Double Happiness!!

Two bits of terrific news for a sunny Monday.

First, two of our friends from the ALTiverse have received their long-awaited referral: twin boys! I won't link to them - they're password protected - but we are entranced and a little in awe of their energy and creativity. And now, they're parents!Their little cuties are from north-central China, fraternal twins, and are already the Light of their mommy's and daddy's lives. And here they were thinking they were all busy with their new doggie!

(For the record, I don't want to give away the boys' actual images so I hunted around the internet for something that said "twin boys", found this, and was entranced that anyone would have written - or read - a story entitled "The Boy Ferret Among The Dagoes".)

Some parts of our past just don't translate well.

But this post isn't about pasts - it's about futures.

We're thrilled with the good news, and want to shout out public congratulations to the Walterniverse and the two brand new little stars in their domestic firmament.

The other good news has a bit of a bittersweet taste to it.

If you remember our China trip to little Miss Shaomei almost exactly one year ago you probably remember the little girl

we went to embrace, and left without, Baoxin..."Yun-yun".

Her story has always been the corona of darkness around the giggling little Sun of Dongguan (apologies to Willie the Shake) who is our sweet Missy.

So we have been trying to find out what had happened to her in the year after we left her with her ayis at the shabby little hotel in downtown Guangzhou.And here's the result:
From: [Mojolicious] [e-mail redacted]
Subject: Question on Fate of Child
To: brianstuy@research-china.org
Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008, 2:11 PM
Hi Brian,
I have seen your work and thank you for all that you do to keep us educated and informed. I have what I hope is an unusual question. I adopted a little girl, Lian Bao Xin, from Lian Jiang Social Welfare Institute, in September last year. She was born March 13, 2006. We had the adoption dissolved because she had brain damage; she went back to her orphanage. How might I find out her fate/if she got adopted/is still “paper ready” and waiting? There are a lot of services available on the internet, I don’t mind paying for a service, but I don’t know where to start. I’ve combed the internet for her specific information and found nothing. Any suggestions you might provide would be much appreciated.
Thank you for your time.

[Mojolicious] [Businessaddress, LLC]

From: Brian H. Stuy [mailto:brianstuy@research-china.org]
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2008 9:48 PM
To: [Mojolicious]
Subject: Re: Question on Fate of Child

I called the orphanage and talked with the office manager in charge of international adoptions. She told us that Lian Bao Xin has been adopted by an American family two weeks ago. She seemed to be doing very well with her family, and I think it has turned out well.

If this family contacts me for her finding ad, I will put them in touch with you.

Good luck!

Brian Stuy
Research-China
www.research-china.org

So we hope, and think, that Yun-yun's story may be lighter and happier than we had feared and mourned. I wish we could have helped you, Yun-yun, I wish we could have been bigger and better than we are. But I am glad that you found a mommy and daddy who love you and want you, and I wish you joy and peace and love all the days of your life.

See 'Saw

Big Boy Peeper is trying to be good about his brand new little sister, but it's not always real easy. She's really much more comfortable and relaxed around the house which translates into a cute little toddler windmill of grasping hands and toddling feet, usually toddling over to wherever the Peep is playing and trying to snatch a toy.
--
She also gets lots of Mommy and Daddy time, which is easy enough to understand when you're 34 or 44 and know that she can't really do much for herself but not when you're 4-and-a-half and can only see that she's getting more than half of the attention once rightfully yours.
--
But, having been scolded by Mommy and Daddy for pushing, shoving or kicking, and even for shouting mean things at this little intruder, the Pea has taken to expressing his dissatisfaction with the new regime in somewhat oblique terms.
--
So he no longer says things like "I hate Mei-mei!"; rather, observing a baby on television, he comments "I hate babies!" Or he invents elaborate misbehavior situations for his little sister: "Daddy, what if Mei-mei found some matches and candles and burned down the whole house?" "Well, son, we would certainly be unhappy with her for burning the house down." At which point his face lights up with a grin of pure schadenfreudlich satisfaction...
--
So I can't say I was surprised when The Peep coolly eyed his sister scrambling around on the floor and asked:
"Daddy, what if Mei-mei cut her head off with a chainsaw?"
--
I replied that I doubted that she could even lift a chainsaw, and that self-decapitation was very probably out of the picture. He pondered that for a moment.
--
"Daddy, what if YOU cut of Mei-mei's head with a chainsaw?" "Well, son, I wouldn't ever do that, but if I did your Mommy and I would be very, very sad."
--
The Peep thought about this a moment and then replied in a wistful little voice: "It would be a beautiful thing..."
--
I'm going to have to keep that boy out of the Homelite aisle at Linnton Feed and Seed, that's for sure.

