What's in a Month?

T.J. and Max at the koi pond of The Garden Hotel in Guangzhou, Dec. 2010.

It's been four months since the day we met T.J., and it's been more than 30 days since we've updated the blog, an eventful month that began with the serious illness of one relative -- Grandma M. -- and ended in the death of another, Uncle Phil. Neither of them has had the pleasure of meeting T.J.

Soon, however, the children will make a pilgrimage to Yiayia's house to meet another clutch of family members and to visit  T.J.'s pal, Max, who is now living outside Chicago.

What they will have to say to each other is anyone's guess. Their last video conference was a bit awkward after several previous non stop chats. In the intervening weeks,the boys seem to have lost the local dialect they shared. But they used neither Mandarin nor English to converse this time.  Max waved some Transformer toys and lugged the cat into view several times. T.J. seemed frustrated. He seems to have a great deal he wants to share with Max, but he isn't quite sure how to do that. It can't be denied that they are thrilled about getting together, and I'm sure they'll find a way to communicate. We cherish Max, the only certain link we have to any part of the first eight years of T.J.'s life. Someday, he will feel that lack acutely. Right now, however, he is living completely in the moment in a way we grown-ups can only envy.

The more comfortable T.J. becomes in our family, the more he opens up, not with information about his past (we know almost nothing and have only two or three photos, all quite recent) but with parts of himself he has kept hidden. As he acquires English, and as he races (not without stumbling) toward emotional maturity, we are seeing funny faces, tricks and tastes that must have been part of his repertoire for a long time. We still really don't have a clue about his foster family, how long he was with them, where he really came from and when he lost his first family.

He is adjusting quickly, but his old balkiness at new situations is arising in the strangest places,for example, a tae kwon do birthday party, which seemed like just the sort of thing he would love. He stood outside the door of the martial arts school, protesting that he wanted to go home, in spite of promises of pizza and cake. The birthday girl, from Jiejie's class, is adopted from Russia. She and her two older brothers have studied tae kwon do for several years. There was something very appealing about the ritual and discipline, the focus on respect and self control -- and about hearing these normally giggly 8-year-olds sing out, "Yes, sir!" Appealing to me, anyway. T.J. and Jiejie would have none of it, even while I was fantasizing about arranging a family class. They watched from the observation area and played a bit with some of the targets the hostess thoughtfully brought over, but did not join in.