The First Two Days

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I don’t care how prepared you are for adoption (…or parenthood…or most things, actually), you can’t actually be prepared until you walk through the experience. We’ve read all the books, attended an intensive orientation, followed blogs, asked for advice, joined Facebook groups, and still–nothing prepared us for the reality of yesterday when we first met Fei Xin (that’s what they call her–I’m switching to that from Xin Xin.)

It was chaotic in ways that are hard to describe; the first few days are like getting on a roller coaster–not a Six Flags or Disney World roller coaster, but the junkie, shaky, falling-apart-at-the-seams fairground roller coasters that come to the wrong side of the tracks. We strapped in, we’re upside down and topsy-turvy, and we have no idea what’s around the next curve.

The guides and the officials know where the lines are, what comes next, where to be, and we are bumping along in a whirlwind of activity. Much of this is cultural–our sense of the rhythm of how things should be done is very different from the bureaucrats’ sense. I’m eternally grateful for years of travel and experience with bureaucracy, especially the time we lost our passports trying to move to Brazil. I had no idea how those outrageously frustrating experiences in Brazil would prepare us for the bumping along feeling of waiting and going and signing and stamping all of the things that come with bringing home a little girl.

***

I had a hard time sleeping the night before our appointment Monday morning at 9:30–part jet lag, part nerves. We were up and ready at 5:30 in the morning, for what would turn out to be a long day. Our guide Zita is a gift; I love her intonation in English. When we ask her whether we can do something, she nods vehemently, “I think, can. I think, can.” We had a new girl, Amanda, who started training on her first day as well. She used to be a teacher of 3- to 4-year-olds and she’s been such a sweet presence the first few days, teaching our big girls Chinese phrases and drawing pictures with them. She and Zita have helped tremendously.

We ate an enormous, delicious, all-you-can-eat breakfast (which has been the absolute best part of our day, hands-down), grabbed all of our paperwork and our cameras, and met Zita, Amanda and our slightly grumpy driver (who smokes when we leave the van and sometimes shaves with what look like a big pair of tweezers when we pause in traffic).

First we went to the bank and exchanged money. The girls and I played “I Spy” and “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” The old man in the line next to us yelled so loudly at the poor teller that the guards finally came. Obviously something had happened to his money and he was really stressed. It was disconcerting and sad.

Then we rounded the corner to another government building for what will remain one of the most overwhelming and bewildering experiences of my life. We squeezed into a tiny, anonymous conference room with two other families, a couple from Hawaii and a mom and older daughter from Tennessee. Each of us had a guide and there were a handful of adoption officials; our cameras were ready but we had no idea if this was the room where we would receive the kids or what was happening. We held our cameras ready–Noelle had a pack of stickers, Joy had little stacking cups, and Jonathan and I had our cameras at the ready (the one thing I forgot to do–charge my camera or bring the charger–OF ALL THE THINGS. We’re borrowing a charger soon, but seriously, what kind of idiot forgets to charge their good camera to ADOPT A BABY? A tired idiot, that’s who.)

They shoved papers in front of us, we signed, dated, signed, dated, passed, nodded, smiled.

And then suddenly there was a little boy crying silently, deeply in the corner and his new mom was there with stickers and we realized that Fei Xin was coming into that tiny hot room where we all crowded around the table. Zita took Jonathan to pay the processing fees. The girls and I tried hard to give the sweet grieving boy and his new mom their space. The other adoptive mom and I made silly small talk. The girls were antsy and bouncing and ready.

And then Jonathan came back. Zita had my cell phone to take video. And we heard the voices around the corner encouraging her to come. “Jiang Fei XIn! Jiang Fei XIn!”

And she was there.

I wish I could load the video or pictures, but WordPress in China isn’t liking me too much right now. The video from when we arrived is hilarious. Zita took it. It’s all blurry. You can hear their voices–”Jiang Fei Xin, uh. Jiang Fei Xin! ….Ma Ma….Ba Ba…Ja Ja…” I have no idea what they’re saying other than introducing Mommy, Daddy and sisters. She came straight to me, held her sweet baby hands up, and just watched us seriously for a long time. She wore a little yellow panda coat that is already one of our most precious possessions.

And in the background of the video, you can hear the quiet cries of the little overwhelmed boy.

I’m glad she came to us so easily. You can see a lot of her personality in the videos; her nannies and Zita, who knows her, all say she really is easygoing and sweet.

And yet, it’s not a good things for a baby to go straight to someone they barely know. My older girls would never have done that at two years old. In the last two days, she’ll hold her hands out and walk straight to anyone. She’s a little love, there’s no question, but she’s a love who will need some serious attaching before she assigns her affection to the right people.

We have our work cut out for us.

***

The first day was easy. We looked at each other and smiled and played cups and teared up that she was here in the flesh and our daughter.

And then night hit. It’s clear this little girl loved her bed (when we went to the orphanage, which I’ll write about later, she walked straight to her bed and clung to it). When it came time to put her down in a strange bed in a strange hotel with a strange white family, she wasn’t having it. Not one little bit.

The way this little one can go from precious lump of love to rage-filled fit-throwing machine is impressive. The fit she threw for over an hour that first night was repeated the second day several times, most notably in the government office. We didn’t feed her enough at breakfast, we didn’t bring a big enough snack, and in the middle of the office while we promised never to abandon or abuse her, she threw a back-bending, screaming-Mimi fit.