Eyeless in Gaza* (at the mill with friends)

Sorry no pictures today, but I can't find where we put the camera, can't turn on the light and don't want to wake Little Missy creeping about in a dark house with toys on the creaky wood floor. I'll throw up some pictures when I get home tonight.

We had a sort of white-black weekend: Saturday was bad...Missy woke about seven times Friday night, I was sleep-deprived and cranky, the kids were pissy (Peep was an utter PILL and woke Missy when she was napping twice), and Mojo was harrassed. So let's give Saturday a pass.

I should add a quick note here: I've been calling our second child Shaomei on the blog, which is, in fact, her middle name. Mojo pointed out that her first name is Maxine, and we should figure out a name we like and use it until she is old enough to make up her own mind. But I don't want to break my rule about not using our real first names online. So, for security's sake, and convenience, here our daughter will go by "Missy" or "Little Missy", which is our nickname for her.
--
Sorry. Back to business...
--
So Saturday sucked pipe. But Sunday? Nice. Missy slept almost all the way through the night Saturday and late into Sunday morning, which gave the Peep his own time to come in and cuddle with Daddy and Mommy. I have to say that I miss that Peeper time a lot...and so does he, I think. That used to be our weekend morning routine, a cuddle in bed followed by couch-time with Thomas the Train, Bob or Fireman Sam. Now Little Missy is usually up by seven, which means that the Peeper has to get his cuddles where and when he can. I think it makes him demanding and cranky, poor guy.
--
So we got our Sunday cuddle, Missy woke up and we got out of the house and down to our St, John's Starbucks for coffee and a pricey egg-mcmuffin (or chocolate milk and a chocolate donut, you can see where's the Peeper's going with THAT...). Then down to Cathedral Park to play on the little beach under the bridge in the brilliant sunshine. We skipped stones, dug our hands into the sand (Missy), wrote names in the sand (Mom and Peep) and marvelled at a huge Herring Gull stalking earthworms in the park lawn (Missy and I).
--
After a stop off at home and a failed attempt at napping for Little Miss we saddled up the Honda and rode down to Columbia Pool for a nice splash and giggle. Our little girl loves to paddle her hands and feet in the water, and can kick like Esther Williams! I gave the Peep multiple pool-floatie-spin rides, which he loved, and we got out before Mommy and Missy so we shared a secret ice cream sandwich...all the more delicious for being stolen and illicit (Daddy sometimes gives sugary treats that we know that Mommy wouldn't approve of...bad Daddy! but happy Peeper!)
--
On the way down the street Little Missy fell asleep, so we parked at the Lombard Goodwill and went inside - got Missy her own plastic Halloween pumpkin, Peeper a fire truck and Daddy and Mommy some books. Then it was back in the car and on the road to Millicent, Floyd and Nola's place!
--
These lovely folks have been - camping, basically - on the first floor of their gorgeous Victorian house as the upstairs is completed. Now the upstairs is done - OMFG, it's delightful, Millie promises that she'll blog again soon, and I'm sure you will see it then over at Different Dirt - and we moved up a bunch of heavy furniture including the God of Television (note: simulated picture of GoT - actual GoT too large for blog bandwidth).
--
While Floyd and I moved, the distaff halves of each partnership played in the yard with the littlies - a tougher job, I assure you - and tried to pull the glass shards and other inappropriate toys out of little fingers before they went in little mouths. Peeper was a big help, and even Little Missy opened up and played. What was really adorable was that once the heavy lifting was done and we all retired to the back yard, at one point Nola decided to give her guest a tour of the charcoal mulch. She grasped Missy's small hand and towed her around the playset, into the dirt and back to the paving! I can't begin to tell you how cute that was. Gives me hope that these two can get to be friends once they grasp the whole "playing well with others" concept. I understand - not a given. Much of the Bush Administration is living proof of that. But, still...
--
Of course, there was also some tussling over toy animals (compete with crying), some sippy-sipping and banana-eating (Nola loves her some nini, that girl, and so does Missy, so they split it), and lots of good dirty fun as the two little girls (who really look nothing alike) disgused their differences with some North Mississippi Day Spa topsoil-and-charcoal facial masks.
--
After going our way we stopped at Sal's for a genuinely pleasant dinner: both children were playful but within limits, friendly and cooperative. To such small limits are our child-rearing horizons bounded!
--
Then home to HotWheels video, congee, tub (for Little Missy, the waterbaby) and bed. A delightful Sunday, and much needed.
--
* Note: Normally I revel in the obscurity of my blog post titles, but I wanted in this case to explain that I am ONLY referring to the lack of visual stimulation in this post. I am not in any form comparing the work of shifting the God of Television to Samson, blinded, at the mill with slaves.
--
Pictures tonight, I promise!

