Some letters to Tianjun over our months of waiting for him, translated by Yuanfang Liu, Ping Zhou and Liwen He.
Dear Tianjun,
Our whole family will be getting on an airplane late on the night of Dec. 2 to begin our flight to you. We’ll leave from New Jersey and fly to Alaska, and then on to Hong Kong. We will spend the night there and then take a train to China, to Guangzhou, and move into our hotel.
On Monday, Dec. 6, we will meet you in a big office where lots of other children, many of them friends from the Guangzhou Social Welfare Institute, will be meeting their new forever families.
Don’t worry. There may be things you don’t understand, but there will be many friends and family members to help explain. There will be lots of laughter and tears and photos and video cameras at the moment that we meet. Then we’ll all get on a bus and g back to the hotel. That’s when the fun will begin. You’ll get to play with your sisters and get to know Mom and Dad and your babysitters, who are from China and can help you to understand anything that might be confusing.
In a few days we will begin packing our suitcases to travel. We have already started packing a bag for you, but we are waiting until we get your new measurements to see how tall you are and how much you weigh so we know what size clothes to buy to fill your suitcase.
We’ll stay in China for a few weeks, and make a trip to Hong Kong on the way home. We will all get on the plane Dec. 20 to come to your new home, Te next day, Dec. 21, is you birthday: one more celebration for you. The day after that we will go to visit your new school, then school vacation begins and we will be hanging out and home with a fire in the fireplace, or playing in the snow or decorating our Christmas tree. We also celebrate Hanukkah in our home, and perhaps we will extend our celebration to the hotel.
We’re counting the days until we see you.
Love,
Mom, Dad and your sisters
Dear Tianjun,
In just two weeks we will fly from the United States to China to bring you home. We will meet you on Dec. 6, a Monday. Your sisters and Mama and Dad will be there, along with your babysitters, two young women from China who help us to take care of you and who live in our home.
We have bought you a backpack with some toys and games in it and some new clothes and new pajamas and a swimsuit. At home, we have a new soccer ball and goal to play with in the back yard. We think you must really like soccer because in the pictures we have of you, you are wearing soccer shirts.
Next week we will celebrate an autumn holiday in our country. It’s called Thanksgiving. It is a day of giving thanks and cooking a feast to share with family. We try to cook foods from the recent harvest, as the Native Americans and first foreign settlers did when they celebrated the first Thanksgiving. The meat of the day is a big turkey (like a super big chicken) stuffed with savory bread and meat and herbs. After dinner we take a rest, watch sports on TV or play games and then eat some pie made from pumpkin or apple or berries. Maybe you have had pie or seen it on TV. It’s a sweet treat eaten after a meal. We call that dessert.
On Thanksgiving we will think of you as we do a hundred times a day. We are thankful to have the opportunity to make you our son. And in only a few days that will happen.
With all our love
* * *
Dear Tianjun,
Tomorrow night we will be enjoying the lovely full moon of the Autumn Moon Festival. It’s a very special day for us. Three years ago we were in Guangzhou for moon festival. That was when we brought home your little sister Davyn Jiying, who is now four years old.
Imagine, we were in the same city with you, and we did not know that someday you would be our son. Our family bought lanterns with candles inside and carried them around Shamian island.
Two years ago on Moon Festival night, we looked out the window after we came inside, and wondered if there was another child for us out there under the moon.
By last September, we had seen your picture and fallen in love with you. At that moon festival, we were hoping that we would be allowed to adopt you and bring you home to be our big boy.
Now, we are only about 10 weeks from traveling to Guangzhou to meet you. Soon, you will join your friends at the Guangzhou Social Welfare Institute for a few weeks before we arrive in China. Several American families will travel at the same time and meet their new sons and daughters from the Guangzhou SWI on the same day in December. Then the fun will begin! You will play with your sisters, move with us to the hotel, buy some new clothes and shoes and toys, go swimming in the pool if it’s warm enough.
We are counting the days. I cannot wait to hold you in my arms.
Tonight we went to visit the school you will attend when you come home. We spoke with the teachers there who explained how children for whom English is a second language are taught in our schools, partly in a class with children your age and part of the time with a language helper.
