We decided to adopt-and that was just the beginning of the journey.
July 2004
My husband Michael and I had been pregnant for 19 months and counting, and some time in the next few months a baby girl would be delivered to us halfway around the world in Nanchang, China.
Compared
with traditional reproduction, this was no speed record-even whales did it quicker.
Nearly two years ago, when I was
48 and Michael was 47, we had requested an adoption information packet. When it arrived, we opened the envelope, read it carefully and stalled. Michael imagined himself in 15 years hobbling out onto the front porch to shake his cane at his daughter's suitors-"Don't make me hurt myself."
I foresaw play-dates with mothers who'd barely heard of the Vietnam War.
Michael said
adios
to future travel, adventure and financial security.
I woke in a cold sweat, certain I'd never have time to write my novels, convinced we were certifiable.
Okay, so maybe we really were crazy. Still we couldn't bring ourselves to say no.
We weighed the pros and cons, our doubts and fears, our longing and excitement. We tried to be logical
and practical-until a wise friend pointed out that, ultimately, after logic is exhausted, life's most profound decisions come from the heart.
Our hearts told us we couldn't turn back from this journey so we took the plunge. By Christmas, 2002 we had sent our completed "we want to adopt form" to our chosen international
adoption agency. One year and 11 days later, on Jan. 5, 2004, our dossier finally reached China.
So what happened during the year between "maybe" and "yes"? The short answer is we dealt with 12 pounds of paperwork. Our lives were dissected. We were assessed, weighed, printed, interrogated-nicely, but still…
We assessed ourselves as well. We introspected. Friends who'd been through the process recommended agencies and websites. Adoptive parents shared stories. We learned that domestic adoptions-children who are adopted within the US-are generally "open."
This means an adopted child may maintain lifelong contact with his or her birth-mother;
medical records are available; both families agree to specific conditions regarding photos, visitation, etc.
International adoptions may be open, especially if they are arranged privately. More often, the children are adopted from orphanages and there is little or no information on birth families and, consequently, on inherited health conditions. Availability of adoptable
children-from Russia, the Ukraine, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Guatemala, Mexico-varies from country to country depending upon the policies and politics of the moment.
Michael worried about potential custody issues with birth parents in open domestic adoptions. His concerns lingered even after we were assured that stories of babies reclaimed
by birth parents after grueling court battles are rare and sensationalized.
For my own reasons, I was already leaning toward international adoption. In domestic adoptions, prospective parents are usually asked to put together their own album of photos and letters and memorabilia. Birth-mothers use these albums to select prospective parents. I was convinced we were too old to make first pick. Honestly, the entire process made me uncomfortable. I'd heard stories from friends who were "chosen"-until the birth-mother changed her mind and kept the baby; or the baby tested positive for cocaine; or the birthfather refused to sign off on the adoption.
After looking and listening we made the big decision: We would pursue international adoption over domestic adoption. But, which country?
At the beginning of any narrative the choices loom daunting in their possibilities. As we worked our way through our "adoption story" the choices narrowed because of the specifics of us: over 45, number of divorces, years married, mother's age and on and on. Each country had its requirements determined by social, cultural and political factors.
China appealed to us for a number of reasons. On the practical side China has thousands of healthy girl babies who, for complex cultural, social, and historical reasons, have been abandoned to orphanages. In spite of this, the Chinese love children and, in general, care in Chinese orphanages is as good or better than in orphanages in other countries.
Instances of fetal alcohol syndrome and prenatal drug exposure are rare. Although HIV exposure is on the rise in China, it's not as much of a problem as it is in some other countries.
The fees are comparable (even reasonable) compared with some countries. An adoption from China runs $18,000 to $22,000. China has one of the most lenient policies when it comes to older parents. Temporal logistics are challenging but not impossible. When we began our process, the wait for a referral was roughly eight months. China has now shortened the referral process to six months-but the countdown begins only after your dossier has arrived at the offices of the Chinese adoption officials.
Michael's preference for China stemmed in part from the three years he spent in Hawaii while in the military in the mid-'70s. His appreciation for Hawaii's melting pot of Asian cultures had stayed with him over the years.