We’ve learned, in two days, to feed her well, to make sure her clothes don’t touch her body and her obviously sensitive skin, and that at bedtime, she’s going to be very sad.

So even though the first day was easy, the second day might have been one of the roughest of our lives as parents. We never regretted this, of course not, but we looked at each other in the midst of the serious rage from a grieving baby, and knew we have a tough row ahead.

She’s darling. She laughs like a dolphin. She walks like an ewok. She loves rice and porridge and she obsessively loves her plastic stacking cups. She charms everyone who sees her and she writes on her Magnadoodle with her left hand.

She’s also in the midst of serious grief and culture shock. She perks up around Chinese people, especially when they talk to her, and she reaches her arms up to the waitresses at the restaurants and the guy watching the indoor swimming pool. She’s still not sure what to do with our big girls; one minute she adores them, the next she fights them for her toys or her bottle. They’ve been angels, but going from being the baby to the middle is really hard on Joy and moving from a little girl to a helpful oldest girl is hard on Noelle.

This has been really, really good. And it’s also been really, really hard. Two days in, we’re glad, tired, in love and digging in.

Trip to China, Day 1

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Today was our first full day in China. We arrived last night around seven in the evening. It was my birthday; the girls picked out a gorgeous locket for me. They gave me an antique one last year and I’ve worn it out wearing it. I love my new silver one with space for four pictures. Though an overnight plane trip is not the most exciting thing, arriving in our daughter’s country on my birthday was pretty darn great

Our girls could not have been better on the plane; it’s as if they’ve been doing this their whole lives. They followed us without any fussing, enjoyed every meal, slept for hours, colored, read books, listened to music, watched movies—it couldn’t have gone more smoothly. Jonathan and I keep saying how glad we are that we brought them. I’m not sure we ever though seriously about not bringing them, but considering that this their very first international trip, we’re bursting with pride at how well they’ve done.

We were met last night at the airport by our guide Zita; she’s a very hip-looking, English-speaking young woman who studied social work and English in college and now gets to combine them in her work as a guide for adoptive families. She has an easy smile and wore great orange boots. I liked her immediately.

We took a van to the hotel from the airport, about an hour’s ride, in a small van with cotton covers on the benches that smelled a little like cigarette smoke and body odor.  The girls loved that they were able to just buckle up without car seats; Noelle watched avidly out the window, but Joy drifted off almost mid-sentence.

The city at night had a dystopian feel; the smog was thick and the bright fluorescent lights on buildings and bridges, one of the things that Shanghai is famous for, made the scenery seem like something out of Hunger Games or The Terminator rather than any city that we’ve been to. The buildings have a square, uniform feel that marks this city as different from Bangkok or Mexico City or Sao Paulo or any of the other enormous, anonymous cities where we’ve been. But really, big cities are big cities all over the world; it’s hard to feel like we’re getting a glimpse of “real China” when we’re on such a touristy trip in a hotel that caters to Western clients.

This is a completely different trip than any Jonathan and I have ever taken. My natural instinct is that we’re not going to eat at McDonald’s, we’re going to find the hole-in-the-wall noodle shops where the locals eat. Today we left the hotel to wander our neighborhood a bit and find lunch. We looked in some stores that felt more typical, but ended up at McDonald’s because of our girls. They were thrilled—they loved the chicken nuggets and the happy meals. They were fascinated by people on the street, but a bit disconcerted at how everyone smiles, points and waves at them. McDonald’s felt like an easy compromise for their outrageously good attitudes in every situation.

It also summarizes the differences in this trip: though we want to get to know China as much as possible for the sake of our daughter because we love her culture, this is a family-building trip. That means less adventure and more comfort than we’re used to when we travel.

Traveling is the thing Jonathan and I like to do with each other most, so it’s been fun to get back into our familiar rhythm and add our girls into the trip. Noelle’s personality (remember the girls go by their middle name on this blog) is to walk around in the front ready to get to the next place. As we were walking through the plaza area outside of the train station right by our hotel, she kept saying, “I just want a Chinese friend who speaks English and is my age and wants to play with me. Can we go find a friend?” That attitude sums up her personality perfectly. I cannot WAIT for her to go to the orphanage and get to play with kids. She’s dying to make friends with everyone.

Joy, though she definitely enjoys interacting with people, is a bit more in the background watching. Jonathan held her the whole time we were walking; we talked about trying to take the subway (we were too tired to attempt that long of an adventure), but she was the one who found the subway map. She watches and makes surprisingly insightful observations for a four-year-old. She has an old soul. I’m so excited to see her as a big sister; she waved at every baby we saw and she can’t wait for there to be a little person she can help every day.

Tomorrow is the day we meet Xin Xin (again, I like protecting my kids’ real names, so we’re using her nickname on the blog). We have felt pretty prepared in many ways for the experience by our agency (we adore our agency). I think everything should go smoothly. We’re packing our bags tonight with presents for the nanny, the orphanage director and the official who is helping us, plus bottles and diapers and the Ergo. It’s a bit surreal that tomorrow we’ll become parents again.

