chest. My child thinks I want to hurt her. It’s beyond imagining. I wonder if the world as I’ve known it may be slowly breaking apart.

Oh honey… do you really think I could ever hurt you?

Well… not you maybe… but that maybe you might hire someone…

But… why…? How could I ever hurt you? I love you, honey.

Its hard to breathe. I need to breathe. And be still. And listen. Closely.

Well… I wonder if maybe you locked my birth mother in a cabinet somewhere…

But… that would truly be a horrible thing to do, wouldn’t it?

She nods sadly, agreeing. Her eyes fill. A lone tear drops onto her cheek.

Do you really think I could do that to another mother? I ask this gently. That would be just awful. Wouldn’t it?

She nods and agrees again. More tears drop down, dotting her cheek. She leans forward to rest her elbows on the compartment between the two front seats.

Do I really scare you?

She nods a weak no. A few more tears escape. She lowers her face in her arms as if she is weary. I feel sick. Heartbroken. I ask, almost beg, her to come and sit with me in the front. I want to gather her in my arms. She nods her head weakly again, no.

I ask if it's okay then if I might come back and sit beside her. She nods her assent. But when I do, she leans forward, away from me, hiding her face and her tears in her arms. She seems so conflicted.

I place my palm on her back and rub, gently. Very gently.

We are quiet. Together.

Then… a thought …

Do you think.. that maybe.. you worry about this because it’s just too hard to believe you could have been born to one mother, half a world away, but now, you’re here with me?

A bigger nod, yes. She is only half facing me but I see a fresh well of tears surge up. They fill her eyes and course down her cheeks.

I pause.

Do you think… maybe…. it might be easier to believe I could be evil than to imagine your birth mother could have ever actually… let you go?

She lifts her head and finally turns to look at me directly. Her face puckers and breaks with emotion and I reach to draw her gently toward me, into my lap. She lets me. Drawing her knees in close, she sobs openly, releasing the sadness.

Oh honey. It hurts doesn’t it? I’m so sorry.

I stroke her arm and we cry together.

Minutes pass. Then she sits up and wipes her face clean and takes a deep breath.

Okay Mom. Another sigh. Let’s go get that book now.

I try to pull it together even though my insides are jelly.

Okay. How do I look?

She manages a small smile and shakes her head.

You’re a mess, Mom. A mess.

We pull on our hoods and climb out of the car. She takes tight hold of my hand and we dodge through the rain together.