Ultimately, China appealed to me for "magical" as well as practical reasons. A fortune cookie that I had kept in my wallet for two years:
Learn Chinese
. The fact that I'd been working on a novel set in 1922 about a Chinese husband and wife, immigrants from the Pearl River Delta-the homeland of many abandoned Chinese girls.
Magical? Practical? Were all of our reasons combined enough of a base for such an earthshaking decision?
A small, tough internal voice growled, "Hey, adoption ain't for wimps." It's the oddest and most profound complexity of human hearts, hormones, yearning, shopping and destiny.
We're going for it.
February 2003
When Michael and I attended our mandatory introductory adoption seminar, in Albuquerque, the facilitator addressed the group, summing up what was on everyone's mind.
"It's not fair. Any dim-wit can go out to a bar tonight and get knocked up and it's nobody's business. They won't be screened. No one will ask them personal questions or visit their home to see if they're qualified to be parents. But it's another story for all of you. Some of you have already gone through the pain and frustration of infertility treatments. Now you have to navigate the adoption maze. There's nothing fair about it."
We numbered 10 couples, and we took our seats around cafeteria-style tables, each equipped with a bowl of leftover Valentine conversation hearts. I found myself nibbling nervously-
Be Mine; Let's Dance; No Lie.
Couples bound for domestic adoption claimed one side of the room; international adoption took the other. The ratio was 7:3 respectively.
By now, Michael and I had already decided to pursue international adoption through Associated Services for International Adoption (ASIA), a non-profit corporation in Oregon specializing in
adoption from China. We also had chosen a licensed New Mexico agency to complete our home-study (which is mandatory in all adoptions) and to fulfill this state's adoption requirements.
"Home-study" is a word that many prospective adoptive parents utter with dread. Basically the home-study consists of three components: paperwork, individual personal interviews with the facilitator and, finally, a home visit and "couples" interview.
It's no biggie if you don't mind navigating a paper maze worthy of Kafka, spilling your guts to a complete stranger who has the power to alter your life and inviting said stranger into your home to examine your closets, your motives and the health of your most intimate relationships.
For us, the home-study would only be the beginning. By the time we finished working with our agency in Albuquerque, we would still have to deal with federal and international bureaucracies.
As our introductory seminar came to a close, our facilitator cautioned that our fingerprints would be run though the FBI's automated inventory; if we had any outstanding warrants, any past convictions, or if we were on any government watch list, it would be best to 'fess up now.
A man mumbled something about an illegal left turn in 1981; a woman raised her hand and then she whispered in our facilitator's ear.
"The only time we ever refused a couple was when we found out they hadn't told us the truth," our facilitator warned with a steely glint in her eyes. "Whatever you do, do
not
tell a lie."
We shuffled out after three hours with our very own stack of documents and forms, and these parting words: "The sooner you get your paperwork turned in, the sooner we can get to your home-study and the sooner you get your baby."
In the car, Michael and I faced each other, grinning crazily. We reminded ourselves that our agency was small with a limited caseload: first come, first serve.
It felt like day one of a scavenger hunt.
Over the next months we worked our way down endless lists. We spread piles of paperwork on the floor. We filled in forms, discussed, argued, made up and discussed again. We spent weeks tracking down vital documents. Michael traveled to Ohio to obtain certified copies of his birth certificate. I sent my California relatives to that state's capital to obtain copies of my birth certificate. (If I'd opted for mail, I was informed the wait could take months.)
We passed physical examinations and blood tests. We compiled three years worth of financial summaries. We got cracking on Form I-600A, Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition. (The name of the form alone was enough to conjure visions of Dickensian orphanages. Proper filing of Form I-600A entailed two trips to Albuquerque's Office of Homeland Security, formerly Immigration and Naturalization Services, the belly of the bureaucratic beast.)
