Dateline: White Swan Hotel, Shamian Island Guangzhou, Guangdong China, 24 August 2004
[Noon on Tuesday—our last Tuesday away from home]
It’s all over but the swearing: we’ve received approval for Vonne Mei’s expedited immigration to the United States as our adopted child. That was the last big hurdle in the process. Now she’s basically ours for life, although we will re-adopt her immediately upon return to the States (in the U.S. legal system) for additional legal protection for both ourselves and for our daughter over the course of her life. Thanks to a law passed not that long ago, Mei becomes a U.S. citizen upon her entry into the United States, so she’ll use her Chinese passport just once to go to America on a special immigration visa using her new adopted name, Vonne Mei Ling Barnett, that will—in three short days—be officially recognized by the U.S. Government as belonging to one of its newest citizens.
In a few short hours we three will walk across the street carrying only our existing American passports to the U.S. Consulate, where we’ll participate in a swearing-in ceremony that I’ll describe a bit later in this post.
It has been an amazing process getting to know Vonne Mei over the past 10 days, building a certain bond of trust and affection. Do I love her yet? She feels as much mine as the other three we brought home from the hospital—none of which I knew beforehand whatsoever, so the emergence of my feeling for her is not all that different this time around. The physical differences do catch the eye: the small Mongolian spot on her rear-end, the palms and bottoms of her feet that match my skin tone even as her somewhat tanned Asian tint does not, her spiky black hair that makes me sneeze whenever I bury my face in it and send a few shoots up my nostrils, the ever-so-slight slant to her eye lids, and the slightly cross-eyed way her eyes work in tandem (we’re not sure if we spot that in other young Chinese babes or whether Mei really does have a problem there—obviously something we’ll focus on in the weeks ahead).
But Vonne Mei feels just the same in my arms. I nuzzle her neck and ears and they strike me as a perfect physical match to my lips, just like the other three did. Having a baby is a stunningly sensual experience, and I’m not just talking the diapers. Hers hands are all over me every moment we’re together, just as mine are all over her squiggly little bod. I already know her every scent, her every facial expression, her posture, her grip, her ambition, impatience, argumentativeness, and her intense desire to be loved and love someone back in return. She is an incredibly beautiful child, probably the most beautiful Chinese baby girl I have ever seen, especially when her rosebud lips stretch into a wide smile that just hints at what her mature face will someday look like.
And I feel completely objective in this assessment, which gives me some sense of the love building within us both: my ego now encompasses hers—the surest sign I know of true feelings of parentage emerging. Mei has joined our family and—by doing so—has forever left behind all designation of “them” to become one of “us.” She now becomes a key sequence in our family’s collective DNA. Vonne Mei becomes a whole number in all of my calculations of future pathways for me and my own. Everything and everyone recedes into the background, leaving only us six—for now. I will spend all, defeat all, and love all who similarly accept her. She has become a non-negotiable item in my life. To accept me is to accept her and all we collectively represent. Somewhere deep inside, I am already feeling the white-hot emotion that tells me I could—and would—sacrifice all or kill every last one of them to keep her alive. Already, all that motivates me considers her to be inside my wire—crossing it crosses the very definition of who I know I am.
Doesn’t mean I’ll be some fanatic, or won’t see her faults, or won’t let her fail when she needs to understand the learning contained within such experiences. Doesn’t mean I’ll always like her, always treat her well, or never feel pain she may care to inflict in my direction. But there will never be a line she can cross that I will recognize as severing my relationship to her as her father—no matter where she goes, what she does, or how she feels. I won’t be able to feel happiness unless she does as well, and she won’t be able to have worries that I do not take up as my own.
I believe in commitment more than any other concept I have ever come across in my life. It defines my sense of love and my sense of spirituality, two things that I frankly have the hardest time separating in my mind. I would never cheat on Vonne because I could never cheat on Em, Kev, Jer and Mei. To abandon that commitment would be to abandon everything I know to be true and good about myself. I just don’t know where I could go in this world after such an act, and—as such—I consider it unthinkable. These five individuals and the love they generate in my life cannot be made fungible; I cannot divide or partition them into separate relationships. There is no thing and no one that can divide and conquer my sense of commitment to this family—the only thing I’ve created that I really care about.
