A few members of our agency's China Team just returned from a trip to China and they brought us an unexpected treat: a video of our soon-to-be-adopted child! We don't have official approval of the match (LOA), so I can't post pictures or video or give any identifying information. Since she will be a treasure to us, why don't we refer to her henceforth as "Pearl"?
Aside from the rash that looks alarmingly like scabies, she is so adorable. The video shows Pearl seated on the floor next to her caregiver, happily pouring small beads from a bottle into various bowls. As an aside, apparently Chinese children do not choke on small objects the way we all fear that American toddlers will if we give them tiny beads. She looks so much more grown up than she did in the referral video we received a few months ago, and in fact, we initially thought the agency made a mistake and sent us footage of the wrong child. However, after several viewings, we were able to identify features that this older child shares with her younger self. To think, adoptive parents used to receive one grainy photo prior to picking up their child. It is indeed a brave new world, one in which video updates can be uploaded and e-mailed around the planet in moments.
Little Pearl is wearing a sweet red shirt with cute little matching shoes. Her caregiver appears to be the same one who accompanied her in the first video, and I have to wonder whether she is our (almost) daughter's foster mother; we still don't know whether Pearl lives at the SWI or in a foster home. She looks well fed and her clothes match. The matching clothes thing seems self-evident, I'm sure, but most videos and photos we see of Chinese orphans show them bundled in layer after layer of mismatched clothing.
I've viewed the brief video several times over the last 24 hours and each time I watch her playing contentedly with her makeshift toy, I become more and more excited. This is really going to happen! Unfortunately, now that our future daughter has a face and a name, each day that passes is a day without Pearl, and my admittedly great and fulfilling life suddenly seems dull and incomplete because she is not in it. Angry Driver and Bean are excited and anxious too. Hardly a day passes without a discussion about "When we go to China" or what we will do when Pearl joins our family.
As excited as we all are, the experience is not without an element of dysphoria. This child is blissfully unaware of our existence. No, she doesn't have a family right now, but she has adults who dress her and feed her and worry about her and care for her. I'm sure she has friends and favorite activities. We are preparing for her, but she knows nothing about us. There will be a huge seismic shift in her life, and no one has even told her to prepare for the earthquake.
I feel for this sweet girl when I try to look at this impending adoption through her eyes. What seems so wonderful to us will, in all likelihood, be frightening and overwhelming to Pearl. When we finally hold her for the first time, I imagine that we will smile and shed happy tears. How will Pearl feel? How will she react?
What will our first day as a family be like for her? What will the first year be like? Will a grown-up Pearl look back on the day of her adoption with happiness? With bitterness? Will she remember the day at all?
I feel guilty. There. I've named it.
What right do I have to remove this child from her world and deposit her in mine? Is this what is truly best for her? I tell myself that even if we did not adopt Pearl, another American family most certainly would. There is no reality in which this child grows up with her birth family and, in fact, we know nothing of her birth family. That disruption happened long before we even decided to adopt a child from China. In an ideal world, children are raised within their biological families with a strong sense of identity and belonging. This is most certainly not that ideal world.
Here is the moment in which I must practice a concept known as radical acceptance. It is what it is.
The situation is that we made a decision to adopt a child from China, a child is living under the care of the Chinese government and has been made available for international adoption, and our family has been matched with this child. I don't really believe in fate, but perhaps a conglomeration of circumstances congealed in such a way that this is the final product. Gosh, doesn't that sound like an appealing concept?
My pledge is that I will always try to see the world through my children's eyes. I will strive to be their soft place to fall. I can't prevent all the earthquakes in their lives, but, to the best of my ability, I will shield them, protect them, and prepare them. My hope is that a strong foundation of love and support will prevent crumbling later in life. And a little maternal guilt won't hurt that foundation too much, right?
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