We asked the teacher how we could prepare you for your new school. She said to have you start to learn the letters of the English alphabet and the sounds they make. Perhaps your foster family can help you find the English alphabet? I can write it here for you, so you can copy the letters!
Warm wishes to your foster family for taking care of you and reading you these letters and preparing you for the changes that are coming in your life. Soon the great adventure will begin.
Love,
Mama (Helen)
A a B b C c D d E e F f G g H h I I J j K k L l M m N n O o P p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X x Y y Z z
(the english alphabet is above. The large letters are the upper case letter and the small ones beside them are called lower case.
You can practice the letters and your Chinese name, Tianjun; your English nickname TJ (pronounced tee jay) and your English name, Zane.
* * *
Dear Tianjun,
It’s August now, and we expect to travel to meet you in December, just four months from now. We cannot wait to bring you to your new home. In December, we may have snow in our part of the United States. Have you seen snow before? It’s great fun. You can make snowballs or build bricks of snow and make a fortress or roll balls of snow and stack them to make a snowman.
December is also the month we celebrate some fun holidays, the most exciting of which is Christmas.
At Christmas time we put a big evergreen tree in our house and decorate it with lights and ornaments. We buy gifts for family members and put them under the tree. On Christmas morning we open the gifts and celebrate the holiday. At Christmas children get a vacation from school for several days.
We are so excited that you will be part of the family in time for the Christmas holiday.
For now, it’s still summer and your sisters have one more month before they return to school. In a few weeks we will travel to the seashore in North Carolina for a week of fun at the beach. We will stay in an apartment right on the ocean, build sand castles and walk on the sand, collect seashells, swim in the pool and eat fish and shrimp. Next summer, you too will be able to go to the beach.
Mama is working some extra days at her newspaper job between now and when we bring you home so that I can take a few weeks off work to be with you and your sisters on your school vacation and to help you get started at your new school and make sure you feel safe and comfortable there. The whole family will come to China to bring you home. In January you will start attending the school that Clare Fu Shan goes to. You will start learning English, which is the language that is spoken in the United States.
We also have Mandarin-speaking members of our household. Yuanfang Liu is a Chinese student who lives with us and helps to care for the girls. She speaks Mandarin and will help you understand. After we come home, Liwen He will join our family to help Yuanfang Liu. She lives in Guangzhou like you do.
Tianjun, we are thinking of you always and hope you and your foster family are well. Our hearts are full of excitement at the idea of adopting you, and your new Baba cannot wait to meet his new son and take him to a baseball game.
With all our love,
Mama, Baba and your sisters
* * *
July 17, 2010
Dear Tianjun,
I hope you are getting my letters. We have no way of knowing that, but we
are sending them to help prepare you for your new life.
Today we were looking at your picture. At work, I showed
it to my friends. Each time I see you, I imagine you living in our home, being
the son to your father and me and being a brother to your two sisters.
Below is a
picture of the family at a wedding party last week for your Aunt Sophia and
Uncle Pete. We flew in an airplane from New Jersey to Indiana in the middle of
the country, the place where I grew up. While we were there we slept in a hotel
that had a swimming pool. We went swimming every day and ate a lot of ice cream
because it was very hot. You have a grandma and aunties there who cannot wait
to meet you.
When we come to China to bring you home, we will all
stay in a hotel. If you like, we will go swimming. Your sisters will come to
make you feel more at home. We’ll all have an exciting adventure together as we
become a forever family.
If you ever get worried or wonder what is going to
happen when you are adopted and become our son, please remember that we love
you. It is our job to keep you safe and happy and to give you what you need:
books, toys, healthy food, fresh air, exercise, a good school. We will teach
you English, and you will go to school with your sister Clare FuShan.
Tonight we celebrated my birthday. It was great fun. My
favorite gift was a pair of binoculars. We ate Chinese food. We will celebrate
your birthday too, with balloons and a cake with candles.
Sending you love
and hugs and kisses from your father and sisters, I am your forever mom,
July 17, 2010
Dear Tianjun,
I hope you are getting my letters. We have no way of knowing that, but we
are sending them to help prepare you for your new life.
Today we were looking at your picture. At work, I showed
it to my friends. Each time I see you, I imagine you living in our home, being
the son to your father and me and being a brother to your two sisters.