Ms. PacMan

I promised I'd post this - this is what we call Shaomei's "coin slot" or "mail slot" - the rectangular bald spot on the back of her head. We're told that this is 1) a remnant of where her head was shaved in back for ease of care and to accomodate the hot weather in Dongguan, or 2) where she rubbed the back of her head sleeping on the hard wood crib-bottom. While I understand the idea of discarding as much of the bedding as possible in the hot, dog's-mouth-humid climate of south China, I'm sorry - wood as bedding? SO Neolithic. Makes my head hurt just to think of it.

We're introducing the concept of pillow. Slow, but sure. We'll have you dancing on the bar in your panties and cowgirl hat yet, li'l American Girl...(now THERE'S a Daddy-heart-attack image...)

Happy Birthday to me

The haiku on the right-hand side of the picture reads:

"Goju kara
kazoe yo chiyo no
matsukasari"
--
"Because you're fifty
count the New Year's pine branches
of a thousand ages"
--
In traditional Japan, people were considered one year older on New Year's Day, which therefore became everyone's birthday. The age of fifty was special because it was considered the beginning of respected old age. Therefore the boughs of the evergreen pine, a traditional New Year's decoration, also carry here the meaning of long life. In addition, the tall forehead of the figure suggests the extended head of Jurojin, the god of good fortune who also represents longevity. Finally, on the back of the figure is the auspicious Buddhist jewel symbol. So for a man reaching the age of fifty, everything about this small painting is celebratory: Happy Birthday, Happy New Year, and Long Life!
--
Respected old age? This as my son is climbing on me like a jungle gym. It's been said before but is worth repeating: we begin never knowing what the end will be. I have no idea what will happen to us as a family with a father at 50 raising a daughter of 1 1/2 and a son of 4. But whatever it will be, it will not be dull.
--
To my friends: my love and my thanks. To my enemies: may you always keep me vigilant. And to my children and the shades of my ancestors: hail, and farewell.

Yun-yun's Story: The House Carpenter

They had not been at sea two weeks
I'm sure it was not three
When this poor maid began to weep
And she wept most bitterly

O do you weep for your gold, he said
Your houses, your land, or your store?
Or do you weep for your house carpenter
That you never shall see anymore

I do not weep for my gold, she said
My houses, my land or my store
But I do weep for my poor wee babe
That I never shall see anymore

They had not been at sea three weeks
I'm sure it was not four
When in their ship there sprang a leak
And she sank to rise no more

What hills, what hills are those, my love
That are so bright and free
Those are the hill of Heaven, my love
But not for you and me