And yet, everything in our lives seems to be leading to this moment. Jonathan’s and my traveling life makes this just another of our many adventures. The way we’ve raised our girls, especially their experiences with the Hill Tribers and they way they run readily into any group of kids, is part of what I think has helped all of this seem so normal to them.  We’ve talked over and around this situation and we feel like we are stepping smoothly into this next stage.

I put the following status update on Facebook right before we left as we were sitting at the airport and I think it sums up perfectly how we feel: “The bags are packed, the lists are checked, the crib is up, the dissertation is defended, and the stockings are hung. The time has come. We’re on a way to get our girl.”

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We cannot wait until tomorrow morning at 9:30 (7:30 pm Austin time), when Xin Xin becomes ours.

T-Minus 48 Hours

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In less than two days, we will be on the plane to China. I had big plans to write a second part to the series about adoption as an arranged marriage and I will (someday!), but I’ve been going ninety-to-nothing for days now and just haven’t had two seconds to get back to it. Sorry if you were waiting breathlessly for part 2. :)

I will be blogging pretty openly about our trip. I owe a huge debt to adoption blogs before me, so I will bypass some of my normal rules about not talking too much about my girls online to give some insight into what it will be like for us to go to Shanghai and bring home our little bundle of love. My girls go by their middle names on this blog, so I’ll probably keep that up with our newest one (her Chinese name is her middle name), so we’ll call her by her baby nickname Xin Xin (Sheen Sheen) for now. Once we get back, I might dial it back in, but I’ve followed along with other families as they meet their kids and scoped out pictures to know what to expect, so I think it seems fair to do that with this blog as well.

So, to start it off, introducing Xin Xin, who becomes ours at 9:30 am Shanghai time on Monday morning:

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(And, in case you’re worried that I’m advertising that I’ll be out of the country online, let me just say to any potential burglars or crazy people–my sister-in-law and brother-in-law are staying in our house and Adam could be a bouncer in another life, so really, do not mess. There, that makes me feel better.)

And now, to finish all of the lists, the packing, the sorting, the downloading and the general craziness of these last two days.

TWO DAYS.

Adoption as an Arranged Marriage (Part 1)

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It was late and we were in Midland for my husband’s grandmother’s funeral. We were sad, but it was time, and so it was a bittersweet weekend. My friend Carrie McKean and I had been emailing and blog-sharing and we finally found the chance to meet in real life. We got together for coffee and then went to the lobby of the hotel where I was staying to keep talking and talking and talking. Sometime around midnight, a baseball team settled into our space and loudly interrupted our conversation, so we took it to the indoor pool.

Inside it was hot and humid and I finally warmed up from the frigid February west Texas wind. Carrie is one of those friends you bump into every now and then who you feel like you’ve known forever. The layers of connection we have (adoption, China, economic development, refugees) are extraordinary.

We were sharing some of our fears about adoption and I said something out loud that has changed the way I view adoption. Both of us were expressing doubt about being able to fall in love with a picture. We had both worked at orphanages and knew that there were some kids you connected with better than others. The three kids from Brazil that I adored might not have been at the top of everyone’s list but I love them fiercely and would have uprooted my life for them if I had been able to adopt them.

How can you have that kind of love for a child you’ve never met? What if you end up with a kid who, if you met them in real life, you might not connect with as well as you would another kid? How do you handle the enormous uncertainty of parenting a child you don’t know with a past and a life outside of your own?

When you’re matched with a child from China (from most international adoption places, I think), you get a picture and some information and you have to make a decision about whether or not you will pursue this child’s adoption. If it’s a file that other people might be interested in, you can have as little as 48-72 hours to make one of the most life-changing decisions you will ever face.

Based on one or two pictures and a couple of paragraphs.

I was thinking out loud in the middle of the night and I told Carrie, “It’s almost like an arranged marriage.” The further we’ve gotten into the adoption path, the more that feels like the appropriate metaphor to me.

I know some people fall in love with a picture and they just know. The day that we got our daughter’s referral was one of the most upside-down days of our life. It just showed up in my inbox on a random Thursday afternoon; my caseworker had a file that she sent to us on a whim. We still had a while on our paperwork, so we thought it would be several more weeks, but this child was just becoming paper-ready and our caseworker thought she might be a good fit for us.

She was. Immediately. We had researched where she was from–we love our agency’s partnership with the Shanghai orphanage where our daughter lives. We knew her special needs were at the top of our list–it’s interesting to me that what fits well with some families does not fit well with others. And oh my word, her sweet face, with the cheeks and the bright all-over smile.

So we accepted the referral. In our case, we had at least two weeks to decide and could have taken longer if we wanted it, but we knew by that evening that we had made our choice. I used that time to call doctors and friends and analyze it from every side. We made a cognitive decision to accept the file, but our hearts were primed and ready to love the child behind the picture.

But now as we face the reality of traveling to China in the next month or so (!!!) and think about how we are about to up-end the life of an almost-three-year-old girl, my heart beats fast and my palms get sweaty. The grief and homesickness she will face is staggering.

As someone who has had my share of homesickness in my life, I can’t begin to imagine.

I’m grateful for the metaphor of an arranged marriage. It helps me to know that what we are all facing will take time. She will not (and maybe we will not) fall in love immediately. We will all need time to adjust. There will be moments of bright joy and also moments of pain. We will need to give each other space to grow in love.

