Mother Tongues

One of our worries is that we won't be able to communicate with TJ. In the videos above, conducted during a camp that brought together older children, adoption agency personnel and Chinese orphanage officials, TJ was interviewed. Although he understood Mandarin, probably from television and possibly from school, if indeed he attends school, he does not seem to speak Mandarin. Nor does he speak Cantonese. Our agency said he spoke a dialect. Which dialect is the question. If we can find out, perhaps we can learn some phrases to make things easier when we meet him. We thought we were covered, with Mandarin-speaking au pairs and Mommy's painful to listen to but fun attempts to learn Mandarin in classes at work. But it looks like language will be another challenge.

I asked our agency, but I am afraid I have been a bit of a pest, and they suggested that perhaps we wait a few months before we submit further questions. In the meantime, if anyone recognizes this dialect, let me know! Xiexie!

Going Faster, Like a Roller Coaster

The summer is racing by, and in a few months we hope to be in China. Gravity is pulling us closer to the day we meet. The closer we get, the faster we move.  It's a journey we are trying to explain in the letters we are writing to you and mailing to the orphanage. We wrote you another  this week, trying to explain a bit more about what will happen when we meet, who will be there, where we will go, how we will get there.

I hope you are getting our letters and photos and that your foster parents are reading them to you, especially now.

In the last week there was a family who disrupted their adoption of a girl from your orphanage when she became violent and tried to run away several times after a few days of perfect behavior. The well-mannered girl they met was hiding the frightened core, which seems pretty natural to me. A mourning, uncomprehending child seems to be what we should be prepared for.  A fight or flight reaction to a threatening situation -- two scary grown-ups trying to take her away from everything she has ever known -- surely seems reasonable.

Thanks to the Internet, the family's decision, and the tearing of their hearts, was heard on several list-servs. The mom wrote about her heartbreak and about the weeping of the Chinese officials and guides. How much did the orphanage know about her behavior and prior circumstances? How much did the child know about what was happening to her? Was she mentally ill as the parents claimed? How can parents leave a child behind? And how can they protect their younger children at home from violent behavior?

Online, the reactions were vastly different depending on the frame of reference of the person responding. There was a debate about whether parents who relied on religion and God to guide them were more likely to disrupt because they were not taking responsibility but rather believing that a higher power was making their decisions for them. There were battle-hardened parents who had stood beside  extremely troubled children, seen their goodness, and devoted their lives to making a safe and secure world for them. Others who had disrupted stood up as well to tell their stories. And some parents reached out to each other to try to pool their resources into some kind of superblog information bank meant for adoptive parents only and not for their in-laws or their children to read. A fascinating idea.

We want to be prepared to give you all you need, and continue to give your sisters all they need, and to do it wisely, with fun and without fear, if there is such a thing as parenting without fear, without feeling your insides float up as you plummet down the steep slope of this ride.

While We're Waiting

We celebrated the 4th of July, the nation's birthday, with a day of swimming, playing outdoors and watching fireworks at a baseball stadium. Bet you'd love to go to a game there. Do you like baseball? Have you been to game? We can't wait to find out what your favorite sport is.
It has been exceptionally hot here this weekend. In our garden the tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, beans and cucumbers (and the flowers and herbs, too) have been very dry and thirsty. But hot weather here does not compare to the weather in Guangzhou.

We are LID!

On June 25, 2010, our dossier, the huge pile of paperwork we have been amassing for 9 months, was logged in in China, another milestone on our way to you, TJ. Time to post an itinerary here, and some of your new photos.