What hills, what hills, are those, my love
That are so dark and low
Those are the hills of Hell, my love
Where you and I must go

for May Baoxin Gellar

Yun-yun's Story: Cock-crow

Wednesday night was awful. Little Baoxin didn't sleep and neither did we, dreading the morning and the return to Guangzhou Children's Hospital. After another terrifying cab ride - the intellectual concept of "lane" appears to be nonexistant in south China and the only traffic regulation is "show no fear" - we were again inside the tile warren, again in a crowded waiting area, again before a doctor, this time the neurologist, who would determine the fate of our child and us.
--
This time the physician performed actual neurological tests, manipulating her limbs, stimulating her to crawl and stand and noting the difficulties. The original diagnosis was modified to "unspecified brain injury resulting in significant mental/physical impairment" or what in the bad old days we called "mental retardation".
--
We cried. Our hearts went out to her. But we couldn't possibly take her home, not with everything else in our past, memories of a daughter lost and worries for our own home and family. We had decided, in the dark hours of Wednesday night, that if the diagnosis confirmed a brain injury to turn her back, even thought it might mean coming home without a child. But we also knew that in doing so we probably condemned her to a life of barely surviving in the cheerless institution we had thought to take her from. We felt like heartless Judases but, in choosing, chose ourselves and our family over her good. That is a cruel choice, and nothing can disguise it. We deliberately chose our own welfare over hers, and we will have to live with that for the rest of our lives.

Having made that choice, the rest of Thursday was an extended frenzy of paperwork and phone calls. First we were told that she would go back to the orphanage that day, then that evening. We were told that we could not move to the non-special-needs category and that it would not be possible to complete the adoption in our original time period (and our travel dates were not mobile!). Then, late in the evening, with Mojo and Baoxin in exhausted sleep, Rob the guide called to say that the nannies had just got in and couldn't be at the hotel before midnight. In one of my most foolish decisions I asked him to put off the handover until the following morning.

Baoxin didn't sleep more than an hour that night, and poor Debra ended up sitting up with her on her chest, feeling every little movement, the pulse of that tiny, injured heart against hers, hating it, hating herself, hating life and the Gods of Children for their unrelenting cruelty. She passed a night so bleak I cannot imagine it, and cannot describe it. But I mention it so that you can imagine for yourself, if you can, those long, dark hours of bottomless sorrow.

The next morning we went back into the city, to a warrenlike hotel where we returned her. She was overjoyed to see her nannies, they crying out cheerfully when she appeared. The cab ride back to the White Swan was sad but not as bitter as we had imagined. We had made the decision and were willing to live with it. Another referral had been mentioned. We were starting to hope again.

But, of course, Fate had a last dagger hidden. I went to the "Garden Pool" to swim and decompress and returned to the room to find my wife all in pieces.

"Rob called" she sobbed "He says he was at the nannies' hotel. Says she was doing all the things they said: walking, talking. Says he wnts us to come and see, that it's our last chance."

I thought about all the possibilities, about our hopes that this sweet little girl had fooled us all, that we had a chance for a full and happy life, that the doctors were wrong. And then of the awful chance that these small things were all she could do, that we would spend the next twenty years hoping for a flower that would be forever a bud, worrying about every setback, every low grade, every speech problem or coordination difficulty.

We never saw her again.

I am crying now, as I write this, for our little mei-mei, for the lost love and hopes we had, for the little girl back asleep in her crib in Liangjiang. We still love you and hope for you. I'm sorry, Mei-mei, that we weren't big enough to be what you needed for a fuller life and a brighter hope. I will be sorry until my own life is over.