She is our daughter because we decided we will love her. We sought her out. We are going halfway across the world–our whole little family–because we want her to fit with us.

The reality is, her pictures are precious and her life is full of pathos and there are a lot of idealistic reasons why this could feel lovely and holy and good. But adoption is complicated and hard and that’s the reality we want to face with eyes wide open. There is loss and pain and grief that we are accepting with this arrangement and that we have to hold in a central place in our lives.

Of all the things we bring to this relationship, patience and grit might be the most important. Because she is our daughter and by the end of this year, two governments will recognize that fact. We will move her here and incorporate her into our lives.

But the real move that is being made is that we are changing ourselves for her. Our two biological girls are dexterously handling chopsticks and learning Chinese songs and falling in love with Chinese culture. I’ve spent the last six months learning about Mao and the Cultural Revolution, Chinese literature, Shanghai economics, and socioeconomic healthcare divisions. We’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg, but we will meet this new little one where she is. In many ways, the rest of our lives will be spent honoring, learning about and falling in love with her culture and her past and her ancestry. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but it’s one of the deepest commitments we’ve ever made.

To me, that’s what you do when you agree to love, honor and cherish someone for life. Even before you’ve ever met.

*****

In Part 2, I will talk about why it’s so necessary that this relationship be arranged, especially for ethical reasons.

Why Adoption from China is Different from Adoption from Other Countries (Some Thoughts)

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In the piece I wrote about adoption ethics a few weeks ago, I referenced the difference between adoption from China and adoption from other countries. I wanted to take a minute to look at that a bit more in-depth. In part, that’s because of some pushback I’ve gotten in my real life interactions with people about adoption ethics, as well as some online conversations. I thought it couldn’t hurt to spell out our decision to adopt from the China Special Needs line a bit more clearly.

I want to begin with this caveat: adoption changes daily. What I am saying is based on my knowledge and pretty extensive research and is true now, in October 2013, but things could change rapidly with new government policies in China or adoption policies in the U.S. or any number of factors. Adoptions from China have changed even in the last couple of years. This isn’t intended to be a document for all time. It’s just a statement for family and friends about why adoption from China is the choice we made.

To be clear, I AM NOT SAYING ADOPTION THAT IS NOT FROM CHINA IS UNETHICAL. Also, I AM NOT SAYING THAT ALL CHINESE ADOPTIONS ARE ETHICAL.

OK. Here we go.

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Since 1979, pregnancies in China have been monitored under the one-child policy. Though the policy continues to shift in terms of enforcement in different regions and areas, in general this means that each family is allowed only one child. In a culture in which aging parents are expected to be cared for by their children, this has led to agonizing choices for many parents, especially the poor. Wealthier families can often afford to pay a fine in order to have a second child.

I’ve heard that the one-child policy is being repealed in several areas; again, all of this could change fast. From what a friend told me who just traveled to China this summer, the rumor is a policy change is coming (or has already come) so that any person who is an only child–basically, an entire generation–can have two children. This is a huge step.

But for poor families, the choices can still be really difficult. Either they cannot afford to pay a fine for more than one child or they cannot afford health care for children who are born with special needs. Chinese health care is mostly a cash-up-front system. So if a family has a child with a medical need, they have to commit to being able to pay for the necessary surgeries and treatments. If they cannot afford them, the child will most often be turned away from the hospital (I’ve heard heartbreaking stories–Carrie McKean is my source for many of them). There are of course hundreds, even thousands of exceptions, and many organizations work hard in the country to provide health care to enable families to stay together. But in general, a child born with any special need is inherently difficult for a poorer family to take care of.

The best case solution to this could be what is often suggested for other women in impoverished cultures–economic and educational development. (You should check out Scarlet Threads, my favorite economic development project in China.) But that still would not fix the problem of lack of decent health care. A bureaucratic policy shift would need to occur in order to solve it. As it is, women could spend their whole lives making fair trade items and still not make enough money to be a drop in the bucket in terms of the health care cost of raising a special needs child. Of course it would depend on the special need and the specific situation.

But the equation that is arguably the answer to the “orphan problem” in other countries–more jobs and better education for women equal more families being able to stay together–doesn’t really work in China.

The bureaucracy and communist caste-system is just different. Add to that the well-publicized difficulties of a culture that is built on sons being able to provide for the family better than daughters. You can see the dilemmas.

Chinese domestic adoption is increasing rapidly. THIS IS GREAT NEWS. The figure a friend told me from her visit over the summer is that 30,000 adoptions occurred domestically in China last year. I have no idea how much this number is up from years past or what the source is for that number (this was a physical therapist who works with our agency and had some great conversations with adoption officials in several different areas). Ideally, every child that is available for adoption would be adopted in-country, so they could have both the support of a family and their cultural connections. We are years away from that happening, but that seems like the goal to me. (That’s what has been happening in Brazil in the last several years, which is one of the reasons we are not adopting from there even though it’s our home culture away from home.)

To summarize: it’s not that Chinese people don’t like baby girls (which is what someone told me not too long ago). And it’s not that they don’t like kids with special needs. There are some cultural prejudices in Chinese culture that are true in almost every culture against kids with noticeable special needs and it’s certainly possible that many kids are abandoned and available for adoption because of those cultural stigmas. But my sense is that in most cases, it has as much to do with the health care system as it does social stigmas.