Below is a
picture of the family at a wedding party last week for your Aunt Sophia and
Uncle Pete. We flew in an airplane from New Jersey to Indiana in the middle of
the country, the place where I grew up. While we were there we slept in a hotel
that had a swimming pool. We went swimming every day and ate a lot of ice cream
because it was very hot. You have a grandma and aunties there who cannot wait
to meet you.
When we come to China to bring you home, we will all
stay in a hotel. If you like, we will go swimming. Your sisters will come to
make you feel more at home. We’ll all have an exciting adventure together as we
become a forever family.
If you ever get worried or wonder what is going to
happen when you are adopted and become our son, please remember that we love
you. It is our job to keep you safe and happy and to give you what you need:
books, toys, healthy food, fresh air, exercise, a good school. We will teach
you English, and you will go to school with your sister Clare FuShan.
Tonight we celebrated my birthday. It was great fun. My
favorite gift was a pair of binoculars. We ate Chinese food. We will celebrate
your birthday too, with balloons and a cake with candles.
Sending you love
and hugs and kisses from your father and sisters, I am your forever mom,
* * *
Dear Tianjun,
Hello. We are so happy that you will be joining our family
within a few months. All of us have been waiting for you for a very long time
with love in our hearts. We will be your parents forever, and our daughters
will be your sisters forever. That means we will love you forever, no matter
what. That is our promise to you.
Let us tell you a little bit about our family.
Mama’s name is Helen. She works at a newspaper. She likes to
laugh and sing and read books and work in the garden. Baba’s name is Craig. He
works at a sports magazine. He likes to play with his children, watch sports on
TV, take his children out to the park to play or to get some ice cream for a
treat. You will be our son, and we will share these activities with you.
Your first sister is Clare Fu Shan, who is 7 years old, just
like you, and goes to school, loves to read and is studying ballet and art in
after-school classes. Clare once lived in a Social Welfare Institute in China
like you did. We traveled to China to bring her home when she was a baby. She
is very smart and pretty, and she will help you learn about life here. Shan
Shan loves cats. We have four cats for pets: Joyce, Luna, Sluggo and Philbert.
Your second sister is Davyn Jiying. She will be 4 years old
in September. She goes to preschool and likes to play spots. Her favorite
animal is a dog. Yingying has been looking at your picture since we learned you
wanted a home, and she has loved you for months already. She is a very loving
and compassionate child with a sweet voice. She loves to hug and kiss the
family. Davyn was born in China like you were. She lived for her first year in
a foster home like you do now. We traveled to China to bring her home in 2007
when she was 1 year old.
Both girls love to play outdoors, dig for worms, go to the
playground, swim at the local pool and look at books. They also like to watch
cartoons on the big TV.
Two Chinese students live in our house as well. They help us
to care for our children. Ping and Yuanfang are their names, and they will help
to care for you, too. They speak Mandarin, so you should be able to understand
them. Mama is trying to learn Mandarin too, but she is learning very slowly.
Please study your Mandarin so we can understand you with the help of Yuanfang
and Ping. We speak another language, English, which you will learn quickly In
the meantime, watch any American TV that you can!
We live in the United States, far from China, and will
travel by airplane to meet you in Guangzhou and bring you to your new home.
Just think, you will soon get to ride on an airplane like the ones you see
flying overhead! Look up to the sky next time you see one, sweet son, and
imagine that we are on our way to you. We will be there just as soon as we can.
When we get home, we will play and learn, go to school, make
friends, teach you English, get you a bicycle and a soccer ball and a baseball
and bat. We will get you a warm coat and hat and gloves for the snowy winter
days.
We live in a big house with a yard and trees on a pretty
street close to New York City. You
will live in the house and have your own bedroom, play in the playroom, and eat
in the dining room. We will try to cook your favorite foods and introduce you
to some new ones.
We hope that someone will take the time to read this letter
to you over and over until you begin to know us. Keep it under your pillow and
dream of us!
We are grateful to your foster parents for taking care of
you for two years and to the staff at the Guangzhou Social Welfare Institute
for caring for you in the past. We are grateful to China for allowing you to
become our son.
With all our love,
Mama and Baba