Next: The House Carpenter

Yun-yun's Story: a Tragedy in Two Acts

So I suppose that most of you reading this, as we did when we left Portland for the interminable flight across the Pacific on Friday the 14th of September thought that we would be returning with the little Girl from Liangjiang, Lian Baoxin. It was with her referral in hand we arrived in the dog's-mouth heat of Guangzhou city and the overpriced luxus accomodations of the White Swan Hotel therein.
--
That was the plan all along. We had read up on her "special need" (polydactyly), learned about her home town and her province, bought clothes for her and anticipated meeting and seeing her for the first time. Emotionally, she was "mei-mei".
--
And so the first couple of days were really just meaningless. I could describe the old colonial enclave of Shamian Island for you, or talk about the sights and sounds of southeast China, but that would be about another subject, and this story is, purely and simply, a tragedy.
--
I suppose that human nature prevents us from seeing ourselves as players in a tragedy, from seeing tragedy as something that happens to us rather than actors in a play or on a screen. But suddenly there you are, your chest breaking open with the sobs you can't keep in while you know that, even as you cry your tears are vain. That the Wheel of Suffering is exact, and swerves not a hair, sparing no one and nothing. That you will be called upon to receive the fullest measure of pain to the satisfaction of the Giver and not the capacity of the Gifted. And so our calvary began Monday morning when a little girl in a white onesie was carried into the "gotcha" room at the Civil Affairs Building in Guangzhou.
--
It was a brutally quick handoff. The nannies appeared, gave us a quick precis on her likes and schedule, passed her to us and departed. We were informed that in Liangjiang dialect the "xin" in her name was pronounced "yun", "Baoyun", and her orphanage nickname was "Yun-yun". Xin or yun, she sobbed equally on Mojo and myself, comfortless amid the crowd of wailing, babbling, cooing and crying families. For the rest of the morning she lay on Mojo's breast, clinging to her with her tiny simian hands and feet in a desperate search for human contact.
--
The next two days passed in a confused crescendo of parental worry punctuated by official paperwork. We, of course, were helpless. Clueless. Utterly unsure of why this tiny human seemed so inert. We tried to make sense of the problems, tried to reason ourselves into some rational order. Of course she was hurt. Traumatized, bereft, probably ill...no wonder she couldn't raised herself up from the prone, roll over, stand from sitting, vocalize except for crying. On Tuesday we noticed white lesions on her tongue, which the White Swan "doctor" diagnosed as something to do with "food sitting in her mouth" and prescribed some sort of hideous 18th-Century iodine swab we dutifully applied to her tongue twice a day.
But even after meeting the nannies again on Tuesday and desperately trying to find reasons for her intertia, by Wednesday afternoon we were near panic. This was not the active toddler we were told to expect. This was more like a six-month-old, and a weak and sick one at that.

So Wednesday night we called "Rob", the agency guide-cum-fixer, and told him we wanted to go to the Guangzhou Children's Hospital. This hollow, ringing porcelin tile sanitarium is a medical facility in the Graham Greene tradition of southeast Asia, full of immense, dimly-lit halls and entire mendicant families huddled around their sick offspring. There, in an open examination cubicle, an appropriately 19th Century-white-gowned and -masked medical person peered at our sagging daughter, picked her up and set her down on her feet and directed Mojo to do the same. She felt the baby's leg, went back to her desk and started writing, saying something to Rob.

"She say something is wrong with the baby's braid." I thought I heard Rob say.

"Braid?" I was stunned "Rob, this child has no hair whatsoever. What is she talking about?"

"No, no..." Rob replied "...something is wrong with brain."

--

Moments later we had the adoption agency's rep in Beijing on the phone. Her English is notably better, and she explained eaxctly what the doctor had said:

"She says your baby has cerebral palsy."

--

Mojo burst out sobbing, and I stared at the phone in sick disbelief.

Next: Before the cock crows shall ye deny me.

We're back

...tired, dirty and emotionally wrung out.

We have a little girl, a lovely shy little girl with big eyes and soft hands. But...and thereby hangs a tale...NOT the same little girl we left two weeks ago to bring home.

I'm exhausted, and I can't post any more than this. But I do want to tell Baoxin's story, as painful as it is, and let you know about Shaomei, our new daughter, the little rose blossoming at the end of a very bitterly barbed journey.

Time to go...

...to put on our traveling clothes and head out the door. Time for Tubby Bye-byes.
--
Why post this picture now?
--
(For those of you who visited last weekend - THIS is what the living room looked like, back in the day, April, 2004, to be exact. And what the Peeper looked like as a 11-month-old. Like today only shorter and rounder and less verbal and non-self-locomotive. Mmm, OK, not much like today.)
--
Because it wasn't that long after this picture was taken that we started this whole paperchase. Home studies. Fingerprints. Haunting the Rumor Queen. Meeting others clutched in the same process. Bringing us to this morning, where I'm sitting up, nervous, typing in the darkened house, waiting, just killing time before we can get in the airplane and begin the next part of the next phase of the rest of our lives.
--
I'm not going to get all ladybuggery on you, but there's a huge part of me that wants to be able to tell my daughter when I am an old, old man and she a young woman, the two of us travelling together in different directions, that this was the first day of our years of lifelong love. The first step out the door and down the path of our mutual caring and commitment that made all the tears and hurt and pain the bearable cost of life. The first of a long chain of days and years that will bring her footsteps, and the footsteps of her children in turn, to the place where they remember me and their mother, to sit and just say to the bright emptiness: you helped us be who we wanted to be. You were a good man. You're welcome, and thanks.
--
All true wealth in life is biological. I hope that today we are on the way to a new and hopeful treasury.
--
Goodbye. I'll be here again, inshallah, in two weeks.