And before I start hearing from people that if we weren’t adopting from the China Special Needs line, those kids would be adopted in-country, let me just say–I don’t think that’s true. As I’ve learned from my friend Erin Raffety, who has done anthropological research on foster families of special needs kids in China, it is still difficult for foster families who want to adopt kids with special needs to do that. There are a lot of factors that make that true; I think it’s hard and sad.

Again, this is all based on anecdotal research and conversations more than journalistic-type sources. But if all the adopting families left the system tomorrow, most special needs kids in China would still remain in orphanages. Huge policy and cultural shifts would have to happen in the country to change that situation.

There is some hope that these shifts will occur and I am praying for that day. Until then, the reality remains. This article from May 2013 in the New York Times shows the impact of the brutal one-child policy: 336 million pregnancies aborted since 1971, many of them forced abortions (the stories in this article are graphic–be prepared). Among the many, many reasons for this high abortion rate are the type of forced abortions described so horrifically in the article, as well as gender-based and special-needs-based ones. The article gives a sense of the huge scope of this issue.

Because relinquishment is still not legal in most areas of China, abandonment of special needs kids can be the only viable option for many families. To be clear, there are as many boys in the Special Needs line in China right now waiting to be adopted as there are girls–gender doesn’t seem to be a factor in children who have special needs. In fact, two things have changed in the last ten years in which I’ve been aware of Chinese adoptions: there are no longer a disproportionate number of healthy baby girls who have been abandoned because of their gender who are not able to find a family (adoptions through the Non-Special Needs line in China can take 6+ years, last I heard). And there are no longer “minor” situations like birthmarks that are labeled “special needs” (in my experience, many of the families waiting in the Non-Special Needs line are moving over or considering children that in the Special Needs line). That’s why I keep talking about the China Special Needs line. For our agency and every other agency I looked into, they are two very distinct types of adoption (and there are variations within that: Special Focus kids are often harder to place).

Kristen Howerton said it best in a discussion about adoption ethics at Idea Camp–a basic rule of thumb for pre-adoptive families who want an ethical adoption is to go where the lines are short. I’m not talking about working with a shady agency that promises short wait times. But the Special Needs line out of China is really, really short. There are hundreds of kids waiting without much hope of being matched with a family. Most families I know, including us, got matched way faster than we expected.

This is especially true if the child is over 2 (like ours) and has particular types of special needs. It’s interesting to me what some people view as major and minor special needs; without going into too much detail about our little one, we felt very comfortable with her diagnoses, but were told by our agency that many kids with similar issues are hard to place. And I certainly don’t want to argue that every family should adopt every kid–I think adoption has become a more specialized situation in the last ten years as older children and special needs kids become the norm. I have a lot to say about that as well and will probably turn to that in another post, but I just wanted to lay out our own reasons first.

We chose China Special Needs because, though not perfect, in general it is one of the more ethical types of international adoption available. It’s not the only ethical type of adoption–not by a long stretch. But it does explain a little bit why a family who lived in Brazil and Chile and speak Portuguese and Spanish found themselves watching Mandarin lesson podcasts and hunting down authentic Chinese food in order to prepare themselves just a little bit for the new adventure to come.

*****

I wrote this quickly, so I reserve the right to make changes to this post as I think of them–this is a difficult, complex topic and it helps to be able to look at it from a variety of angles. There are many big topics I skimmed over, so if you think I missed something or you have questions, I’d love to discuss this–with kindness and respect, please–in the comments.

Adoption Ethics

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Today I’m very, very pleased to be posting over at Seth Haines’s blog about adoption and community development. This guest post is very close to my heart; it’s not short and it wasn’t easy to write. But that’s because I think a complex, nuanced conversation needs to begin happening about how, when, and why we adopt. I’m so grateful for Seth’s desire to begin this conversation in earnest.

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The question of the ethics of international adoption has become very, very personal to me. A few days ago, in a Chinese orphanage in a very large city, our third child celebrated her half-birthday. She is now two and a half; we go get her in a few short weeks. Her videos and pictures, her fat cheeks, shy smile and her sweet clapping hands, have changed this debate for me. This is no longer theory. This is real, as real as the grief we are about to enter and navigate together as we start over as a family of five.

The week after Jen Hatmaker began her series of adoption ethics in June, no less than six people in my life asked me whether our adoption was ethical. Part of that is because I live in Austin, where Jen lives, and a lot of us really like her. Part of that is because her series of posts prompted many people to begin thinking about these issues in new ways. We had just been matched with our little girl a few weeks before, and I mentioned to a friend at the time that one of my greatest comforts was the deep sense of peace we felt about the ethics of our adoption.

I was happy to answer those friends’ questions (and the ones that have come up since) and I’m grateful to the people who are helping to change the scope of this debate—we should be asking if adoptions are ethical with the same ease that people ask why we picked one country or a particular special need. I can say with a lot of love that I realize that for some people, the issue of adoption ethics is one that they only realize late into the process as they really begin to understand the ramifications of changing the course of a child’s life forever. But for me that was not the case; this has been the guiding issue of our adoption process.

An ethical adoption was the only option for us.

