In Praise of Earnest Nerdiness

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Our oldest daughter Noelle (remember, I don’t use their real names on my blog) might be the most earnest girl that ever lived. Whatever she does, she does passionately, all in. It’s precious (and sometimes exhausting) to live with this spirited girl. In the midst of this hard season adjusting to having a new little person in our home, Noelle and her school gave us the sweetest day on Saturday.

I’ve written before about my daughter’s school. She got into the dual-language program at a brand new elementary school just weeks before starting kindergarten last year. We had no idea what to expect; no seasoned parents could tell us what it was going to be like. The first few days were chaotic–the school was under construction up till the very last second, teachers had only a few days in their classroom, parents didn’t know the routine. Within about five days, however, we started to see signs of an amazing efficiency emerging as the principal and teachers worked overtime to get themselves together. And it has been that way–seamless, energetic, rigorous–ever since. Some of the classes are designated dual language, some are English and some are bilingual (targeted only to Spanish-speaking kids rather than a mix), but the entire school operates with both languages all the time. Announcements are alwasy translated; kids are told to slow down in both languages. The teachers and students move fluidly between both.

Noelle thinks this is completely normal.

These are teachers that believe firmly in what they’re doing. They’re bringing a top-notch education to a neighborhood that has traditionally been overlooked. Noelle is one of four caucasian kids in her classroom; she’s definitely in the minority in her grade.

I’ll be honest, it’s exactly what we were looking for in a school.

***

When we first found out Noelle got in the dual-language program, meaning all of her kids would have this chance, we were ecstatic. But as soon as we started to share this information, we had the oddest conversations. They were well-intentioned, I’m sure, but the undercurrent was the same–you have to watch what you’re getting into. 

Someone actually said to me at a baby shower days before school started that I’d really have to supplement her education because “you never know with those people.” I pushed back hard–what people? What did she mean? No, I’m sorry, I don’t know? People who speak two languages, like my husband when he was growing up? I’m sorry, can you say that again?

I left the awkwardness there because frankly, I was offended. To have children who understand that people from all walks of life are equal human beings seems like my highest goal as a mother.

Let me tell you the kind of education we (bilingual, multicultural, mixed-economic, collaborative, outside-of-our-tiny-box) people are working on at my daughter’s amazing school.

***

This Saturday, Noelle and 25 of her classmates in the gifted and talented program participated in Destination Imagination. I’d never heard of it before, but let me tell you, it’s where baby theater and speech and band and choir and AP English nerds are starting off these days. Oh my word, the cuteness of little bespectacled babies with costumes and capes. I could die of my love of the earnest nerdiness.

Right in the middle of the group was Noelle, dressed like a reporter. She was on one of three teams from her school. Each team was mixed age, race and gender, as well as mixed language. Of course. That’s how we roll at Barron.

Noelle was the only girl; there were three “big” boys (3rd and 4th grade) and three first graders, Noelle and her two buddies. They identified a problem at their school and then worked hard to fix it–they decided that their brand new school needed a school newspaper.

So they wrote one. They researched and analyzed and pecked out articles over weeks on their computer. They wrote a jokes section. Noelle wrote about China. They interviewed the tallest coach in school. Some things were in Spanish, some in English, and it was all so earnestly executed.

They presented their newspaper and, after a few mediocre run-throughs, knocked it out of the ball park when it came time for the actual presentation. When they came out, the principal, gifted teacher and team coach were all teary. Even Jonathan was a bit choked up.

Noelle stood up, confident as could be, and said, “I’m a little girl. My name is Noelle Goudeau.” And then read her much-practiced story what was the same and what was different in China, where she got a new little sister.

I die of the cuteness.

***

If it had ended there, it would have been sweet enough. But in the last round of the day, they had their second event–an impromptu challenge they’ve been sworn to secrecy not to share. The team coach worked to get the instructions read to the mixed-language team in both Spanish and English; the first languages of one of the first graders is Spanish and two of the first graders is English. We were all afraid that if it were in one language or another, that they wouldn’t be able to understand the more academic terms.

But it wasn’t allowed–the rules had been changed last year. Someone felt it gave the bilingual kids an unfair advantage (!!!) to hear the rules twice. Heaven forbid they should have more time.

So instead, the teacher reading the rules said them slowly.

The “big boys” translated.

In their suits and ties, these children of working-class parents demonstrated their poise and compassion as they translated WHILE THE MAN WAS TALKING for their littlest team members.

The coach said by the end, even the judges were beaming–this is what intercultural collaboration looks like, with children who think that translating is normal, that working with other people of different ages is worthwhile, that being stand-up boys at an early age is something to be prized.

We were in tears by the time the coach finished telling the story. And you guys…they nailed it. They aced their impromptu challenge–in two different languages. Because that is how Barron rolls. And Noelle came out bouncing-off-the-walls excited and proud.