Our experience of the journey soon condensed into highlights: me begging the man at Homeland Security to "go with my target weight because I'm dieting." The baggies I
wore over Vaseline-slathered hands for most of a week in order to repair dish-pan hands for state fingerprint cards. The race to the Secretary of State's Office to redo a document because the notary left off her middle initial. The three returns to the sheriff's department because the notary forgot how to notarize. Fingerprints again. The letters, the interviews, the payments-money doled out in installments. The all-day seminar when we heard from adoptive parents, birth parents who'd given up babies for adoption and children (now grown) who'd been adopted. Another seminar was presented by a renowned specialist on attachment issues in adoption and, yes, it was excellent but it also opened the door for all my adoption fears to surface:
There will be something terribly wrong with the baby. There will be something horribly wrong with the bond between us and the baby. We'll regret we ever did this.
And finally, the home-study verdict: Yes, this couple is suitable for adoption.
Two weeks before our dossier finally arrived in China-at the Chinese Center of Adoption Affairs-I dreamed I visited our daughter's orphanage to take her out for the day. Bring her back by sunset, the nannies warned me. I drove with her on mysterious snowy roads, so entranced, I plowed the car into a snow bank. An old man, clearly powerful and wise, walked up to the car. He was smiling. He said he could help me get back on the road. He assured me all things were possible. He winked, crossed his arms over his chest and said, "I know what you're up to."
I said, "I'm glad one of us does," and then I woke up.
July 30, 2003
The phone rang, but I ignored it because I was working. Minutes later, it rang again. Again, I let it go. By then my concentration was fuzzy, and a faint voice whispered,
Answer it.
Almost a month earlier, we'd been alerted by our agency-"China's speeded up its process and the wait for a referral is down to six months."
Michael and I went crazy with excitement and panic. We'd been waiting exactly six months! But days went by and the referral didn't come. Now, a month had gone by.
Could this be it?
I checked messages and a familiar voice said, "Michael and Sarah, we're trying to reach you. We have your referral. We have a picture of your baby."
I screamed, and, fingers trembling, dialed Michael at work.
When I heard his voice, I yelled the news,"Ohmygod, ohmygod, we have a baby!"
"Who is she? How old? What's her name?"
"I don't know! Ohmygod, I can't believe it, ohmygod, they left a message!"
Michael called our agency and then he called me back. I was crying, but I heard him say, "Her name is Xing DingZhu, she's 10 months old, weighs about 19 pounds, and she's 28 inches." Michael read from the single page of notes he'd taken: "According to orphanage caregivers, she's active and smiles, says 'Ah' a lot, and makes more sounds when she's excited. She enjoys listening to music and adult conversation."
Were we talking about a baby or a single's ad?
Later, our adoption agency told us that all the babies from our orphanage had been given the surname "Xing" (pronounced "Shing"), which means "good fortune." "Ding" translates as "certainly" or "decisively" and "Zhu" as "bead" or "Pearl."
In the spirit of nominal options, we decided to call her Pearl Xing Lovett Mariano.
Post-referral, Michael went into shock. He appeared lucid and calm, but his eyes were glazed and he was slow to respond to questions. When he awoke two days after the news, he announced, "I want to go get our baby
now.
" He flew into hyper-nesting mode-cleaning, painting, rearranging, hammering, mowing. It's not uncommon for birds to fly into windows when nesting, but when Michael lost his bearings, he walked into the back flap of our camper, ending up with 16 stitches in his forehead and a scar that resembles an "X"-a ding for baby Xing, we agreed.
We bought out the bookstore so we could speak Mandarin in a few, easy lessons. We learned about the four tones-by varying intonation, the meaning of the word changes. I'd chosen the
Lonely Planet Mandarin Phrasebook
, which informed me that, depending upon inflection, "
Yi shou shi
," the phrase meaning "poem" is also the phrase meaning "a handful of shit." Delighted with this trickster aspect of Chinese culture, I also saw the vast linguistic mine field we would have to navigate if we attempted to speak Chinese while incountry.
The agency translated two sheets of development information from the orphanage. We lapped up scraps of information as if we were feasting-she eats congee, she naps three hours a day, she poops twice a day, she likes watching TV, she spends time in her "walker," searching for playmates.
This was all part of what certainly must be the most agonizing part of the adoption journey-the part where, photograph in hand, prospective parents
wait
.
"You must be going crazy," family and friends commiserated.
Yes.
"How does it feel to know she's waiting in an orphanage?"