READ MORE…

***

In other news, I miss you all. I’m just days away from finishing my dissertation. I’m revising like a fiend, slapping together a bibliography (digging out articles from dust-covered shelves). Half of it is in Portuguese, so there’s some translation that happens late at night and then I have funky dreams about Brazilian translation theory…I’m knee-deep in nerdy-world. I’m almost done, though, and I can’t wait to come back.

In case you’re wondering, our little one is coming home faster than anyone dreamed. We’re thinking more in terms of weeks than months right now. I have more to say about adoption and the horrible heaviness of waiting and the fact that there is a two-year-old out there that belongs to me and she’s not home, but it’ll probably be another week or two before I start that up again.

Most excitingly, I’ll be at Idea Camp this weekend. Can’t wait to catch up with many online friends as well as some of my favorite Austinites who will be all in one place. It’s going to be so much fun and deep and practical. We really will be hashing out adoption ethics over dinner and drinks (margaritas and queso, claro!), with so many great minds all in one place, it can’t be anything but a party. If you’re there, come find me!

Waiting for Little Goudeau

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We got the email from our adoption agency a few months ago: “There’s a little girl, are you interested?” We were. We are. We are smitten beyond our capacity to bear. We have been matched in the system in China and we are now, horribly, eternally, unswervingly waiting.

I can’t show pictures for now and I don’t want to reveal details for awhile. My heart is gratefully relieved in some respects. I have done extensive research, both before and after this referral, about the China Special Needs program, our agency, the specific orphanage, the region, the director, the medical team, the charity that supports the children, the medical need she has–this is as ethical an adoption as we could ask for. It’s also a perfect fit for us.

While the debate rages online about how to approach adoption in an ethical manner, the fact remains that there are still children who need a home or they will grow up in an orphanage. Our little one is one of those.

Anyone who has been around me for longer than five minutes has probably heard my spiel, but I want to say something briefly about why we picked the program we did: In the past, China’s one-child policy meant that there were hundreds, even thousands, of healthy girls available for adoption. In the last decade, that fact has changed tremendously. The one-child policy has been relaxed (my understanding is that the enforcement of it varies by regions). Many people who are themselves only children are allowed to have two children; since that’s almost a generation of people, the amount of healthy girls being abandoned because of their gender are becoming fewer and fewer. In another very encouraging turn of events, domestic adoption within China is also on the rise. I talked with a pediatric physical therapist who just got back from China (where she evaluated our little pumpkin); she told me 30,000 kids were adopted domestically within China last year. That is fantastic and as it should be.

The demand for adopted children within China rarely includes girls OR boys with medical needs. While there are a few cases of baby trafficking and exploitation in the system (believe me, I’ve read about all of them–I’m a tad bit obsessed), in general, the China Special Needs program helps get those children, who face stigmatization and institutionalization in their home country, into loving international homes. It’s an imperfect system, of course, but good agencies working with good orphanages whose work can be independently verified mean that it’s also one of the most transparent international adoption processes on earth.

This matters to me because, from the beginning, I didn’t want to adopt children that were “poverty orphans.” My experience at Hill Tribers and my research into educational development make me convinced that the secret in many regions is to work on a holistic level to enable mothers and fathers to have better maternity care, economic resources, educational opportunities and community support in order to help kids stay with their families or relatives or villages.

Adopting a child from China because of the political situation and strict (though changing) socioeconomic caste system is very different from adopting a child from another area. And in general adopting special needs kids is very different from adopting healthy young ones. Many of my friends have made different decisions about their adoptions and I love and support all of them in what they chose to do for their families. Adoption is very, very complicated and I don’t want my words to imply that China Special Needs is the only choice–there is much, much more to say, but the reality of the choice we’ve made has hit home for me in the last few months. We are very much at peace in this decision. For a researchy girl like myself, that is a huge relief.

This is what works for us. This is the journey we’re on now. We’re excited and nervous all at once.

And oh my word, I cannot wait to get my baby home. We are all systems go. Now we’re just waiting on bureaucracy to get the green light to travel to China in November or December.

As if that weren’t enough, my dissertation is almost done. I want to defend before we go get little Goudeau and to do that, I’m going to work like a freight train on fire for the next two months. I turned a copy of my dissertation in to my committee chair several weeks ago.

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I don’t mind telling you, I was more nervous about that than almost anything I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve been writing on my own for almost two years (which seems to me, at least, pretty unusual) and my fear that I had somehow drifted off course or written terrible arguments had me convinced that they’d politely ask me to leave the program once I turned it in. I might have been a teensy bit crazy at that point.

(Dissertations turn people into purple minions from Despicable Me 2. It’s a little known fact.)

I got extensive feedback from my professor last night. It was really good, actually, very encouraging with some nice happy adjectives thrown in, but of course there are modifications in every chapter and an intro and conclusion to finish. And the bibliography.

Y’all. The bibliography.

Oh, and did I mention that Hill Tribers’ fall line launches soon? And our big flagship show, which my co-founder and I plan every year, is November 16? Artreach is awesome, but it is not a cakewalk.

So, in order to keep my sanity and to be ready when we ALL (that’s right, all four Goudeaus) go get our new little one in Shanghai, I’m going to take my own forty day break from social media.

No blogging. No facebook. No twitter. Not till at least September 22, when I’m planning on turning a copy of my dissertation in to everyone on my committee to get ready for an October defense. (You guys. My heart just stopped writing those words. I am READY to be done.)