***

Noelle came home last year and told me, dripping with her earnestness, “Mom, my teacher told me we were working hard at making our elementary school the best school in the world. I think we’re almost there. We’re really close.”

We couldn’t agree more. This school, these children and teachers, are a gift. My girls will always know that people who look different or speak differently are still the same inside. Those are lessons that can never be taken away from them.

And, by the way, their little team of overachieving underdogs won third place out of the whole region. Noelle wore this medal all day at school. This crazy toothless grin says it all.

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¡Qué orgullo! 

Le Mot Juste for 2014

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Gustave Flaubert famously spent most of his life searching for what he termed “le mot juste”–the perfect word. He is the quirky king of meticulous writers, often spending days on one handwritten page while his peers pumped out novel after novel. But if you’ve ever read a good translation of Madame Bovary you know his obsessive focus led to tense, tight prose.

In a wordy world, it’s hard to remember when we didn’t just bleed words onto the page, wildly available to hundreds or thousands just by clicking “publish.”

I find myself still trying to put my thoughts about adoption and dissertation and the gale-force winds that all but tore us apart last year. I’d like a word for how I feel about writing or about work and what I’m focusing on in 2014, but I’m struggling to pare it down to one.

Here are three.

*****

Depleted.

I poured words into my dissertation, into blog posts, into paperwork, into conversations, until there are so few left they rattle around in my mind like pennies in an almost empty piggy bank. Some words are sown like seeds and they lead to more words, more action, more life. These words took something essential from me and I still can’t define it to myself, much less anyone else.

*****

Fallow.

I need to leave words unsown. I need space to breathe and think. I need words that have no purpose, no drive behind them, no killer point or stellar argument. I need to play and rest and tinker. I need to let go and renew.

*****

Roots.

What Gerard Manley Hopkins called the “dearest freshness deep down things” is still there, I can feel it. But I keep echoing in my head what he said in my favorite of his poems: “Mine, O Thou Lord of life, send my roots rain.” I want to find freshness again. I’ve seen damage done so significantly to people, such deep burnout after a terrible season, that everything is gone, roots and all. I don’t want that to be true for me. I want to write again for the joy, not the ambition, of it.

*****

I have so many projects I’m working on, but I’m going to try to let them come slowly. It’s hard to turn down the drive after so many years of working toward a goal. But that’s what blogging has been for me and I’m going to come back into this space more just to share some thoughts. After the burnout of 2013, I’m hoping to relax and experiment and breathe a bit in 2014. I’m going to be working on things totally outside of my field or my expertise.

And I’m going to spend a lot of time playing toddler games again. Bring on the whimsy, 2014.

Grafting

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(I intend to post a lot more in February. I need the rhythm of writing again. My dissertation took away all the joy of it and I want to get it back, Also, D.L. Mayfield has told me sweetly and sternly it’s time. So here, D., more for you with love.)

***

I have often heard the metaphor of adoption as grafting. But it’s an odd comparison. Grafting for plants, as I imagine it, is a peaceful if incongruous process. It’s strange to put two plants together, to add a new limb to a different type of tree, but there’s no violence or pain in the act, unless plants have nerves that are deeper down than we can measure.

In the grafting of adoption, there’s more grit and verve. We are putting a limb where a limb has never been before. It hurts. It’s uncomfortable and cumbersome. There is a great deal of grief and loss for everyone. It’s hard to see the point, sometimes, of this process.

And then you see life begin to stir in what was a dying limb and you catch your breath in wonder.

She says “Ma!” and she means me. All over the house, from sunrise till late (LATE) into the night. “MA! MA! MA!” Over and over again, she calls me by my name that is her special name for me because she’s my daughter.

And she reaches up her fat hands to kiss my cheek, first one slobbery side and then the other, over and over in a repeated smacky game.

And life slowly seeps between us as we knit together more fully.

It takes time. But it is good.

The Special-Stressful

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I keep thinking of Beowulf when I’m trying to come back to write about our trip to China and bringing our baby home for Christmas. In Beowulf, the speaker uses a literary device called a “kenning” to describe a noun with an adjective phrase, so the sun becomes the “sky-candle,” the ocean the “whale-road,” etc.

If I were to summarize this season, the trip and Christmas and all of the emotional and joy and heartache, it would be the special-stressful.

*****

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This Christmas, our little Fei finally made it home from China. When I last wrote a blog entry, it was on the second day of our two-week trip. I fully intended to write there every few days. I have at least seven posts started, many of them almost finished, but I just never got around to putting them online. I will, I promise. It matters to me to finish those up. I so admire the moms (and dads, I’m sure) who are able to manage that trip, write meaningful posts, take darling pictures, keep everyone updated, and apparently also shower.

That was not our trip.

I’m ready to call it–this is easily the hardest thing we’ve ever done. And we have lived pretty adventurous, difficult lives.

It is also the best decision we ever made.