Yesterday I walked in on Vonne crying quietly to herself. I asked her what was wrong and she said, “It’s just been a very emotional journey to get to this point.” I knew immediately what she meant. Already I can feel millions of years of evolved instinct drawing this child within my protective embrace, and that is an emotionally-charged realization—a concept made entirely real to me over the past 10 days that shook our world. That these tremors are transparent to the rest of the world only confirms to me their exact center of gravity—my heart.
My brown-eyed girl loves to stand up and balance herself, cooing in our direction until our eyes meet hers and our loving approval is registered. She loves to explore and put her hands on everything and everyone. She gets nervous whenever she can’t see one of us, just as we do when neither of us can see her (something I expect to be a major problem in coming weeks, primarily for us). She is an optimist if ever I’ve seen one—something I already love about her. She is determined in focus, and not easily swayed in her beliefs. She wants to see the world, and we want to show it to her.
Vonne Mei will fit right in because she wants to fit in and because we wish it for her. There is no fate involved in this process, just commitment ultimately transformed by, and into, lasting love.
Last evening after I sent off my blog, Vonne and I were both feeling awfully down, mostly to do with our sense of physical wear and tear (e.g., the intense pollution in this town gives me a round-the-clock sore throat that’s about an inch or two from a full-blown migraine), but also due—I suspect—to our growing sense of impending commitment to this child. That commitment will be made official in less than an hour, when we hold up our right hands and swear our allegiance to Vonne Mei—when she joins our united state and the United States.
So what to do in our funky state? We phoned local landmark Danny’s Bagels and ordered in a cheeseburger and fries, plus tuna-fish and grilled-cheese sandwiches. Thus fortified, we joined new friends Janet and Michael and little Arwen for a boat ride up and down the Pearl River. Yes, there were plenty of others on this 30-foot craft, the charter of which was arranged by guide David at $15USD per adult head. But we felt largely in our own little world, sharing our two, new little families with one another.
The ride was as relaxed as the pace of most of Guangzhou’s city dwellers on this sweltering summer night. We sat together in the aft until Vonne Mei got so squirmy I had to run her up to the bow, where I let her pull herself up on my knees about a hundred times as I lay on the artificial turf-covered deck, watching several hundred high-rises drift past on both banks of the river (yeah, I said “hundreds”). Guangzhou is one big-ass town. Amazingly, David will tell you that twenty years ago, none of these buildings even existed—take that Chairman Mao!
It is very symbolic for me to be visiting China during Deng Xiaoping’s birth centenary, especially on an adoption trip. The adoptions are really Mao’s legacy, and if these girls are somehow “lost” (a term I hate and disagree with on more levels than I can count), they were lost to that man’s unbridled ambition and personal ego. But I don’t see Vonne Mei in this light, rather I see her as China’s special gift to our world, something I credit to the confidence Deng imparted to the Chinese people: to stop defining themselves in terms of past grievances and instead in terms of future triumphs and a willingness to join the world once again—on their terms. I choose to accept this historic offer, just as we choose to accept Vonne Mei. My worldview shapes my understanding of this transaction, just as this child shapes my worldview of global connectivity leading to perpetual peace.
And I consider it all for the good—this Theory of Peacefully Rising China. I have no illusions about either the country or this child: I trust both to be exactly who they are. And, as always, I choose connectivity over fear
[later, at 5pm Beijing time—and yes, we’re all on Beijing time here in China]
Just back from the ceremony: a sweaty walk over, then a sweaty time through security, then a sweaty time in a sweltering waiting room, then we walk to a window and match our faces to our passports, then a man from the consulate walks into the room, tells us our kids become citizens the minute they officially enter the U.S., and makes us all swear (right hand raised) that all the information we’ve provided in this process is true to the best of our knowledge.
Vonne feeds Mei a bottle while I prep the camera and camcorder for one of our last group acts: a group photo down at the famous waterfall (all of us together—parents and kids) and a second of just the babies on of one of the giant red couches on the second floor—a big tradition among all the American adoption families. Should be a real scene, but since Vonne Mei slept through much of the consulate process and is now getting a bottle, she should be cool.
After that I fire off this missive and check email for 30 minutes (stopwatching myself to avoid a charge beyond 80 yuan ($10 USD)). Then we’re off to the last group dinner at the Victory Hotel as arranged by guide David. It will be a big Dim Sum feast.
We are winding down, and feeling pretty good about that.
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