Testing Emails

This is try number two.

People have trouble using Blogger from China, so I'm trying to post by
email and attach photos. How does this look?

Updated Photos

Well, we asked for them, and we got them:  new photos of Zi.  I don't know exactly when these were taken, but I think within the last week or so.  She is growing nicely:  up to 18 pounds, they say.  We are still waiting on travel dates and hoping that those come within the week.

Here I go: Not so perfect

One of my newest great-friends and I had a wonderful 24-hour visit, and as we ate dinner in my favorite sushi place last night, she challenged me: you write it.

So here I go.

Leading up to her challenge, I was complaining about how adoption blogs are like one big cliche, how everyone says the same things, uses the same metaphors, and almost no one really says anything at all about the complications of real-life emotions. I suppose many people are afraid that their children will grow up and read what they've said and that those children will somehow think less of their parents, will feel unloved, or will somehow be damaged by knowing how their parents felt anything other than total bliss at every moment of their lives.

I am (however wrongly) laboring under the belief that children are human and that my job as a parent is to prepare them for the world -- not as we want it to be, but as it is. I believe my life would have been better had people told me their honest feelings. I have appreciated those friends and family who have been/are honest about their joys and sorrows in life. So, I'm going to try this. I am going to try to let my perspective out of the bag. I am going to try something else...

Something for Zi. A chronicle of the real-life (whatever that is for me) stuff. That means I want to explore the complexities (joys, laughs, sorrows, frustrations, growing pains, etc) of lots of things: being a feminist/academic/mother/wife, being the White parent of an Asian child, being a 40-year-old first time mom, watching an adopted child grow up, ... you get the idea.

Today's thought: jealousy

A different new great-friend left for China today to go get her daughter from the same orphanage where Zi is living (this friend created the beautiful image above from our referral photo). I feel lucky to have met her and hope that we (and our daughters) will be life-long friends. In talking with her, I found that several people have been churlish with her because she is traveling earlier than they are, because she got updates on her child when they didn't, or because her daughter's cuteness has been praised more than their own daughters. I find myself profoundly shocked by this behavior, and then I find that I'm shocked by my own naivete. Of course people are selfish and snotty and jealous. Yet, I wonder WHY?

I expect this to be a running theme here...American entitlement. (It can be no accident that the two friends listed above are not American -- one Canadian and one Australian).  As an educator, I have found that with each passing year, young adults in America are being raised to expect more and more to be given to them (Yet another, curious thought, why are those most entitled so against government entitlement programs?). They think the world owes them something. I have news. No one owes you (or me) anything. That's right, ANYTHING.

If we (should I just say I?) could all begin to see that everything we get/earn makes us fortunate...as if not starving in a hovel under a bridge makes us wealthy beyond all measure, we might become a culture that is less concerned about having the perfect ass size, the perfect tennis outfit, the perfect life. And if we can let go of the "perfect," we might be more likely to stop shooting each other for not getting tenure, to stop stealing art/music/essays and realize that to spend $10 for group of songs is to employ a band or to write a paper is to learn something, to stop treating our adopted children as contest prizes and to feel parenthood as the obligation of raising informed citizens, to live as if to really live is to survive the world and then to make it better than we found it.

This friend told me of one person who claims to now hate China because of the four year wait in adoption. I vote that this person not be allowed to adopt. How will this person who hates China treat his/her adopted Chinese child?

I am lucky to be able to share Zi's life. She is not a charity case; I am not "saving her" from some horrible life in China. In fact, I am making her life difficult in many, many ways. I hope that I will be able to honor her with something in exchange for her sacrifice. I hope that part of that something will be a willingness to let go of "perfect."

Visas and updates

Fed Ex says our visas will arrive tomorrow, so we should have travel approval within the week (that means we will have hard dates too).

I've emailed the agency and requested updates from the orphanage. Some lucky people get more pictures and updates on length and weight. Cross those fingers and toes -- we would love to be lucky!

Referral Pictures

Here are Zi's referral pictures. We think they were taken when she was about 6 months old.

We received the infamous "call" on February 1st, 2010. I wrote all of the information that the agency gave me on the back of a junk-mail envelope, and waited for the email that contained these three photos. I was in Montgomery, and Charles was in Atlanta, as usual. So, when I hung up with the agency, I immediately called Charles who was driving home from work and could not see the pictures (thank you very much ATL traffic) for another 45 minutes.

Five weeks later, I still find myself looking at the pictures trying to tell myself that it really is real. That THIS child will soon be in our home banging on pots and pans.

Another Adoption Story

So, after 40-something years of life and 40-something months of preparation, we are finally looking at pictures of our daughter. Since we are not able to take everyone to China with us, I thought I'd follow in the tradition of the many, many bloggers out there that tried to tell their adoption story on the web so that those at home can follow along.

I will try my very best to avoid cheesy music, the word "doll," and the other gag-inducing techniques that seem to run rampant on this beautiful information highway.

If I should slip, just let me know.