It felt like torture worthy of the Inquisition. We wanted her
now
-and yet, at the same time, we felt totally unprepared for parenthood.
"Stay calm and focus on travel and legal arrangements," our agency cautioned. "Every family in the group of eight has to agree to accept their referral and, then, China has to issue
formal permission to travel. Our best estimate is a trip in early October."
I've been told that in Chinese culture there is something called the red thread, the bond that attaches each of us at birth to those who are destined to become an important part of our lives. I embraced the concept eagerly.
Even those who don't begin the adoption journey with a clear sense of destiny are bound to acquire one along the way. Maybe it's the storytelling part in all of us, the part that creates personal myth to entwine with larger cultural contexts. Maybe it's the fact that the joy, tragedy and miracle of adoption are bound together inseparably. There is too much to absorb without reaching for fate.
As we grew closer to our China trip, I couldn't forget that Michael and I had ghostly doubles in China, Pearl's birth-parents, who would almost certainly remain unknown. I knew what it was like to be haunted by a child you did not keep, and I wondered, did her mother
grieve for her baby every day? I prayed for our baby and her birth family. I prayed for us-for safe travel along this next portion of our adoption journey.
What awaited Michael and me in China-although we had no way of knowing at the time-was the agonizing vulnerability and indescribable joy of family and parenting.
September 2004
We would be leaving in less than a month to pick up our new daughter in China. We downed typhoid pills and warm-water chasers, the breakfast of cautious travelers to Asia. We'd already had shots for Hep A, Hep B tetanus, and flu. "Oh, and stay away from rabid dogs," the doc warned.
Our bank was storing $6,000 in crisp new hundred dollar bills. We'd been cautioned that China's adoption officials wouldn't accept worn, wrinkled, or defaced currency. Our international adoption agency had provided us with a breakdown of who-gets-paid-what in US dollars and
renminbi
, China's currency-everyone from the China Center of Adoption Affairs, to orphanage officials, to our tour guides.
The packing list loomed large-gifts for the orphanage director and nannies, clothes, toys, and supplies for our baby. We were told to bring diapers and wipes, pediatric medicines, Cheerios, milk or soy baby formula, bottles and an assortment of nipples. Until that moment, I'd never imagined there could be so many different varieties of nipples to choose from-fast-flow, slow-flow, latex, silicone, nubby or smooth. I barely avoided a full-blown panic attack in Target's baby department.
A friend would be housesitting during our trip. She gazed quietly at the growing piles of
stuff
in our living room. Her eyes spoke for her-there was no way everything would fit inside our four large suitcases.
And then there was our dossier. It had taken many months to collect these vital documents. The bottom line: no papers, no adoption. Our agency gave us orders:
Do not put the dossier in luggage that will be checked-through to China, keep it with you at all times.
Michael and I often found ourselves staring at our baby girl's picture. We kept two photos of her on our refrigerator. In one, she was three months old, bundled in multi-layers, a smiling, tubby-faced Pillsbury Dough Baby; in the other, she had grown to nine months, and her beautiful, serious, worried, intent baby face was our talisman. Each day we whispered to her, "Good morning, Baby, good night, Baby, we love you, Xing DingZhu, hold on, we're coming to get you soon."
Would those pictures
ever
translate into a living, breathing baby girl?
October 2004
China, finally! The Beijing Airport, bleary-eyed after the 12-hour flight, pushing a mountain of luggage toward the greeting area. Our ears buzzed with the exotic clip of
Chinese. We saw very few non-Asian faces.
Our welcome party waved at us from behind the barricades-three families who had opted for the pre-adoption tour, our guide Bonnie and Dr. Susan Song, a sprite-sized dynamo who works for the China branch of our adoption agency. The other travelers had each brought a modest suitcase and a backpack at most. Michael and I had our four giant suitcases as well as carry-ons, one filled with soccer balls and an air pump, a gift for the orphanage. The balls were stamped,
Made in China.
We had come to get a baby, our daughter, Xing DingZhu, who was just weeks past her one-year birthday. (She had been discovered on Oct. 4, 2003, abandoned at the gates outside an industrial area of a town in southern China.) Six days from now, the eight families in our group would gather in an official waiting room and our daughters would be handed out, one by one.