Down to a wake-up...

No more days left. Down to one. Now its only hours, the clock ticking down the hours from now until wheels-up. Hours. Only hours.
--

I'm starting to get nervous and jittery, my thoughts are chasing themselves around inside my head frantically twitching their tails and chittering like squirrels.

--

Hours.

--

Only hours now.

Don't disturb my circles

We take our lives for granted. That’s my thesis for tonight.

Not in the sense you usually think of it – ungrateful for our blessings, hurrying past the small beauties and hidden graces kind of “granted”.

No, I mean literally. We get up every morning and don’t stop to think: I might not make it to sunset alive. Would ‘t’were bedtime, Hal, and all well. I might die today; make all my plans and schemes and hopes meaningless. Come home in a box. Done. Finito. End of mission, out.

And that’s fine. Life wouldn’t be bearable if we had to wonder every morning if we’d see the twilight and every bedtime if we’d see the dawn. As I child I remember hating – hating – that moronic prayer that includes the line about taking my soul if I die before I wake. The idea that I could just close my eyes and stop, never waking, just fading from one starless dark to another…well, I’m kinda amazed I ever slept as a kid.

I remember being both fascinated and horrified by death. I think most kids are. My mother used to like to tell the story of me as a toddler staring transfixed into the pyracantha bushes as a California king snake coiled into a cedar waxwing’s nest and devoured the young birds. I worried about it, wondered if it would hurt, why it happened to old people. I once refused to kiss my paternal grandmother (a lovely but prematurely desiccated and antique lady) because, as I hissed to my father in an undervoice, “...she makes me think of Death”.
It seemed to me then and still does, by the way, that the worst part of Death was Fear. No matter how awful the dying once it's over it’s..well…over. For you, nothing more. Whatever happens next, including nothing, the living part of your life is done. Now the fear and hurt and emptiness moves on to those who loved you.

Which brings me to my antithesis: once you make the decision to have children you find that nothing in your life can be taken for granted. You give hostages to Fortune, and Fortune, heartless bitch that she is, commonly slays or maims them without remorse. This is the side of parenting the books won’t tell you and your parents themselves have lived with so long that they’ve forgotten to even mention it. Does a fish think about the water it swims in, or an earthworm the soil surrounding it? Look inside a copy of “What to expect when you’re expecting” or Dr. Sears on discipline. You will find no whisper of doubt that this little person you’re reading about will suddenly be gone, as finally and achingly as the last sunlight before full night. You will be – or you have been already – tossed into the Drowning Pool without a life jacket while the raging typhoon called “childhood” hammers you with fifty foot waves of pure terror. Drowning? Choking? Falling? Lead paint? Toxic fabrics, plastics, metals…hormones in milk, child molesters in the street, thought-destroying dreck on the TV? Yep. It’s all out there. Waiting for your kid.

And your child, or children, will rend you on this rack of Fear every day, for they themselves are fearless. Death may intrigue or terrify them but will that stop them from dancing as fecklessly as Shiva in a ring of fire atop the narrowest of ledges? From hurling themselves off high places as if they knew that angels would catch them before they dashed their feet against the rocks? Watching all-in no-rules cagefighting on Versus long after bedtime?

You bet your sweet ass it won’t. The only thing more invisible, invincible, immortal and bulletproof than a college sophomore with eight shots of Stoli in her is your five-year-old on his bicycle. One bioadaptation that pediatricians should provide for the parents is a wider throat, since their hearts will be in it fifteen times a day.

