Yesterday we celebrated our 2nd family day. I wrote this article about it and I thought I would share it here.
It was the most important day of my life and all I could
think of was, Would I make it to the toilet
My husband, Dave and I were in China in a van going to our hotel
to see our child for the first time. We had been told that we would meet our
baby, the day after our arrival in Nanchang. I had it all planned. I’d have a
bag of Cheerios for the baby. I knew I would sing “Baby Mine.” I would wear
red—the color of joy in Chinese culture.
Why I should have expected this day to go as planned when
nothing whatsoever in my motherhood journey had done so, I don’t know. First we
went through fertility treatments. The medical establishment has innumerable
ways to take the “sex” out of “sexy”—leaving me to wonder “y?” Was I fully a
woman if I couldn’t bear a child? How was my marriage to work when sex became a
chore—and someone other than the two of us made the schedule? After yet another
doctor’s office called to tell me that the latest procedure hadn’t worked, the
decision to adopt wasn’t so much a decision, as a level of defiance: I was
going to be a mother. We chose China.
If I thought fertility treatments had been invasive, the
adoption journey brought invasiveness to a whole new level. We cleaned up our
messy home and prayed that a speck of dust wouldn’t take our dream away when
the social worker visited. We asked our friends to write recommendations for
us. How many parents today would have children if their friends had to write
references for them? We were fingerprinted so many times that it might have been
cheaper had we built our own crime lab. We were “Paper Pregnant” and remained
so for close to seven years.
Then we got the call, an email with sporadic information,
and a picture. A little girl who was born the day I had
miscarried my only pregnancy, was to be our child. She was sitting, unsmiling,
against an orange background. She was wearing a pink outfit with yellow socks.
She was the most beautiful baby we had ever seen. Another three months of
hacking through the bureaucratic red tape and we were in China, our daughter’s
birthplace.
The day before we
were supposed to meet our daughter, Dave and I, and another couple that would
be meeting their soon-to-be-adopted daughter got off the plane in Nanchang,
China. We were assured that our guide would
find us—and it was easy to see how. We were among very few Caucasians there. Our
guide, Claire, introduced herself, helped us get our luggage, and told us,
almost parenthetically that our babies would be waiting at the hotel and we had
to get into the van quickly. I stared at
her. Was she trying to maybe make a joke? The other soon-to-be mother smiled
and made joyful sounds. She obviously processed this better. My brain was a
blank. I looked at my husband and I saw he was just as scared as I was. Then,
of course, my body got into the action. I needed to use the bathroom.
In most of China a toilet consists of a ceramic hole in the
ground with a place to put your feet. This is supposed to be excellent for your
colonic health. If you’re a Westerner needing to defecate, it is the devil
itself. I had used one, but I wanted to go to a Western toilet in the hotel. I was hoping I would make it.
I tried to imagine our baby, soon to be renamed Lotus in my
head. Was she walking? Did she have a temper? The information we had was
eclectic and maddening. It said that when she got sick she got well quickly—but
not what she had recovered from. It said she liked music—but not who sang it to
her. It had the measurements of her anus—and I had some degree of pity for the
poor worker who had to record that bit. All that info and I didn’t know her.
What did she like to eat? What made her smile? Laugh? What made her fist her
hands? Would she like us? Would I like her? Would I make it to the hotel to use
a bathroom or would I embarrass myself before I met her?
We arrived at the hotel and I ran full-out to the Western
toilets—in time! Afterwards, I walked to the ornate lobby of the hotel. The sun
streamed in as I looked for Dave. I’d be lying if I said I remembered the
expression on his face—all I saw was the little girl he was holding in his
arms. She still didn’t have much hair.
She was wearing a long sleeved striped shirt in 95-degree weather and, her face was
very red. That might also have been because she was screaming her lungs out.
She didn’t seem to be afraid, more pissed off. I ran to my husband and held my
arms out for our baby.
He placed a screaming weight of about 20 pounds into my
arms. I started jostling, hoping to comfort her, and she screamed louder. I
opened my mouth to sing and every song I’d ever learned went out of my head. I
would have been hard pressed to do the ABC song. I jostled more and her crying got even louder.
I held her closer and she screamed right in my ear. Finally I heard myself
singing:
“Oh stop your crying, it will be all right.
Just take my hand, hold it tight.
I will protect you from all around you.
I will be here, don’t you cry.”
As the next words of “You’ll Be in my Heart”
from Tarzan came out of my mouth, my
daughter stopped crying. My blue eyes met her deep brown ones, and she kept eye
contact. I tried to put all the love I felt into my eyes. My voice broke as I
sang about how she would be in my heart. I felt Dave’s arms come around us as
we became a family of three.