We had yet another list of what loomed ahead: the adoption registration and family portrait, our baby's medical exam, notarization of adoption certificates and issuance of her Chinese passport, interviews with China's adoption officials and, finally, the issuance of her orphan visa along with an oath ceremony at the US Consulate in Guangzhou.
None of this seemed remotely real as we stepped out of the terminal into air that was warm, hazy and tangy with smoke and smog. We boarded the bus that would take us to the hotel. For now, all we had to think about was what to do with all our luggage. ("That's okay," Dr. Susan told us, laughing, "When they go back home, many ASIA families leave behind diapers, formula, wipes, snacks, toys, you name it.")
We needed sleep!
As we all dispersed to our rooms at the ritzy Swissotel Beijing, we were reminded to be ready to board the bus at 9 am the next day. We'd opted for the mini pre-tour offered by our agency. Over the next four days, we would visit some of the area's most famous sites-the Forbidden City, Beijing's Hutong District, the Great Wall. This was our chance to experience our daughter's birth country.
Back when we were still debating whether we were up to the demands of adoption, one of the worst negatives on Michael's list was, "No $$ or time for travel."
After I'd heard this fear repeated several times, I said, "Hey, you've never had a passport before this and now we're flying
all the way to China and we'll walk on the Great Wall and see the Temple of Heaven and the Ming Tombs and it's all thanks to our daughter." Michael smiled. "That's got to be a good omen."
For the next few days we were mesmerized, charmed and excited by China's beauty (even with dense smog) and by the energy and pride of its people. Walking through Tiananmen Square, teenage boys and girls asked to have their pictures taken with us, arm in arm. We were pleased and bemused at the thought of these bi-national portraits appearing in Chinese scrapbooks and on computer monitors. We took pictures, too, to show friends at home.
On the bus, while we traveled between destinations, our tour guide Bonnie, Dr. Susan and Fei Yang, our agency program coordinator from Oregon, taught us Mandarin phrases and lullabies, and then they patiently answered questions about China's history and social customs. They did their best to explain the reasons behind China's strict birth-control policy.
China is people, a crush of humanity that we can't really comprehend in the US. Our traffic jams and pollution pale in comparison to counterparts in China. There is little opportunity for people to live in private houses; instead, apartments are the norm. There is so little space, the Chinese use their public places in ways that astound. We saw old and young alike practicing ballroom dance, martial arts, Chinese opera, crochet, ping pong, story-telling, music. The energy was contagious, and sometimes it obscured darker truths.
It is estimated that, in spite of thousands of foreign adoptions each year, there are half a million children waiting in China's orphanages. Each year, infant girls are abandoned in markets, parks and other public places. Mostly, they come from rural regions.
While concepts of family, marriage and the roles of women in China's urban society are changing at light speed, life for rural females remains difficult-education is a luxury most can't afford, sons have traditionally been valued over daughters and patriarchy still dominates.
"In the Confucian scheme of things, control of the land and all the family fortunes was passed from father to son," Karin Evans writes in her wonderful book
The Lost Daughters of China.
"A daughter's place began at the bottom of the family hierarchy and stayed there." For centuries, and with few exceptions, a young woman's value was closely tied to her ability to give birth to a son."
When communists achieved power in 1949, Mao Zedong instituted social and education reforms aimed at improving the lives of all Chinese, including females. But Mao's favored saying, "Women hold up half the sky," was forgotten when communal farms failed, setting off the worst famine in China's history, and tens of millions of Chinese died between the years 1958 to 1961.
Influenced by the famine, burgeoning population (currently approaching 1.5 billion inhabitants) and by a drive toward economic development, China's government put into effect in 1980 a strict birth control policy-often called the "one-child policy."
Under this new policy, women lost their right to conceive a child without official permission. To give birth at a hospital, even women in full-out labor might be required to hand over a birth permission paper,
Shengyu zheng
.
A family's failure to comply with the government's policy might be punished by loss of jobs, fines and, possibly, a jail sentence. In the extreme, women could be forced by the government to use contraception or to undergo sterilization or abortions.