--

You couldn’t live like that and neither could I. So our synthesis is to try, like Archimedes tracing figures in the dust, to manage our little piece of the world while the Heavens fall around us. We teach, we warn, we clutch, hold and pull away. We hide the scissors and cap the poisons and pad the corners and close our eyes at the daredeviltry and hope that the fates are kind and the ground soft. We compare car seats for impact performance, choose bike helmets for impact resistance, make healthy lunches, watch uplifting programs, read good books and teach good manners and confide good choices until it seems that we’re ready to fall over exhausted from so much care.

--
And all the while in the back of our minds there’s a hard, cold place we don’t want to visit but know awaits us; the realization that work and try and hope and pray as we might it might not be enough. That we may tell ourselves that anything that wants to hurt or kill our children will have to tear us apart before it does, but even as we do we realize that all our love and all our strength are helpless against a kinked umbilical cord, a flu germ, a moment’s inattention on the part of another driver.

So we go on. And learn to live with the fear that all parents live with from the moment their children are theirs. Until the moment their own eyes close.
--

Long ago I asked my mother in the blithe ignorance only the adolescent can carry off: “When did you stop worrying about me?” and the look I received answered me better than words could have ever done. She hadn’t. She didn’t. She never will, until they put the pennies on her own eyes. And now I understand as I look in on my own little Peeper – and worry about another little person too far away in Lianjiang for me to do anything but worry – and stand silently listening to his night-slow breathing. I understand about the stone.Fear (Strakh)

--
So you think you know the real meaning of fear?

Yeah, you think you do know, but I doubt it.

When you sit in a shelter with bombs falling all over.

And the houses around you are burning like torches.

I agree that you experience horror and fright

For such moments are dreadful, for as long as they last,

But the all-clear sounds–then it’s okay—You take a deep breath, the stress has passed by.

But real fear is a stone deep down in your chest.

You hear me? A stone.

That’s what it is, nothing more.
Ilya Selvinsky

The world turns on its end

Not much to look at, is it.

But this sheet of foolscap says if effect we are now, officially and legally, a mom and dad for the second time. We are stunned and thrilled at the same time. We were expecting weeks - it took 18 days.

Uh. OK.

And now we wait for the travel authorization.


"There's the way we may appear
but that will change from day to night.
Would you ever see within?
Underneath the skin?
Could I believe you had that sight?
--
And so a woman leaves a man.
And so a world turns on it's end.
So I'll see your face in dreams
where nothing's what it seems;
still you still appear some kind of friend."

Suzanne Vega

Green Acres

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother.
It's so young,It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.--You come too.

Pace Mr. Frost, the critter is what we used to call in the Army in my time (during which a lot of the Vietnam guys were still around) a "waterboo". A carabao, or water buffalo.

These are pictures from another family's trip to Lianjiang City, the small town in southernmost China where our soon-to-be little daughter Baoxin was born and is living. Since Friday is my day for posting "things-I'm-interested-in", and what I'm most interested in now is her, I thought I'd put these up. Note the banana trees above: southern Guangdong Province is China's "banana belt" - tropical and more like Southeast Asia than it is like the interior of the country.

It is also, as far as I can tell, about semi-rural. I get the feeling that folks from Beijing and even Guangzhou probably think of Lianjiangers as, um, "rubes"...

Described as a "typical street scene" from Lianjiang City. Wonder what the bicyclist is going to do with the bamboo. Home improvement? Garden plant stakes? Light industrial materials?

Not sure what the guys are doing here. Is this the Cantonese version of trainspotting? Just a shady spot to hang out (southern Guangdong is described as hellish for heat and humidity)? Is this the South Lianjiang City railroad station?

My little sister's first boyfriend had a red Honda 50 just like the one in the front left corner of this picture. In 1975.

Another Steve McQueen wannabe. Also: note the building in the background: in Panama this sort of open-sided shed would be called a bohio. Interesting that here are two tropical locales divided by the expanse of the Pacific and both have arrived at the same solution for keeping the rain off but allowing the heat out.

Well, that's all. I love this picture of the little girl and her mommy going on their way, their colorful umbrellas fending off the sun...makes me think of another little girl, and another mommy, and my hopes to see them together real soon...