After that, I’ll hopefully be back, full of righteous indignation and teary rants about injustice and poverty and all the happy things you always come for. I miss blogging terribly but there are just not enough words in my head right now and I need to protect what’s left.

Because that little girl we’ve seen in the videos our agency sent us, with her fat, fat cheeks and her forehead wrinkling while she concentrates, that girl is keeping me awake at night. That pumpkin is worth waiting for and she’s worth finishing for so that all we have to do when she gets home is schedule surgeries and plan therapy and just sit and gaze and get to know each other for a while.

Waiting for this little Goudeau is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

All’s Quiet on the Western Front

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It’s been 106 way too many times here in the past few weeks. The mornings are taken up by summer day camp while I desperately work on dissertation chapters, followed by swim lessons in the afternoon. We collapse, all of us, exhausted in bed by 9:00 most nights. I’ve taken to getting up at 5:30 to beat my early-rising kids just to have a few moments of uninterrupted writing time.

I’ve made no secret about the fact that I don’t enjoy my dissertation. There are some aspects of it I really like, but I’m in what seems to be the most grueling stage–the constant analyzing and evaluation of each line, each segue, each paragraph claim, each use of evidence. I’ve weighed it all and found it all wanting more times than I can calculate, but still I plug on, confident that an overlycritical grad student might never get done if she takes herself too seriously.

I miss writing for fun. I have a book that is writing itself and I’m working on it in five-minute snatches when I’m stuck. I used to blog for dissertation distraction, but it was too easy to get caught up in the game of relevance and spectacularness to sustain during this season.

I miss this space, but I will continue to be quiet for the next few weeks while I edit and process and push and wail and breathe. This dissertation has to be done soon.

There’s more to say. I will share it when the time is right. In some ways, I cannot wait to fill in the past few weeks for our little family. In other ways, I just need the space in my head during this season to fight well, but mostly, to stand. That’s my goal every. blessed. day: just to stand.

When I turn a draft in, soon, soon, soon, I’ll be back, readier than ever to write and share and rant.

On Righteous Indignation

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 {BE WARNED: SOME OF THESE PICTURES ARE PRETTY GROSS.}

I was in my car with my girls when I got the phone call. Our friend H, my first Burmese friend, was fuming. Her brother-in-law and sister-in-law had finally agreed to leave Thailand and join their brothers’ families in the States. When they arrived in the country, the refugee resettlement agency paid an apartment complex a deposit. “24 hours to clean the apartment,” the manager said.

Six days later, they were still staying in H’s home.

Nine people, four adults, five children, sharing the space that is full with H’s small family alone. The in-laws’ new household items were stacked against the wall in the living room, waiting space. A boy’s bike, some pots and pans, bags full of clothes, a lamp. The brother-in-law was sick. The sister-in-law was catnapping on the suitcases.

Jetlagged, exhausted, bewildered, overwhelmed, they wished they had just stayed in the refugee camp.

The apartment that was supposed to be theirs not only had not been cleaned, it was disgusting. I asked her to tell me what it looked like and H just said, “Could you come?”

I asked her to give me 30 minutes.

***

The first thing I did when I got home, after giving my girls some lunch, was to put on a pencil skirt, high heels, a conservative top. I pulled my hair in a bun, grabbed my camera and a notebook.

When we got back in the car, Noelle asked me, “Why did you change clothes?”

I tried to think about how to frame my answer: “Sometimes when I look a little bit different, I can have better conversations with the apartment manager. She’s not being very nice. She’s kind of being a bully to our friends.”

Noelle is all over bullies. They’ve talked about strategies at school. I saw her eyebrows in the rear view mirror: “I’m going to tell her, ‘you cannot be mean to my friends!’”

“That’s good, Noelle. We have to speak kindly but firmly to people who we think are not being nice to other people sometimes.”

The four-year-old piped up. “Yeah, I’m just going to kick her in the knees.”

Also an appropriate response, but I still tried to talk her into slightly more positive choices.

Later, Noelle circled back to the clothes: “So you changed clothes because you’re going to help people? Does that make you kind of like Wonder Woman?”

***

When we got there, the girls played outside while I went with H to the apartment they had supposedly been “cleaning” for six days. Every time they called or went by the apartment, the manager said they were just two hours away. “Come back at ten! Come back at twelve! It will be two!”

The smell hit me first, the hot rotten smell of overflowing garbage in the summer.I clicked indignantly through with my high heels, snapping pictures.

There were roaches and small bugs crawling all over the walls.

There was something rotting in the sink with bugs coming out of it.

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The trash was overflowing in the kitchen.

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The living room and back porch were full of trash.photo4

The walls were marked with food and crayons and other disgusting things.

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(Out of kindness, I have spared you my pictures of the bathroom.)

***

Amazingly, while I was there, the manager suddenly showed up, all business, on the phone with the cleaning lady, “Where are you? What? We have clients waiting!”

After my repeated assertions that my friends would be taking their deposit and moving elsewhere shortly, she finally told me there was another apartment waiting almost ready for them.

H had asked several times for another apartment; it took a dressed-up white lady to get that information.

My own complicity in this makes me irate–this is not my first battle with this manager and only at my dressed-up, pissed-off, indignant best do I ever get results and that’s only because of my skin color and education level. This is systemic injustice at its very worst–it’s common knowledge among our friends that she treats Burmese people worse than anyone else. I hate it.