*****

Adoption is not for the faint of heart. I blogged a lot (and will continue to blog) about the ethical aspects that are some of the most important parts of the pre-adoption process. Post-adoption, I still want to ask hard questions and face hard truths. So I’ll be honest–bringing home an almost three-year-old with a life and a past and a daily routine and a determined personality is pretty stinking hard.

By the third day, we knew that we were facing some serious grief on the part of this little girl. Selfishly, that’s a good thing–it means she was well-loved and well-attached to her caregivers (she was so adored by those nannies), which means her attachment to us, when it does finally gel, will be secure. There are none of the signs of reactive attachment disorder or even minor attachment issues.

We know, compared to many of our friends both online and in real life, that we have it pretty good. In many ways, this feels like a textbook adoption.

And it’s still really complicated and complex and painfully difficult to navigate.

During the day, Fei is an absolute love. She cuddles, she charms, she smiles, she sings, she putters, she pats, she wants to be held, she makes faces, she mimics, she dances. We are deeply in love with her little personality–she’s a ham. She’s a pixie. She’s a snuggle bug.

At night, it’s all too much for her. The first night, her crying was sad and pitiful. It broke my heart. The second night, the rage hit. Bless her.

Bless us.

It’s beyond my capacity to be a good parent with so little sleep, much less to blog and write well about the experience. We traded off, but we had no idea what positions she wanted to be held in. If we did it wrong, and even when we did it right, she flung (flings, still) her body from one side to the other or back, with her knees bent, so it’s almost impossible to catch her before she crashes to the floor. We’ve gotten stronger and faster and our reflexes are better, but it’s like holding a live monkey and trying to calm her down.

There was no instruction manual for this little one.

*****

During this season, the special-stressful, a famous Dylan Thomas poem keeps running through my mind. Perhaps it’s because Fei’s fits magnified as we got closer to nighttime:

     Do not go gentle into that good night.

     Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

     Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though Thomas is talking about aging, I think it fits adoption as well. What we are experiencing with Fei (though it has gotten better in the last three weeks, this is a long, long road ahead) seems to fit that first stanza. I think adoption SHOULD burn and rave at close of day. It’s all too much. No child should ever face all of the grief our daughter has in her short three years.

It’s just wrong.

In China, she only wanted to be held and walked. For that first week, when she barely knew us, when we smelled and looked funny, when her tummy hurt from new food and her skin was irritated by new clothes, when everything was totally off, the only thing we could do was pat her and walk while she raged.

Miles we walked in two tiny, tiny hotel rooms, trying to keep the big girls asleep, trying to give each other a break. Every hour or two, she was up for an hour or two. Jet lag was a joke–we didn’t sleep for two weeks straight. And we’ve barely slept coming back. I got strep throat. We struggled to be civil to each other, to meet our biological daughters’ needs, to be patient with the whining and the tears of everyone (I might have been the whiniest of all).

And at night I’d whisper encouragement into her ear: “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

There is a grief so stark it can only be marked by throwing your body to the floor and raging at the top of your lungs.

*****

And yet.

This time has also been catch-your-breath sweet. Watching her giggle with her sisters. Seeing her hold her arms up for love again and again. Listening to her English words (“please,” “mama,” “nana,” “no”). Witnessing her confidence and her belly and her cheeks grow in the last three weeks.

She was loved, but she was one of many in that orphanage. Now she’s one of three very, very loved little girls. And we can see the difference it is making in her life. One of the sweetest things (which I will post about later) was watching her nannies’ joy at seeing her with us. They celebrated and smiled–everything we know is that her future in China was bleak. It was beds in a row and the lowest level of education and a name that clearly marked her as an orphan.

I can’t talk about the children we left behind. I might never be able to talk about walking out of that room with one and leaving twenty behind, not to mention the other rooms all along the hallway in the cold, unheated corridor that stretched on and on.

Having this baby home to walk around at Christmas time with fat legs jutting out of her diaper, sunglasses on her face, a Dora cell phone to her ear and a Christmas bag slung over her shoulder like a purse as she waves bye-bye, it makes me want to weep at the rightness of it all.

She has always belonged to us. She belongs here. She is ours. We are getting to know each other, but having walked through the fire of the first three weeks together, we are more bonded and blessed and blended than we might have been had all of this gone smoothly from the start.

With every fiber of my being, I can say, she is mine, just as much as her two blonde sisters who have had my heart for seven and four years.

*****

People text me or message me and say, “Isn’t it so fun to have her home for Christmas?” And it is, truly. But “fun” seems like such a small word to use for the heart-stopping rightness of her being here. And it can’t possibly touch the shift-on-a-dime feel of one sweet moment sliding into a full-body-throwing fit over picking up blocks on the living room rug.

The grief-joy of this time is intense and precious and holy and too hard to put into words.

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.

*****

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.

***

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…

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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!