Changes

Tonight YoYo lost a word. He tried to describe the day’s rain and was at a loss for the Mandarin word, one he easily sang just a few weeks ago. His English, by contrast, is remarkable.

In the preadoption classes and reading, I learned that there comes a break for a child with his language and culture. I find myself mourning this loss for him, as I am sure he will when he is old enough to name it.

We have wooed this little prince. We tried, limited as we are, to speak Mandarin as much as possible in China. We made up little songs like, “Mama, Baba Ai YoYo,” (“Mama and Baba love YoYo”) to sing him to sleep. He responded more to our efforts than I expected, graciously laughing with us at ourselves when we gaffed, gently leading us on. We brought home so many pieces of his daily experience, and we kept as much as we could for his sake. The foster home played a certain CD every afternoon; the copy we were given immediately became THE CD for naptime and bedtime. His ayi gave us a Winnie the Pooh book, and we’ve read it at every bedtime since May 8, developing an elaborate ritual. We watch Teletubbies. We try to sing along with the Chinese language CD of children’s songs in the car, and we’re coming close to having “Xiao Bai Tu” (“Little White Rabbit,” a nursery rhyme) downpat.

The biggest key to this little boy’s heart has been food. I ventured to an international market and brought home frozen dumplings, bok choy, red bean buns, so many noodles, and the biggest container of soy sauce I’ve seen in my life. He danced with his arms in the air as I unloaded the bags, singing “Gyoza, Gyoza!” (“Dumpling, dumpling!). Now, at the end of every meal, he reaches for me and says, “Thank you for making YoYo’s food, Mama.” This morning, he held my face and said softly, “I love you Mama, you know that?”

When we read Pooh, now, it presents a dilemma. He’s clearly bored, yet he wants us to read it. I think he doesn’t feel like he can make the decision to let go of it on his own. He cries when he wakes up alone. The bedtime CD is not the soothing presence it once was. My Dad says (wisely, I might add), that YoYo is here now, not in China. I know it is time for change, but I feel it must come in little steps. I want to tell myself that I am valuing him and the life he came from, but I also know that I am at least in part trying to protect him. I need bigger hands.

scarlet thread

Today was eclipsed by a funeral for a child Tian Yo’s age who died of cancer. Afterwards, I could only wonder that my little boy has been spared so much, while another woman’s little boy, the grandson of a sweet friend, did not survive. It brought to mind a poem written in the late T'ang Dynasty by Meng Chiao, the translation of which I read this evening.

Wanderer’s Song

The thread in the hand of a kind mother
Is the coat on the wanderer’s back.
Before he left she stitched it close
In secret fear that he would be slow to return.
Who will say that the inch of grass in his heart
Is gratitude enough for all the sunshine of spring?

I’ve concerned myself with marveling over Tian Yo’s journey to us and our journey to him. Many adopting parents refer to the “scarlet thread” leading to their little ones, perhaps because the image implies redemption. Our own thread is a cord binding many lives together. But back there, in his mother’s country, the yin of this yang grieves her loss, the little boy she did not see to manhood. Her cry is not unlike the one I heard at the funeral. Her grief may wane as YoYo blossoms in the riotous exuberance of a three-year-old boy, but it will surely wax fuller when he is old enough to understand that the scar on his belly traces his path away from her even as it mends him, and but for that chance condition of exstrophy, he might be with her still, and not with us. Both halves are part of his whole, both mothers will have loved and lost.

But for grieving another woman’s little boy lost, I would have missed it. YoYo’s birth mother wrapped him in what one nun called “a traditional red cloth” before sending him on. I’m left to wonder, as I watch him sleep, whether his mother meant to catch a glimpse of him on occasion, or to at least know how he fared. The scarlet thread in her kind hand is bound with ours.

sweet little boy

OK, OK, I'm sleeping better, finally, with much thanks for kind thoughts and prayers and a good talking-to from my sister Rose (who will get her fair share of sleepless nights come Jan. 30-WAHOO!) and encouragement from Becky C and the hope + help of the Barlow clan. Still, this little dragonfly-boy of mine swoops me up into the clouds of "Wow" and back to the still places in the grass where I have no answers.

A remark from an "easy" day--Shane & I sat at dinner, planning our evening routine. I'd read to YoYo the night before, but Shane hadn't gotten any sleep (long story involving insomniac me and an Ambien and subsequent hallucinations and him staying up to make sure I didn't take off naked down the road with the map of Canada, which I was sure was an angry crowd in a bar trying to eat Greenland while China fell on some man carrying groceries). Seriously, think twice, people, before hanging a world map in your bedroom. And there are sooooo many reasons that ceiling fans create bad, bad feng shui when placed over a bed.

ANYWAY, I offered to put YoYo to bed for the second night in a row, so Shane could slide off to bed. YoYo put his hand up to signal a pause. "Mama read to YoYo last night, Mama can read to YoYo tomorrow night, tonight is Baba's turn. Share, Mama."