***

We went next to the “new” apartment. Everything looked good but the mildew-covered bathroom. The sink and bathtub and toilet were being replaced, she told us. It would take two hours.

“Two hours?” I was incredulous.

She consulted in Spanish with the handyman who was painting (Sr. E, a man with a fine handlebar mustache). Sr. E said it would be two days. She looked at me confidently and said, “He just said two hours.”

She doesn’t know I speak Spanish, but any idiot in Texas knows the difference between dos dias and dos horas.

We went back to consult. I told them I thought they should pull out, but the brother and sister-in-law want to be nearby. It’s worth it to them to be in the same building and same schools as their cousins; I can’t say I blame them. Accompanied by my girls, I went back into battle again.

I smiled my way through a conversation in Spanish with Sr. E (I lived in South America for a few years–I can handle talking about bathroom renovations). When I told him what the manager had said about “two hours,” he just laughed.

“She lies,” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

No kidding.

Together with Sr. E and my children, their flip-flops slapping the sidewalk while my heels clicked along, I went downstairs to confront the manager.

In Spanish, so Sr. E could understand.

I might have told her that I would no longer accept the level of injustice against my refugee friends (amigos refugiados and injusticia came up several times). I might have threatened legal action. I might have appealed to her own position as an immigrant and asked her for compassion.

(I might have gone a little over the top–I was kind of wound up.)

***

Yesterday afternoon, Caren called (we had it worked out–she got to be bad cop, I got to be kind-but-firm cop). She said, ”This is the nice phone call. Tomorrow will be the not-nice phone. They will be moved in to a clean apartment within the next two hours.”

Last night the family moved into the apartment. The stove still didn’t work and the electricity wasn’t on. I was up there every few hours “speaking firmly” with the manager. It was a hard-scrabble battle that should never have happened, but it worked. Sort of.

***

When I talked to H’s sister-in-law while H translated that first afternoon, I told her how sorry I was that people in my country were treating them so unkindly and how I hoped she understood that some of us were so glad they had come and considered them our good friends.

While we talked, my kids fit right into the little gaggle of girls coloring and giggling on the floor–these are some of their oldest and favorite friends.

Caren and I cannot stand that people treat them differently than they treat us or our blonde children. And judging from the many, many conversations we’ve had the last few days (“Why do grown-ups make bad choices, Mommy? Why won’t they let our friends have the apartment?”), our kids aren’t going to stand for this either.

But all we did was come in and yell a bit: the hero in this story is the tenacious Burmese woman who fights tirelessly every day for her children, her in-laws, her husband, herself, who works and learns and prays and smiles and fights. (And calls her friends when she needs a little extra support yelling–we make a good team.)

My friend H is pure grit. Wonder Woman, indeed.

Having “the Poor” with Us

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We finished the “Questions of Travel” series a couple of weeks ago with very little fanfare from me since it hit just at the end of school; I hope you will go back and reread the many brilliant entries in that series. It is one of the things I’m the most proud of on the internet in my short time blogging–bringing these voices together in a discussion that was as complex and nuanced as it has been seems to me a real triumph. Thanks to the many contributors–what a great gift you’ve given us.

I had a conversation with my oldest daughter (who goes by Noelle on this blog) that I thought summarized so perfectly how I wanted to end this series. She’s been attending a VBS at another church this week (it’s awesome). But she came out on Wednesday really frustrated.

“Mom, why do I have to give all of my stuff to the poor?”

We talked about giving things away that we didn’t need.

“No, not that. My art. Why do I have to give my art away to the poor? I like my drawings. I made them. I don’t want to give them to poor people.”

It took awhile for me to figure out her VBS teacher kept some of her drawings to send to “the poor.” I asked Noelle to consider a little bit more about sharing and how her lovely pictures might bless people’s lives. I’m still not sure exactly what the teacher said to her; I’m always learning to filter what my kids say, so I don’t really know what comment it was that set her off. But after we talked about giving drawings away to her grandparents and cousins and friends, Noelle sighed as she grabbed my hand to cross the street.

“I like giving my drawings to people I know. But I don’t want to give it to poor people. Who are poor people, anyway?”

I looked at this child who plays weekly with Burmese refugees in an apartment complex that many suburban moms might consider unsafe but that she runs through with the familiarity of her favorite playscape. Her best friends from kindergarten speak Spanish and most of them live at the trailer park that borders her amazingly diverse public school. When we go on playgrounds, she doesn’t realize it yet, but she is always drawn to the people who are different from her, who speak other languages, who don’t dress the same.

This kid has no idea who “poor” people are. We’ve never drawn those categories. We talk about difference and celebrate skin colors and languages and cultures, but there is no rich and poor, as far as I know, in her six-year-old mind.

I squeezed her hand. “You know what? Let’s not worry about the poor. Thanks so much for sharing your drawing–you’re going to make someone very happy whoever they are.”

I love that my kids see no rich or poor, no us and them, just friends who are different. Someday we will have to talk about these things, but for now, we’re going to enjoy the easy friendships of this mixed-together lifestyle. It’s not always easy, but it’s the kind of life I would pick again and again for us–having the poor just be the people in our lives that we love.