The DSL guy comes tomorrow...so hopefully I can post from home again soon. See ya then!

Thermonuclear cuteness

Every parent does this and it's SOOOOO irritating, but: is this a cute girl, or what?

Here's little Miss Baoxin again, this time a little older - notice that the baby fat has gone somewhat - and a little taller.

What a clever girl! Look how she's weighing the mass versus the volume of those little plastic toys. Clearly somebody's going to grow up to be a brain surgeon or a theoretical physicist.

--

Whatever - grow up to be a Greek philospher-poet/auto-body sheetmetal worker, sweetie. We just want to bring you home soon...

--

And speaking of poetry:

Destiny

Aphrodite promised your return on Beltane

I hang to her words with the last hope

Love can give.

Spring is still young

The wheel of life must turn.

The moon must pass before

You come to me

--

What if you don’t come?

What will it be of me?

No, Aphrodite will not abandon

A daughter of light;

A daughter of fire;

A daughter of the forest;

For the gods are bound to me

As I am to you, my love.

--

Love, god’s sacred gift to us

Becomes my curse

Every minute you are not with me.

Becomes my burden

Every second you are away from me.

Becomes my death

Every moment you are far from me.

--

What is my destiny?

To be waiting for you?

Alejandra Olivas

Last Picture Show

That being little Miss Baoxin's referral photo. We looooove this picture. It's got so much personality. This has got to be her "cut that crap out" face. Bet we get to see this one a lot...

We love you, kiddo. Now we wait for our Letter of Authorization. Hurry, please, hurry.

The Girl from Lianjiang

So here she is: Lian Baoxin, a bouncing fifteen-month-old curently residing at her pied-a-terre in the south Guangdong Province city of Lianjiang. Our daughter - we hope!

Is she a little cutie, or what? My only other thought is that in our first care package we need to send her some hair conditioner, because that's some flyaway toddler hair going on there. Maybe she was just scuffing her little feet on the carpet to make her hair stand up. What a cutup that girl is!

Our LOI should be going to CCAA this coming week. We're through the review room and have not gotten any request for additions or changes to our dossier, so I suspect we're OK on the p-work side. Now we just have to hope that the nameless official somewhere in Beijing thinks we're good enough for this little treasure.
--
That's what we think the "Bao" in her name means "treasure" or "precious", although the webpage we checked included several alternate meanings of the word spelled in pinyin "Bao" including "saucepot", "procuress" and "Chinese bustard". Likewise "Xin" can mean "happy" as well as "copper" and "used in names"
--
No matter: here she is, our little happy treasure (or our little copper Chinese bustard). We're already foolishly nuts about this darling and, as you can imagine, are getting all fidgety waiting for an LOA and then a TA and then a "gotcha day" so we can start showering her with lots of goofy mom-and-dad-and-Peeper luuurve. The Peep has already described how he's going to be a terrific big brother and not let his mei-mei play with scissors and show her how to jump on the bed. So there's that covered.
--
So as you can imagine, this week there's been some excitement and celebration going on around here, and I want to post all about that later today.

Things to do in Portland (while writing your daughter's referral acceptance letter)

Look up where she lives (Lianjiang City) on Google EarthTM

Find out what "polydactyly" means and what to do about it.

Watch hella freakin' wierd Pobaby "Porro/Zorro" video. Seriously, check this out. We're talking goofy translated synopsis of the plot of hella freakin' wierd Pobaby Porro/Zorro video, awesome Xiao Ya, Pobaby's baby girl inamorata, and her buttless Chinese red baby chaps (yo, girlfriend is, like, the femme Tom of Finland model of the pre-continent set), Pobaby as Crouching Diaper, Hidden-Don-Diego, and the porcine antics of Pobaby's enemy, San Jie. I find this whole Pobaby camorra intriguing. Here's more oddball Pobaby stuff: this time Ya vs. The Giant Chicken. With an NBA theme. Wierd? Ya think?

Wonder what she's gonna sleep on, how to help her get along with the Peeper, who she is and what she'll be like...

Dream.

Just Dream.