(Now, we learned, there are positive changes in birth policies. If an only child marries an only child, they will be allowed to have two children.)
The old policy promoted distrust and hardship and proved dangerous to the mental and physical well-being of many women. Caught between government and social pressures-and, usually, the crush of poverty-some families have secretly chosen to abandon their infant girls. Because child abandonment is a serious crime in China, most babies are anonymously left in high-traffic areas where they will be quickly discovered and placed in orphanages.
Day Five
Tour complete, we flew to Nanchang to meet up with the rest of our group at a four-star "baby hotel." Several of the floors were dedicated to adoption tour groups. Each room was stocked with a crib, a bassinet and miscellaneous baby odds and ends. Upon arrival, we encountered parents holding babies that had been theirs for 30 minutes, three hours, eight hours. Adoptive families had journeyed from Scandinavia, France, Australia, Great Britain, Germany. At night, the halls would be
busy with pacing parents and crying babies. Michael and I wondered how the regular business guests felt about all these babies.
No matter what we did, the day was going to feel surreal, so we spent it shopping for appliances (gifts for the orphanages) at Wal-Mart; we had coffee at Starbucks and fries at the Golden Arches.
In the "baby" dining room, we watched new parents deal with high-chairs and feeding. Some babies whimpered and cried, others seemed sociable and already adjusted to the change. This can't be possible, we thought, as we nervously complimented parents-She's so cute, so pretty, so sweet.
It was their courage and resiliency that stunned me. These babies had been through so much and, yet, here they were, beginning whole new journeys. Our own daughter was spending her last night at the orphanage that had been her home for the past year. Surely, there were caregivers who loved Xing DingZhu, and who would mourn her absence, even as they celebrated her good fortune.
"She's been abandoned by her birth parents. She's about to lose whatever bond she's built with the caregivers in the orphanage," our home-study facilitator in Albuquerque had said more than a year ago. "It's really three strikes,
you have to get this right.
"
That night-hours before the onset of our own parenthood-we lay sleepless in bed. I kept practicing the most important phrase that we'd learned from our daily on-the-bus Mandarin lessons-"
Wo ai ni
"-so I could tell our baby, "I love you."
Wuh…eye…knee…wuh…eye…knee…wuh…eye…knee…
I struggled to master the falling/rising tone/first tone/falling rising tone, repeating the words again and again, as Michael tried to drift off to sleep. The phrase began to morph into a Bruce Lee wail.
Finally, Michael rolled over and stared at me. "Wuh…eye…knee," he said, softly, "Is for you to shut the f--- up so I can get some sleep."
We both fell into hysterical laughter.
We were laughing.
We were hysterical.
At this point in our adoption journey, it felt like we were participants in
Fear Factor
-meets-the-
Dating Game
. After all, adoption is the ultimate and most extreme blind date. It's a match for life.
Baby Day
This was it. The morning we would first hold our baby in our arms. We awoke blind and crazed with looming parenthood. We showered, dressed, and made our way calmly to the "baby" dining room-but we were calm in the way semi-hysterical people feign calmness.
Back in the summer, when I'd been having a meltdown, I blurted out to my friend, Miriam, "What if I don't know how to do this? What if I don't know how to be a mother?"
"Oh, honey," Miriam had said, laughing gently. "Your teacher is about to appear."
On the bus, a normally chatty time, everyone was quiet. Dr. Susan and our guides explained the process this way: We would go to the Jiang Xi Province Center of Adoption Service and pay our fees. We would wait in a room. One by one, our names would be called. We would be handed our new daughter.
All those months, all those thousands of miles and there we were. There'd been so much time to prepare and, yet, preparation for a life event of such magnitude is impossible. It's like preparing to walk on the moon. There comes a point when what has been endlessly imagined becomes real-and then you step out of the module into zero gravity.
I was crying so hard I didn't hear them call our name. Earlier, we had decided that I would be the one to receive our baby-Michael would catch the moment on film. In a daze, I saw him drop his camera, and step forward, arms wide, "Come to Papa."
Smiling wildly, he held our daughter for a few seconds, and then he handed her to me.