Yesterday morning, it was not so much laughter. YoYo woke up crying, asking for his friend Lo Fei from the foster home. Shane was finally able to soothe him, and we had an uneventful morning. Shane left for school, and at naptime, YoYo asked, "Where is Lo Fei?" "At Lo Fei's house," I answered. "Ahhh, where is Qing Qing?" "At Qing Qing's house," I answered. This went on, with mostly ayis in question, but some children, too--Zi Ping, Mah Ling, Xiao Jing, and then I explained that just like YoYo lives in YoYo's house with YoYo's Mama and Baba, now Zhi Jing lives in her house with her Mama and Baba, and Zi Jiang will live in his house with his Mama and Baba, and Hai He will live with his Mama and Baba. He nodded, and replied, "Zhi Jing is in Zhi Jing's room, Zi Jiang is in Zi Jiang's room, Hai He is in Hai He's room, YoYo is in YoYo's room." My breath caught when he added, "And Qing Qing and Mah Ling and Zi Ping and Xiao Jing Jie Jie are all at Lo Fei's house?"

"Well, yes. They are."

"YoYo can see them?"

Four words he can now master in English well enough to string together with a simplicity that smites my heart. God help me to love this little one well, so even amidst such profound loss he remembers being deeply loved. What on earth can I tell him?

"We can see their pictures. Would YoYo like to see their pictures?"

"YES! YEAHHHHHH!!!" And thus begins the cutest dance with little fists half-pumping the air, "We'll see the pictures, we'll see the pictures, YoYo will see the pictures and Gou Gou and Mama and Jie Jie, yeahhhhh!"

For now, it is enough for him, and I walk to the living room fighting tears to retrieve the most beautiful gift, the square pale blue scrapbook filled to brimming with the love of volunteers I may not meet and ones who avoided my eyes crying when we parted in Beijing. The scrapbook holding his past and by paradox, his future, his friends and ayis, a letter from someone Very Important who wrote the story of his birth and journey to the foster home, and so many photos. We look at this for a half-hour, and I'm desperately thankful that I have seen these little faces of his friends and can share knowing them with him. I cannot imagine how much trust that builds between us, that he knows when I speak of Hai He and point to his sweet silly smile and the fish on his head that Mama knows Hai He and Mama has played with Hai He and YoYo together. Someday my Little Prince may not be content to only look at pictures and remember that time, but for now I will let it last as long as he needs it to and whenever he needs it, too. I know, too, what I will grab on the way out of the door if fire or lightning strikes, and what will join us in the bathtub if tornado comes, and what will be under my arm the next time I sprint 12 flights of stairs in an earthquake...

We took a nap together, a little later than most afternoons, holding hands and snuggling.

zombie

I'm writing this at 1 am. Of late, I've found myself awake in bed, just like in the olden days before YoYo came to us, waiting for sleep to finally come to me at 4 or 5 or 6 in the morning. Shane is remarkable, always supportive, caring for YoYo until I can stumble out of bed. Some nights, I wonder about YoYo's spina bifida, about all that is still unknown to us about his condition and what his future holds. Sometimes, I think about my grandmother's recipe for pound cake, or how to secure microloans for Kurdish women in Northern Iraq who could sell their yarn to eager American knitters and give their children an education, or how to start a canning business in a small Tibetan town which wants better dentistry for its monks. And then I think of the families waiting for children.

Granted, there are a lot of families who come to international adoption with fluffy thoughts of rescuing orphans and having true religion and claiming a child who was born "in the wrong tummy." Some bring infertility baggage or noninterested spouses or racist pandering with them. But there are ones who hope, too, ones who know that the child they adopt will not be an orphan biologically, but instead will have been "orphaned" by circumstance. They know that their child already has a name, a precious commodity when possessions and personal history are lacking. They will try to give their child room to grieve, and they will not be embarrassed when their child acts out at a restaurant in some lonely province (I confess my failure there), because they will know that they are the latest power-brokers in a sea of ever-changing faces and loss. And they will have a mighty trial ahead of them if they are with our agency.

Our agency has been denied Hague accreditation AFTER being reviewed a second time. One by one, their employees with the China program have been "reassigned" to another country's adoption program or have "resigned" to pursue other interests. The chat group is full of angry and frightened parents. I'm sure there are many like us, who have stretched past their financial abilities, who could not even dream of bringing a child home but for the love and support of a faithful community of friends and family. I wonder if they will be able to make it. If they will be able to afford being transferred to another agency to complete their adoption. If they will decide that they were never meant to have a child. If part of them will die. And of the ones who are easier to dislike, if they will be further hardened. If they will try to cast out government demons, blaming the CIS (immigrations) or the COA (accreditation board) for calling out our agency's wrongdoing. If their marriage will fail under the strain of so many deaths. If they will decide they are alone.

Their emails and questions echo in my mind each night on into morning, and I am powerless to help them. I know that I could post a caution in the chat group, that I could tell them to run and run and run to another agency, to transfer their files themselves...but what would that do? What would I think if I was one of them and read that? I know (or trust that I cannot grasp the fullness of) the sovereignty of my Maker. How will these people be rescued? Who will bring them hope?

After our scramble in early April to redo our I-171, which our agency completely mishandled, I thought, "They should be shut down. No parent should have to go through the added strain of not knowing whether they'll find that their paperwork is wrong or inadequate until it's too late and they can't finalize." Now, I ponder the fate of 2,500 adopting families. They are people. Some have children. Some do not. Some have room left to hope. Some hang, even now, by the slenderest thread.

And they keep me awake.